Nottdance through the eyes of Ben

So we are on the last week of this year's fabulous festival, and its been an amazing two weeks! I have seen two world premieres, a world first preview, a UK first and a host of other events. Not bad for my first Nottdance I think, plus add to that I am helping run it..

I came into the Dance4 team with a limited knowledge of what the whole thing was about, all i really knew was that we have some cool posters round the office from previous years.

But that all changed pretty quickly.

I was thrown into the deep end! Given some artists and told that I was the food guy, luckily for everyone I wasn't going to be cooking every night but it is always a last resort…

I was first handed Me and the Machine; two lovely artists, Sam Pearson and Clara Garcia Fraile, based in Brighton, who were so nice! They just took everything as it came to them and got on with it, which is great when trying to do a load of other stuff as well (like now I'm doing three other things at the same time).

So far their "When We Meet Again" has been my favourite piece of the festival, it was just a magical experience, a 1 on 1 performance where you are immersed into a new world and a new person, it created a lovely amount of positive feedback and a question you have to ask anyone else who had seen it about a strawberry. I will say no more..

The first weekend was a packed one for me, I had Friday and Saturday with Me and the Machine at the PlayHouse with When We Meet Again and then Sunday at the Dance4 studio with their work in progress "On Ways To Disappear without Leaving a Trace" which included a rather handsome Dance4 employee. (No David it wasn't you). Add to this we decided to show Sam the eventful nightlife in Nottingham on the Friday night and then I wasn't to sure how to get back to the office or the Playhouse in the morning as I had ended up staying the night with some of the Dance4 team who decided to lay in all morning! and leave me to walk miles and miles and miles… to a bus stop down the road, where yet again I met a nice old man (a different one to the guy at Episodes) who told me where i needed to go.

Skipping forward a few days now, I have seen the World Premier Premier preview night performance (or whatever it was known as) Glorious by Rajni Shah and now I am about to see a double bill at Lakeside. It's Matthias Sperling and Rachel Krische performing a world premier of their Superdance project and Coisceim Dance Theatre with Swimming with my Mother.

It kicked off with Matthias and Rachel bouncing onto the stage in a lycra costume representing a superhero, however they forgot the first rule of superhero costume design; as the Incredibles has told us all: No capes! We all know that they either get you sucked into a vortex or get them snagged on a missile fin. You can tell what we all talked about in the interval! The piece was a mixture of laughs and a serious competition to outdo the other dancer. I felt the best part of this piece was when they were listening to music through head phones and portrayed it through their movements and timings, a great idea which I would love to have a go at sometime soon..

Coisceim was a moving piece about a Mother and her relation to swimming and how it had shaped her life. I personally enjoyed the movement qualities of this piece and loved the simple ideas used to create a heart warming dance piece where David played both himself old and young and his father.

The World Premier of Tom Dale's I Infinite to me was a wonderful experience and the performance was great. Maria did a great job with Tom's choreography and to get the timing right with Barret Hodgson's lighting and sound which were both very impressive. I can't really say what I enjoyed most, the whole piece was a spectacle not to be missed if you get a chance to see, but the movement and performance by Maria made me want to ditch my cape and join in in the futuristic world. The lighting and use of haze made a beautiful image of clouds forming and moving around the lights and creating an image that has stuck in my mind since; yes it was that beautiful, at the time i found myself stood in awe.. just watching and wanting more. And finally a section where you could get up close to the action, Maria reacting to a tilting image on the floor and matching its every move, I could of quite happily stood and watched her play with that for an entire performance.

Ali Fekih is an amazing man! Seeing his show on the Saturday night was an experience as I had no idea what I was going to see, a thought shared by many I think. I saw a mad collection of movement, use of simple objects and sound timed to perfection, he is a little bit of a perfectionist from my time with him. This continued onto Sunday at our Street Martial event at Broadmarsh. We had a collection of great young groups, Leicester Parkour wowed the crowed with some amazing moves and many backflips off horses (gymnastic ones that is), Fresh 101 with their beat boxing and comedic street moves, Cordão de Ouro Capoeira Nottingham with their use of live music and singing and a show of basic to advanced Capoeira which showed incredible body control by all, Ali Fekih returning to his roots as a street performer and creating a sense of story time for us all their with more great body control and a little bit of showing off with his handstand press ups to warm up! and not to forget the Spirit Dance! which brought the crowd onto the stage to do the new dance to help promote the Spirit Campaign. Ali also helped us pack up which was nice but was mainly to show us up as he was a master of rolling dance floor and we were, well lets just say pretty bad.

