1 - 12 MARCH | CAMOUFLAGE: SEEN AND UNSEEN
Celebrating 25 Years of Leap Festival
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Venues
Book Tickets & Festival Pass
1 Make.NORTH DOCKS
3 EDGE HILL
37 Regent Street. L3 7BN
2 THE HIGHER SPACE, 10 COTTON ST, L3 7DY
ARTS CENTRE St Helens Rd, Ormskirk, L39 4QP
Website: leap2017.co.uk Phone: 0844 873 2888 0151 709 4988
Date
Time
Event
Wed March 1st
7.30pm
Opening Night : Gary Clarke Co.: COAL
1
Thu March 2nd
7.30pm 10am
Gary Clarke Co.: COAL Stuart Waters & Wendy Hesketh-Ogilivie Intensive
1
Fri March 3rd
Venue
2 CANNING HALF TIDE DOCK
2
10am 5pm
Stuart Waters & Wendy Hesketh-Ogilivie Intensive Scratch Performance: ROCK BOTTOM
9.30am 7.30pm
Taster Bungee-Assisted Dance Workshop Barrowland Ballet : WHITEOUT
2
Sun March 5th
9.30am 3pm
Taster Vertical Wall Workshop COMMUNITY SHOWCASE
2
Mon March 6th
9.30am 7.30pm
Bungee Workout Stopgap Dance Co. : THE ENORMOUS ROOM
2
Tue March 7th
3pm 7.30pm
VITAL! Liz Aggiss : SLAP AND TICKLE
1
Wed March 8th
7.30pm
Mary Pearson : FOMO MOFO | Taciturn: VIEW EDIT HISTORY
1
Thu March 9th
7.30pm
Hetain Patel : AMERICAN MAN
1
Fri March 10th
10am-5pm
Workshop : ARTIST TAKEOVER
2
Sat March 11th
5.30pm & 7.30pm
Project O : VOODOO
1
Sun March 12th
10am - 5pm 7.30pm 9.00pm
Workshop : ARTIST TAKEOVER ARTIST TAKEOVER LEAP 2017 CLOSING PARTY
2
Sat March 4th
THE GARRICK CHARITABLE TRUST EM WETHERED AND IDK CHARITABLE TRUSTS
2 1 1 1 3
1 1
RIVER
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Welcome to Leap 2017 Camouflage: Seen & Unseen
MDI’s mission has always been to inspire people through the wonderful artform of dance and it is that commitment that drives LEAP’s provocative and tantalising agenda. To shine a spotlight on the city of Liverpool through dance, I have chosen the theme of camouflage for this year’s festival. We want to bring dance out of the shadows, explore the hearts and minds of our communities and discover what makes Liverpool move. LEAP 2017 is a creative catalyst and world-class festival, all about “being noticed”, enabling us to grow a scene and thriving community for dance in one dedicated space. This year’s ambitious and bold programme has been curated in response to the fundamental concept of “being seen” and considering the impact of “being unseen” and what impact that has, on a city, a region, a country and the world. We will open with award-winning choreographer, Gary Clark’s latest production, COAL, a prolific statement that sets the scene for the festival with untold stories - celebrating a life of work and courage. Identity and what we choose to see and show the world can be explored through the work Merseyside Dance Initiative 24 Hope Street Liverpool, L1 9BX
of Project O and Hetain Patel. How much do we own what we show? Barrowland Ballet and Stop Gap consider what family life really is and how the choices we make or change through loss can impact on how we choose to live our lives. Being invisible as a positive thing, creating the unexpected and placing dance differently is a big part of the camouflage theme in 2017 and is demonstrated through our community dance events, Vital, Community Dance Day and Artists Take Over. Join us and join in as we take a massive leap to bring some of the most inspiring and criticallyacclaimed dancers and choreographers to the city, while showcasing our own talented, ground-breaking artists based right here, such as Mary Pearson, Felix Ologbosere, Helen McCarron, Wired Aerial and Taciturn dance. Most importantly, LEAP 2017 would not have been possible without the 130 individuals who kindly backed our Kickstarter campaign. To all of them, our sincere thanks and we look forward to seeing you at LEAP 2017. Thanks to Morecrofts, Moore Media, IDK Foundation, LJMU, Wired Aerial Theatre, Edge Hill University, The Granada Foundation and Garrick and EM Wethered Charitable Trusts for their generous donations and support, and to everyone who has helped us in bringing dance to new places and new spaces. Karen Gallagher MBE Artistic Director and the MDI Team: Adam Cooper, Maxine Brown, Jennie Hale, Paul Doyle Technical Support: Fiona Hilton, Phil Saunders
Tel: 0151 708 8810 Web: www.mdi.org.uk Email: info@mdi.org.uk
mdidance24 @mdistudio24 #makemeleap
Celebrating 25 Years of Leap Festival
Welcome to LEAP 2017; a festival of dance celebrating its 25th anniversary in Liverpool. We’re delighted to bring LEAP 2017 to MAKE; 18,000 sq. feet of warehouse in the vibrant North Docks creative hub, only a 15min walk from Liverpool city centre. The whole festival would not have been possible without the collaborative support of Unity Theatre. For LEAP’s 25th year we’ve made MDI’s biggest dream a reality; to create a pop-up dance house and present the best of the UK’s dance all under one roof - a first for MDI and the city!
