| It is both a dance festival, and also ‘nott’ a dance festival. |
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An International festival of experimental dance and performance, nottdance07 takes place across Nottingham from 12-21 October. Ethereal and invigorating, leaving a scent of smoke in the air, the momentary events of the previous nottdance festivals were always a joy to receive. Colliding sonic adventures with bodily movements, carefully choreographed performances and environmental happenings there are many lightening bolts of creativity that may occur along the way. We discussed this year’s nottdance festival with Nicky Molloy Director of organisers Dance4.
What is the aim for the festival? It is both a dance festival, and also ‘nott’ a dance festival. Which allows us to present audiences with work that they can’t always easily categorise. The programme for 2007 presents some UK based artists, the rest are from across Europe, US and Canada. This is the first time the festival has occurred in the autumn, which we’ve done so we can work with the universities in engaging students who are studying dance, live art, visual art and theatre. Does this festival have a theme? This year we have a couple of natural threads running through, for example, an interest in showing work-in-progress and some which are not yet finished. This comes from very experienced artists and we believe that it’s a great experience allowing them to input the response to their work as it continues to develop. It is also a great insight for audiences, who are rarely privy to the process artists go through when creating a new piece of work. Which artists in the festival are from Nottingham? Nottingham based artist Andrew Brown, is working with Simone Kenyon and Katie Doubleday to present Open City: Nottingham. This is part of a series of works looking at how we live in, journey through, and experience the human and built environment. So keep your eyes out for impromptu ‘happenings’ across the city centre, as well as live and archived footage of these activities, which will be beamed back to various festival venues and Broadway Cinema. What kind of ‘happenings’ are we talking about here? I think on the whole we will have to wait and see but essentially the artists intend to orchestrate mass ‘choreographed’ walks/runs etc through the city of Nottingham. The outline of the project is in place, how this evolves almost depends on how the events are received. What work have you commissioned? This year we have given support to Nigel Charnock, a UK based artist who will present the UK premiere of Stupid Men at Bonington Gallery on Sunday 20 October. He worked on this piece in our studio last year and brings with him a stellar cast of performers who are experienced specifically in the art of improvisation. The improvised nature of this piece means it’s a new show every time they do it. Our audience will see something different to the show that had its world premiere at the Venice Biennale earlier this year. You’ve combined musicians SunnO)) and Scanner with Choreographers, is this a new avenue for nottdance? This years’ festival gives a really good insight to these collaborations. Giselle Vienne from France has worked with Stephen O’Malley, aka SunnO)), on the creation of her new piece Kindertotenlieder, which will be in Nottingham on Monday 21 October. Stephen is incredibly well known on the experimental black metal music scene. Stephen and his collaborator Peter Rehburg, aka PITA, devised KTL in response to the work they were doing with Gisele and have been performing around the world since then. Live music in the festival is a great way of opening up opportunities for new audiences to have a look at nottdance, we are really excited to see how many new faces these collaborations will attract to the festival. What can be expected from KTL’s collaboration with Giselle Vienne? It is dark, intense, visually stunning and has outstanding music… I don’t think anyone will be disappointed. There is much excitement about this piece, which we hope will result in a sell-out show. This will only enhance the feeling and atmosphere for the audience. There is nothing better for generating a mood than lots of people waiting in anticipation for something like this. You’ve introduced the WIRE editor, Tony Herrington to talk with Charles Linehan, what is the intention to this? The relationship between dance and music is in a sense obvious but when an artist truly engages with this relationship, in the way that Charles does, the result is very exciting. It isn’t about hearing a beat and moving in time, we wanted to give audiences an insight into the foundations of Charles’ work and because he has a very strong artistic dialogue with Tony, we thought that audiences would find this very interesting. This is another opportunity to gain behind the scenes access to an artists’ work, whilst getting a chance to hear from the editor of one of Britain’s most popular music magazines. Explain the ‘How Much?’ pricing scheme? We want to encourage new audiences to try nottdance. ‘How Much?’ allows the audience member to decide how much they pay for their ticket, based on what they feel about the piece, or can afford to pay, after they have seen the show. People just need to call the box office to reserve their seat, and at the end of the show our team will have buckets for people to donate what they like, as they leave. We are looking forward to seeing how this works! Anything else you would like to say to LeftLion? The first five people who call our festival information line (0115 941 0773) and quote LeftLion can have two tickets to a show of their choice (all shows except Kindertotenlieder). nottdance07 takes place at venues across Nottingham from 12-21 October. www.dance4.co.uk Comment (0)  Send to friend  Print  Add to Facebook  Socialise
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