Annual Report April 2016 - March 2017
@PhoenixLeeds /PhoenixDanceTheatre /phoenixdancetheatre
Melt by Sharon Watson. Photo: Brian Slater Front : photo by Richard Moran
Year in Review 2016-2017 was a significant milestone for Phoenix Dance Theatre, celebrating its 35th anniversary, the national dance company based in Leeds can boast being the longest standing contemporary dance company outside of London. Phoenix had an eventful year celebrating what the company has achieved over the 3 ½ decades and the lasting impact made on the dance landscape both locally and nationally. Over the past 12 months, the company continued to take work from their rich and varied repertoire into cities, towns and villages all over the UK, and engage educational institutions and communities to bring new audiences to dance.
Sharon Watson Artistic Director
Company Details April 2016 - March 2017 Board Keith Evans (Chair) Stephen Derrick Andrew Fryer Simon Kamstra Matthew Roberts
Susan Coffer Brian Daniels Dominic Gray Heather Paul Helen Jenkins
Directors Artistic Director: Sharon Watson Executive Director: Mark Hollander Interim Executive Director: Chris Lloyd Artistic Rehearsal & Tour Director: Tracy Tinker Producer: Rajpal Pardesi Technical Manager: Leon Smith/ Luke Haywood Company Stage Manager: Hayley Smith Wardrobe Manager: Emma James Touring Wardrobe Supervisor: Bethany Holmes Dancers Sandrine Monin Vanessa Vince-Pang Sam Vaherlehto Carmen Vazquez-Marfil Prentice Whitlow Natalie Alleston Carlos Martinez Marie-Astrid Mence Jack Thomson (Weston Jerwood Graduate Dancer 2016) Apprentice Dancers Elliott Thompson Ana Fernandez Melero Candela Murillo Access & Education Director of Access & Education: Charis Charles Access & Education Projects Co-ordinator: Emily Labhart Youth Academy Coordinator: Antonio Borrellio Youth Academy Co-ordinator: Tanya Richam-Odoi Access and Education Officer: Sam Broadbent Access and Education Trainee Officer: Jerome Wilks Arts Administrative Apprentice: Sophie Wyatt Marketing, Development & Administration Marketing Manager: Sian Dudley / Kate Kershaw Development Co-ordinator: Melody Walker Finance and Office Administrator: Tony Shergold Fundraising Fellow: Dafydd Williams Company Assistant: Lesley Blades
Mark Hollander Executive Director
Associate Artists Warren Adams Ana Lujan-Sanchez
Highlights 34 performances 24 venues Taking our work throughout the UK with performances in middle scale or small sized theatre venues
Barcelona Dance Festival Phoenix’s company of dancers were invited to perform as the opening act of the 12th edition of The Barcelona Dance Festival at the SAT! Theatre, Spain in Spring 2016
100% capacity We experienced sell-out success for our Rural Tour
Youth Dance success One of our Youth Academy graduates was selected to participate in the BBC Young Dancer Television series for the 2017 competition, gaining a place in the live finals. Axon, choreographed by Phoenix appeared on the cover the first edition of the One Dance UK magazine. Our Youth Academy was also featured in the same publication.
Photo by Richard PhotoMoran by Richard Moran
Best ever Phoenix at Home
2,000 local school pupils engaged
Our Phoenix at Home showcase at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre was our most successful run with audiences filling the venue at 96% to 100% of its capacity across the 4 nights.
Over 300 sessions delivered in Leeds primary and secondary schools reached more than 2,000 pupils of which 60% were from schools in disadvantaged communities.
5,000 participants
53 repertory workshops
Access and Education delivered 1,276 sessions to almost 5,000 unique participants (a 21% increase in sessions delivered ) and our young people performed to audiences of just over 10,800.