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GARY CLARKE COMPANY
Winner
2016 U K Theatre Awards Achieve ment in Danc e March 1st & 2nd : 7:30pm Tickets : £16 / £14 (conc) Created to mark the 30th anniversary of the end of the 1984/85 British Miners’ strike, award-winning choreographer Gary Clarke proudly presents COAL, a powerful and emotional dance theatre show about life at the coal face. It brings together Clarke’s striking physical language performed by 7 professional dancers, a local cast of women and a live brass band, in a story about community, solidarity and survival.
“An absorbing, immediate slice of history rendered with the kind of emotional truth that deepens its impact as popular entertainment.”
BOOK NOW: leap2017.co.uk | 0151 709 4988
The Times
Image: Joe Armitage
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BARROWLAND BALLET
March 4th : 7:30pm Tickets : £16 / £14 (conc) “ Barrowland Ballet bring a thrillingly muscular energy. ...This is a take on life with genuine strength of conviction in a natural, vivid style. We’re entranced.”
The Guardian “Natasha Gilmore’s choreography explodes on the stage and demonstrates why Barrowland Ballet is one of Scotland’s most successful contemporary dance companies”
The Reviews Hub
Image: Pavel Dousek and Jason Brown
Celebrating 25 Years of Leap Festival
Presented by one of Scotland’s most successful contemporary dance companies, Barrowland Ballet’s WHITEOUT is a heartfelt contemporary dance theatre piece that gives resonance to the complexities of bi-racial relationships. Informed by personal experiences from her marriage and as the mother of bi-racial children, Natasha Gilmore explores this issue with honesty and humour. The six dancers use their versatility of styles to create a show that is thrilling, joyful and physically emotional.
BOOK NOW: leap2017.co.uk | 0151 709 4988
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MDI
March 5th : 3.00pm Tickets : ÂŁ8 / ÂŁ6 (conc) Placing the people of Merseyside central to our future ambitions for a dedicated dance space for the region, our community showcase will celebrate 25 years of Leap Dance Festival. With a diverse programme of new work by invited groups past and present. Image: Alan Smith
March 6TH : 7:30pm Tickets : £16 / £14 (conc) In THE ENORMOUS ROOM, the past is still present and memories collide with reality. Combining exquisite detail in movement with evocative text and design, the production takes the audience somewhere in between this world and the next. Image: Chris Parkes
“Dave’s wife Jackie is gone, but her husband Dave still sees her everywhere. She is lying in his bed, sitting at the kitchen table and laughing with their daughter Sam. Dave is not going anywhere and has withdrawn into the living room. He has built the walls up high and is refusing to let the future in. But going is all that Sam can think about.”