And here I arrive to today, our little break before the final week, a chance to catch up on office work and for me to share a little insight. I haven't mentioned the craziness which is going on but im sure you can imagine what i said about episodes and times it by three weeks! Yet I'm still sane (I tell myself this on a regular basis) and loving the Festival and the sense of achievement after every show.

Be sure to come along to our final performances and see some impressive work by some of the best Choreographers from around Europe and even more UK Premiers!

I'm sure you lucky people will get another blog soon so keep your eyes peeled.

Ben Eagles
Events and Promotion Trainee, Dancer, Worlds Best Backstage Runner! (I feel..) Chef of the Year, IT Extraordinaire and Cookie Monster (Radojka thinks I eat to many…)

Ben's Episodes2011 blog

Episodes was two days of complete craziness! And I was lucky enough to experience both sides of the whole process.

Thursday I was thrown into the world of being a runner, having been in shows before and seeing what the runners do during the performance i thought it would be good fun and pretty easy. I got half right.. Runners have a tough time!

It was my job to make sure everything went smoothly, so making sure the groups were in the right place, on time and quiet! Which during a show with 13 youth groups is a challenge. But we had a great team and managed to run a smooth show and the day went really well. Also the highlight of this night was a message played backstage with ten minutes till the start, "10 minutes till curtain up, we are now entering PERFORMANCE MODE!" okay it wasn't the highlight but as i heard this i saw the stage manager, lighting technician and sound technician look at each other then continue to drink there coffees, I think me and Rachel might be simple minded to find this amusing! The real highlight was to watch as all the hard work put in throughout the day made for an excellent show.

Friday was a mixture of a day for me. I started the morning as i had thursday, running around all other the Playhouse and having a good chat with the stage door receptionist about the "good old days" and shows we had been in, I don't really know how i can talk about the good old days being 18.. But then i had to give my well practised responsibilities to Matthew who arrived and genuinely looked scared at what he was about to get into, and went into "PERFORMANCE MODE!" as i was also performing this night with Clout Youth Dance the company i am in. This was a strange turn around as i couldn't stop myself being a runner and helping the others like i had been for the last day, but i managed and focused on my dance side.

As we were one of the last groups to tech we decided to get straight into costume and make up, which is always fun as we have some great costumes! So there was me walking around the Playhouse with my newly cut 1940s style hair, a white and mucky face and some green overalls, a look I'm hoping will take off world wide.

During the dress I got to see some great pieces of work and actually rest instead of running around like the night before. Our run went really well and we got some great feed back from other groups although they could only see us from the side as they were waiting for the finale.

Being the last act in the show we had to wait in college street till the second half and something that Clout are getting famous for is the amount of food we take anywhere and our ability to turn a dance studio into a picnic! All the food was healthy of course, we were getting ready to go on stage… While here i was dragged back into work mode by Adele and filmed some of the performers answering some questions on episodes, and i witnessed a handstand competition which turned very competitive and i think i saw Ian from Retina give himself a free pass straight into the final, fair? I wouldn't question him :D

On to the actual performance at last! After stretching in the corridor, this was pretty impressive and there is a picture of us all with are legs up the wall in splits (i say splits but i was way off) we all rushed through to the side of the stage and watched eagerly as Ecdc finished their performance. This was our first time showing our new piece 'Hang Fire' to an audience, so if you were at the Playhouse you saw a World Premier! The performance was great! it ran really smoothly and nothing went wrong, well i lost balance on a move i had done a million times before and got a little carried away in my solo so i was a bit late for a music cue but I cant be perfect all the time:) And as i said before we were the closing act and this meant there was the rest of the performers in the wings for the finale, which can be a little off putting when you are staying in character and have to walk directly towards them so i thought i would freak one of them out by starring them down, sorry who ever that was! With our dramatic end to the piece (I wont spoil it if your coming to U.Dance) we got a great reaction from the crowd and it made all our hard work worth it.

I had a great two days at Episodes2011 and am really sad I wont be part of it next year. I hope i haven't put anyone off helping at episodes as its a great experience and for me its helped to show the hard work that is involved to put on a event like this and truly respect the people who do this for dancers, actors and musicians alike.

I hope you all come along to U.Dance on the 27th March at the Leicester Curve, and see all the great groups involved, including Clout as i can't wait to perform 'Hang Fire' again

Ben Eagles

Events and Promotion Trainee, Dancer and worlds best runner! (i feel..)