Dance Umbrella Reveals Full Digital Programme For 2023 Hybrid Festival

Following the announcement of live events for 2023, Dance Umbrella, London's annual international dance festival has announced the full programme of digital explorations and the on sale of its digital pass. 

Available to a global and national audience from 6 - 31 October, the digital programme consists of a curated selection of dance films, panels and workshops from Graeme Miller, Jade Hackett and Abby Zbikowsi. Previously announced artists in the digital programme are Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, Trajal Harrell, Stopgap Dance Company,  Vincenzo Lamagna & Danilo Moroni, and SU PinWen. 

London-based choreographer, performer and curator Jade Hackett explores her personal definition of home in a new film, Let's Dance in the City, London created in partnership  with Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage in collaboration with regional partners. 

Gazing out of the window onto the grey concrete jungle of her dwelling in the capital, Jade begins to long for her mother's back garden. An oasis of calm where family BBQs fill the air with the smell of jerk, neighbours pass Jamaican breadfruit over the garden fence and 80s vinyl records pulse with the vibrations of the African diaspora. This is the first place that Jade and her friends began to create dance and movement together, a safe space in which they could truly express themselves.

“As London's high rises are continuously growing higher and higher, this little patch of land, tucked away in England's capital, will always be home.” 

For Let's Dance in the City 2023, Dancers respond to the energy of Leeds, Leicester, Newcastle and London. Working alongside filmmaker, Cayla Mae Simpson who has collaborated closely with each artist to creatively help draw out the dance heritage of each place.

Internationally renowned choreographer Trajal Harrell creates narratives that examine the lives of women beyond their sensational moments of infamy. O Medea begins where Euripides' tragic Greek masterpiece ends and seeks to explore the wild grief that our lives can sometimes produce.

Channelling the histories of how they have loved, been loved, and been betrayed through the ecstatic rituals of mourning, O Medea considers what it is like to be a woman among other women, expressing the weight of their lives performatively.

Using elements from contemporary culture, Trajal Harrell's captivating work of expressive

gestural forms sits uniquely at the intersection of postmodern movement, voguing – a style developed in 1980s Harlem, early modern dance, and butoh – a form of Japanese theatre which emerged after the second world war.

KINGDOM is a visionary art film, co-created and directed by musician and composer Vincenzo Lamagna and fine art photographer Danilo Moroni. This cinematic experience is the embodiment of Lamagna's album of the same name, and lives at the intersection of images, dance, and music.

An exploration of the dualities inherent in human existence, KINGDOM confronts viewers with a dance of flesh and spirit. It portrays a compellingly raw tableau where the corporeal crosses paths with the ethereal, unearthing the tension between the raw physicality of life and the immaterial spirituality of existence.

Deeply rooted in the creators' profound ties with the contemporary dance and ballet world, KINGDOM unveils Lamagna and Moroni's multidisciplinary vision, brought to life by some of Europe's most exciting dance artists.

In artist and composer Graeme Miller's 2013 film, End of the Day (knowing it doesn't but making it matter), the camera travels across a football pitch from touchline to touchline capturing the rain-filled imprints of recent action on the internationally iconic Hackney Marshes, reminiscent of a WW1 battlefield. This meditation on loss and gain features the final broadcasts of the legendary radio presenter James Alexander Gordon, known as 'JAG', who read the classified football results every Saturday until his death in 2013. The words evoke an eternity of goal-less draws that contrast with the vocal urgency of the crowds on the touchline and the graphic imprints of the body in the mud. 

Freddie Opoku-Addaie, Artistic Director/Chief Executive of Dance Umbrella said: “Through an evocative soundscape and symbolic imagery, Miller's End of the Day creates a choreographic score that transports audiences to the heart of the match; conjuring up the memories of what took place and depicting the intricate movement language of the beautiful game.” 

Join Greek dancer and choreographer Ioanna Paraskevopoulou for a unique audio-visual performance for the digital stage. In All She Likes is Popping Bubble Wrap, the screen is split in two, one side showing a montage of archival film footage (three girls fishing in a lake, a zombie chase scene, a woman in the bath); whilst the other shows a performer in dialogue with the images. Using various resources including her own body, to devise, create and produce a new soundtrack, Paraskevopoulou creatively brings these filmed images to life.

All She Likes is Popping Bubble Wrap is a playful and captivating experiment for the screen from an artist at the forefront of experimental dance and film. Paraskevopoulou will also perform MOS in the live programme at the Barbican 

SU PinWen's fascination with touch, sensitivity and tactile culture is explored in the short film, Girl's Notes Film Work, which offers a dynamic angle which contrasts with the theatre view, aiming to avoid the narrow gaze on the female body from a single perspective.