Celebrating 25 Years of Leap Festival
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STOPGAP DANCE COMPANY
BOOK NOW: leap2017.co.uk | 0151 709 4988
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MDI
March 7th : 3.00pm Tickets : £8 / £6 (conc) Returning for its second year, Vital! celebrates the notion that you are never too old to dance. With workshops and performances for and by people aged over 50, we highlight the need for creativity and expression within an aging population. Image: Alan Smith
Edge Hill University presents … LIZ AGGISS
Edge Hill Arts Centre March 7th : 7:30pm Tickets : £10 / £8 (conc) / £5 (EHU Students) Book tickets at: edgehill.ac.uk/artscentre Born in an era when children were seen and not heard, Liz never had a clue what she wanted to do. She just knew she wanted to be seen and heard. SLAP AND TICKLE is a dark and ribald physical commentary on cultural mores and sexual taboos: a disorientating display of interpretations and contradictions about women, girls, mothers, bitches and senior citizens. Beating a path through the personal and historical, Aggiss creates a feminist soup that lurches from spoken word to expressionist movement, from music hall to radio nostalgia.
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MARY PEARSON
March 8th : 7:30pm Tickets : £12 / £10 (conc)
Image: FoMO MOFOs: Mark London
With Special Guests:
TACITURN: VIEW EDIT HISTORY Taciturn get sucked into the world of social media and the role it plays in our society in their new work in progress. The pictures we see and stories recounted, those ‘best bits’ we compare to our own lives. But what we don’t see in between those poses is the stark reality and unpredictability of life. We hope to share with our audience an honest and presumptuous account of the transfer of reality to social media and vice versa.
Celebrating 25 Years of Leap Festival
Enter here and now. A woman, and a mystery: What happened? How did we get here? How do we get down from here? Flashing back through another time, another place, a woman is lost in a digital age state of being. All eyes gaze upon her, their insatiable desire is to invade and capture her privacy. FoMO, MOFOs! (Fear of Missing Out, Motherf***ers!) is a kaleidoscopic meditation passing through the films Blow-Up and Mullholland Drive and the songs of Robert Wyatt, Kraftwerk and John Lennon; a modern myth, cautionary tale, and cinematic visual feast. At times sinister, at times achingly vulnerable, and laced with deliciously surreal comedy, this solo performance is hard to pin down and hard to forget. FoMO, MOFOs! is made possible by a Time & Space residency at Metal Culture and residencies at Au Brana Cultural Centre and Unity Theatre
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Unity Theatre presents … HETAIN PATEL
March 9th : 7:30pm Tickets : £12 / £10 (conc)
BOOK NOW: leap2017.co.uk | 0151 709 4988
AMERICAN MAN, the new one-man show from visual artist and performance maker Hetain Patel, imagines a not too distant future where celebrity power and political correctness have reached new heights; where Barack Obama’s post Presidential job is the new head of Apple computers and where Stephen Hawking provides live translation for political speeches and rap concerts. Combining seamless vocal and physical impressions with his characteristic wit and humour, Hetain presents a personal, sometimes dark, outlook on a world that bombards us with contradicting ideas about who and how we should be, and where freedom walks hand in hand with guilt.
Image: Courtesy of Sadler’s Wells
“Patel shapeshifts with delicious dexterity.” The Times
PROJECT O
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March 11th 5.30pm and 7.30 pm Tickets : £12 / £10 (conc)
Image: Katarzyna Perlak
Celebrating 25 Years of Leap Festival
Over the course of 4 hours, Project O dance themselves out of the desire for and expectation of an aesthetic assimilation that upholds a system of white supremacy. A dance as cartography, mapping the movement of their memories and the gaps in their knowledge of what went on before, those histories that are repeatedly erased by being unspoken. Training their bodies to fall through time, communing with ghosts, conjuring new futures and describing a misremembered past, this dance is an ode to the present. It’s durational unfolding becomes a science fiction that addresses the desire, confusion and responsibility of being a single subject who is also a symbol of many long-persecuted people… An attempt to never be caught or trapped, to visit and leave behind former selves, to move and to transform. Voodoo is 2 hour show that mutates as it is performed twice
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MDI
March 12th : 7.30pm Tickets : £8 / £6 (conc)
BOOK NOW: leap2017.co.uk | 0151 709 4988
For the final day of the festival, the venue is handed over to local artists to experiment and explore the possibilities of a dedicated dance space and steer the course for MDI’s future ambitions. An evening of innovative new performance work, including MDI’s ResiDance artists Helen McCarron and Felix Ologbosere.