A 35% increase in repertory workshops delivered, 53 repertory dance sessions delivered to schools, colleges and dance conservatoires across the country including Belfast, Aberdeen, Greenock, London and Brighton
35th Birthday
Phoenix celebrated its 35th Birthday in style with a specially curated programme for ‘Phoenix at Home’ performed to sell out audiences each night, with 5 curtain calls on the second night by popular demand. The evening presented excerpts from previous repertoires and new works created for and performed by the Youth Academy. The signature piece for programme was NightLife at the Flamingo, a seminal dance production that was first staged in 1983 and choreographed by Edward Lynch with the 5 founding members of the company. It was revived to include a cast of 35 dancers to mark 35 years, featuring 8 company dancers, 2 company apprentices, 20 Youth Academy dancers and 5 ex-Phoenix dancers. Revived as a 30-minute dance work and marked a significant achievement in the history of the company, NightLife is also pertinent to the history of Black dance in the UK and the broader Phoenix legacy. NightLife of the Flamingo also brought new audiences in increased numbers to see this production at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre. We had an increase in BAME audience members to 20%.
83% said the show was excellent
78% rated the dancers as excellent.
30% of our audiences
over the 4-night run were new or had not seen Phoenix perform for 10 years or more. Audience Survey October 2016
“Phoenix at Home was the first time I’ve seen the Phoenix company. They were phenomenal!” “Excellent…very Alvin Ailey. “Best night out in ages.” “Absolutely brilliant from start to finish.”
Touring
Phoenix Dance Theatre toured Triple Bill 2016 for 8 months of the year which featured Until.With/Out.Enough, Undivided Loves, and theatres had the choice of either Bloom or Melt. We toured to 10 new venues including Aberdeen, Newcastle, Blackpool, London and Taunton. We completed the tour in November and succeeded in bringing new audiences to contemporary dance. Mixed Programme 2017 premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in February 2017 which featured our new work Calyx, a revival of Beast and the show stopper Nightlife at the Flamingo. This marked the end of our 35th anniversary celebrations. Mixed Programme 2017 went out on tour with Maybe Yes Maybe Maybe No Maybe choreographed by Aletta Collins which first premiered in 2010 performed along with Calyx and Beast. The 2016-2017 touring season ended on a high with our Refined Rural Tour to enthusiastic and sold out performances at small scale venues in Hereford (South, East England), Llandrindod Wells and Abergavenny in Wales. The rural tour was delivered in partnership with the National Rural Touring Forum. Audiences saw excerpts from Bloom, Never2Still, Until.With/Out.Enough and Nightlife at the Flamingo. 01 Bloom 02 Until.With/Out.Enough 03 Calyx 04 Melt 05 Beast
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03 04 Photo by Richard Moran
Photo by Richard Moran
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Phoenix Premiere 8 February 2017 West Yorkshire Playhouse Choreography & Design concept Sandrine Monin Composer Roberto David Rusconi Lighting Design Luke Haywood Set Design Hughbon Condor Costume Design & Realisation Emma Louise James
Leche Trust
Photo by Brian Slater
Calyx
Created 2017
Sandrine Monin with Phoenix Dance Theatre dancers
New works
“Monin’s choreographic structures are lucid and…clearly defined. Roberto Rusconi’s music is an exciting range of melody…Monin and Rusconi are real finds!” - Dance Europe A highlight of the year was a brand-new commission of a new 20-minute dance work, Calyx by emerging choreographer Sandrine Monin, one of Phoenix Dance Theatre’s professional dancers. This was Sandrine’s first professional dance choreography and Artistic Director, Sharon Watson’s first internal commission. Calyx premiered in February 2017 as part of Mixed Programme 2017. Sandrine worked with composer, Roberto Rusconi who she first partnered with on Phoenix’s Choreographers and Composers Lab 2015, funded by the Esmée Fairburn Foundation. Calyx was inspired by the work of renowned French poet Charles Baudelaire from his most famous 1857 anthology, Le Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) which explores beauty, duplicity, decadence and eroticism and features a cast of four dancers, with soundscape and soundtrack by Roberto Rusconi.
Photo by Brian Slater
Access & Education Phoenix’s Access and Education department delivers a range of activities that are designed to increase participation and break down barriers to arts engagement.