Created during the pandemic, Girl's Notes Film Work gave audiences of SU's progressive work a way of experiencing their unique visual language. While balancing a copy of the 'History of Beauty' on their head, a vibrator triggers expressive hand movements, symbolising the power dynamics of women's sexuality within relationships.

Taiwanese artist SU PinWen's work challenges heteronormative notions of gender,

feminism and nudity, taking dance into conceptual realms beyond the purely aesthetic. SuPin Wen's will also perform Girl's Notes in the live programme at The Place. 

Stopgap Dance Company presents Dance Tapes. Dance Tapes is a series of choreographies that combines speech and sound, amplifying the voices of Disabled dance artists. Devised by the renowned Stopgap Dance Company, this project offers audiences an intimate and immersive experience, delving into the rich lived experiences of these remarkable artists.

One of these choreographies is On the Way to My Body, featuring Japanese artist, Kazuyo Morita. In this captivating piece, Kazuyo gracefully traverses between English and her native tongue, exploring the fluid nature of identity, embodiment, space, and perception.

Taking the form of a wide-ranging and personal journey through her anatomic landscape, Kazuyo reconceives the internal layers of the body as places of exchange. Through the delicate dance of unique sensory signals, she skillfully reshapes the exterior surfaces, employing language and metaphor to find her own path towards self-realisation.

Another Dance Tapes project is Within My Own Bones, a sound work created by Zimbabwean choreographer and dance maker Shyne Phiri, who is now based in London. In this profound work, Shyne takes us into the heart of his home, where the tensions within his body harmonise with the immediate surroundings. With a heightened awareness of his sensations, Shyne's words and movements gradually evolve into a stirring celebration of freedom. As he explores various manifestations of nature, he tunes into his body, seeking solace and a place to rest. Shyne's work as a freelance choreographer epitomises his commitment to crafting choreography deeply rooted in everyday life. As a disabled dance artist, he continually pushes boundaries, constantly exploring new avenues of movement.

ReWorking Rhythms is a panel discussion presented in collaboration with Independent Dance and Team London Bridge. Chaired by Tarik Elmoutawakil, the panel will discuss access and inclusion when making, performing, or producing performance. Drawing on their own experiences as artists, the panellists will examine what is given time in the creative process and how those decisions affect or limit what is made, seen and valued. This discussion will take place in-person and online. Full details and booking information to be announced soon. 

Dive into some of the most exciting minds in contemporary choreography. Now in its fourth year, the 2023 edition of Choreographer's Cut features Trajal Harrell. When Tanz Magazine selected Trajal Harrell to be their Dancer of the Year in 2018, the honour prompted the artist to create a solo reflecting on (self) worth, confronting what he means to dance, what dance means to him and the legacy he hopes to leave behind both as a choreographer and as a dancer. Harrell now selects his 2019 work Dancer of the Year to discuss exclusively for Dance Umbrella audiences.   

Finally, Artist Encounters is an online professional development workshop with a guest artist focusing on cultivating practical skills, sharing knowledge, and asking questions that resonate. For DU23, we will be joined by critically acclaimed international choreographer Abby Zbikowski (Abby Z), who will focus on how to create rehearsal spaces that reclaim the brutal rigor that goes into the practice of hyperphysical movement. Through the subversion of outdated hierarchies, Abby will demonstrate how practice can be used as a vehicle for individual and collective growth.

In this interactive session, Abby will offer insight on how to build and sustain relationships with dancers when asking them to repeatedly do the impossible. She will share how her experience with athletics, punk and African Diasporic dance have mentally, physically and politically informed her approach. And she will divulge her most successful and unsuccessful coaching moments, revealing what they have taught her about her responsibility as a dance maker.

Participants will be led through exercises to discover the ways in which, through a system of interconnected relationships between dancers, choreographers, physical movement and a greater purpose that emerges throughout a process, layers of meaning are made.

Dance Umbrella's Digital Pass is Pay What You Can and will give audiences access to the entire digital programme within this year's festival, available online to global and national audiences from 6 - 31 October 2023. The pass is available to purchase  now via danceumbrella.co.uk. 

For the live programme, a Discursive Dinner has now been added to the line-up which will be held at Battersea Arts Centre. Join Dance Umbrella and Fest en Fest - LAB for a  dinner conversation between artists and curators Sonya Lindfors (FI) and SERAFINE1369 (UK). Over dinner, Sonya and SERAFINE1369 will talk about their curatorial approach and how they see their artistic practice intertwined with the curatorial. A vegetarian or vegan meal plus a glass of wine is included with the booking. Bookings will open soon.

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