Image: Alan Smith
Followed by:
LEAP 2017 CLOSING PARTY 9.00pm Tickets : £5 / £4 (conc) / Free Admission with Festival Pass or Artist Takeover With DJs, dancing, a late bar and some surprise guest performances, join us as we celebrate the culmination of LEAP 2017, and look forward to next year and the future for a dedicated dance space in Liverpool.
MDI presents‌
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March 1st - 12 th : 12pm – 10 pm Archive video installation running throughout LEAP 2017 MDI has been working with a group of LJMU student interns to create a lasting legacy of Leap. The students from Screen School and the Dance Department have come together to create a documentary using video archive to celebrate the silver jubilee of Leap, marking the last 25 years! Through assembling raw footage and interpreting the material, the students have created an archive, documentary and installation responding to the themes of the festival. The documentary will feature throughout the festival and the installation will pop up through the second week. Students producing these works are: Hayley Banner; George Buxey, Kevin Keenan, Meghan Escott and Natalie Traynor
Celebrating 25 Years of Leap Festival
25 YEARS OF LEAP INSTALLATION
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Talks, Workshops and Satellite Events Throughout Leap 2017
LEAP PROGRAMME FOR SCHOOLS
Alongside Wired Aerial Theatre’s HIGHER SPACE and independent artists, we will be presenting a programme of Workshops and Discussion throughout LEAP.
Workshops for Schools, Colleges and Higher Education
Independent artists will be leading research workshops at HIGHER SPACE on Friday 10th and Sunday 12th as part of the ARTIST TAKEOVER! There will also be pre-show discussions as part of the programme, which will be released at a later date. For full details of discussions and workshops visit leap2017.co.uk
2-day Research Intensive with Stuart Waters & Wendy Hesketh-Ogilvie
BOOK NOW: leap2017.co.uk | 0151 709 4988
March 2nd – 3rd : 10am - 3pm Scratch Performance March 3rd : 5pm Rock Bottom is an aerial dance theatre duet, presently in research and development phase, led by Stuart Waters, working with Wendy HeskethOgilivie. This intensive gives professional dancers the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the duo’s working practice and creative approach. A scratch performance of the work will take place at the culmination of the session on March 3rd. For more information on all courses running at The Higher Space as part of LEAP 2017 visit wiredaerialtheatre.com/workshops
Image: Panta Rei Dance Theatre
As part of Leap 2017 we are delighted to offer workshops for you and your students at your centre. Gary Clarke Company will be delivering workshops that explore the movement and themes of their award winning production COAL, featured in the main festival programme. COAL Workshops lasts 3 hrs for up to a maximum of 30 participants. Contact the company direct: engagementcoal@gmail.com Stopgap Dance Company are offering schools the chance to explore their methods of working with a company of able and disabled performers and the themes of their new work The Enormous Room featured in the main programme. Schools may select a workshop on previous work Artificial Things, part of the new GCSE Dance Anthology. Stopgap workshops will take place on Tue 7th March, last 1.5hrs for a max. of 20 participants. Workshops form part of an exclusive education offer. A ticket and workshop package is £490 for a workshop at your school and 20 tickets to the performance. More tickets can be added to and will be priced at a reduced rate of £12. If you would wish to book a Stopgap workshop or for further information, please contact | paul@mdi.org.uk or 0151 708 8810.
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Dance at Edge Hill University Edge Hill University’s innovative dance programme combines technique development and academic rigour to meet the requirements of contemporary dance professionals and artists, creating graduates with range of skills sought after within the industry, including choreography, dance techniques, performance, dance teaching and contemporary practice. If you have any questions about this programme or what it’s like to study at Edge Hill University, please contact: Course Enquiries Tel: 01695 657000 Email: study@edgehill.ac.uk Dance Programme features: 30th January, 7.00pm: Fallen Angels: Upon Awakening 9th February, 7.00pm: Wendy Houstoun: Pact With Pointlessness 28th February, 7.30pm: James Wilton Dance : LEVIATHAN with a curtain raiser performance by EdgeFWD and 3rdEDge choreographed by James Wilton and the dancers.
The Arts Centre, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire L39 4QP Tickets £10 / £8 / £5 EHU Students
Image: Wendy Houstoun by Hugo Glendinning
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The Guardian
17/01/2017 15:49
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