100% success for Youth Academy Of the Youth Academy Leeds senior members who auditioned for places at top conservatoires, 100% were successful in securing a place to pursue full-time vocational training at recognised dance conservatoires. The Youth Academy boasts engagement as high as 6,000 which includes regular in term weekly sessions, performances, bespoke projects and holiday intensives. 4 new dance works were created for the Leeds Academy and were performed to audiences of 10,800 including at Stratford Arts Circus Theatre London, FRESH 17 at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and Leeds Corn Exchange. Expanding the Academy to the North East We set up our first satellite academy in Newcastle and up to 20 young people participated regularly in its termly activities with engagement as high as 1700. The North East Academy participated in our Leeds Spring and Summer performances.
Through this programme, we delivered GCSE/BTEC/A-Level dance syllabuses, university modules, after-school provisions, engagement projects for hard-to-reach and cross discipline collaborations with other academic subjects in schools, colleges and universities. Notably, we taught BTEC dance modules at Leeds City College and the Dance in the Community degree Module at Leeds Beckett University. We also delivered the full dance programme for Years 9, 10 and 11 at the Cooperative Academy of Leeds. Connecting with the over 55s The Young at Arts dance provision delivered in conjunction Opera North and offers dance classes to older people ages 55 and over, was expanded to include older people in care homes in parts of Leeds. Engaging pupils creatively with Science The Science in Motion pilot project was delivered across 2 primary and 3 secondary schools in Leeds to over 180 pupils using dance to enhance the teaching and learning of specific areas of the National Science Curriculum (Key-stages 2, 3 and 4). The project brought together dance practitioners, science teachers and digital technologists to develop an interactive digital education resource based on three of Phoenix’s professional dance works (Melt, TearFall and Repetition of Change) which explore scientific themes within the
school curriculum. The resource and CPD training are available to schools and science educators who want to engage their pupils with science in innovative and creative ways. A new resource for GCSE Dance The digital resource for the dance work, Shadows which is now included in the AQA GCSE dance syllabus since September 2016 went on sale in Autumn and has been selling quite robustly to schools across the UK. We have also delivered CPD training for teachers and workshops in schools nationally on Shadows resources allowing participants to learn the movement material first hand. Lighting up the stage The department delivered 3 Dance Platforms over the past year at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre which gave over 500 young people the opportunity to perform on stage to an audience made up of peers, family members, friends and dance supporters.
Photo by Brian Slater
Schools Partnerships Scheme
Photo by Brian Slater
New Developments
Phoenix Dance Theatre appointed two new Board members with expertise in Major Gifts and Corporate Giving, Brian Daniels and Matthew Roberts. Helen Jenkins and Dominic Grey stepped down from the Board. We welcomed a new Executive Director Mark Hollander in August 2016. Mark comes to the company with extensive experience of running arts organisations, working as a senior manager in the Arts Council and working as an arts consultant. Phoenix continued to commit to supporting the development of young talent by offering apprenticeships, internships and work experiences. A total of 27 students were offered work placements during the year across all departments. Our CEP funded Arts Administrative Apprentice completed her year long apprenticeship with Phoenix and was promoted to Access and Education Arts Administrator. We offered apprenticeships to two postgraduate dancers from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD); a scheme designed to bridge the gap between training and working within the professional contemporary dance world.
Fundraising
Phoenix had a successful fundraising year. The Give 35 for 35 Years came to an end in February 2017 with the campaign achieving 80% of its fundraising target. The campaign gave us an opportunity to build a new fundraising relationship with our audiences around the country and laid the foundations for a monthly donors’ programme. This was further supported by the formation of a Board Fundraising Sub- committee to focus specifically on corporate giving, with new recruits to the board having the necessary skills in this area. The development team was strengthened with an Arts Fundraising Fellow delivered by Cause 4 under the ACE funded Arts & Philanthropy Fundraising Fellowship Programme. The placement ended in August 2016. We continue to successfully raise money from Trusts and Foundations and are steadily increasing donations from other sources. We had a corporate partnership with Spanish wine producers, J Garcia Carrion who supplied our special events with wines as well as Don Simon fruit juices.
Photo by Justin Slee
Our Artistic Director Sharon Watson was appointed Chair of the Steering Committee for Leeds’ bid to be European Capital of Culture 2023. She led a star-studded contingent to the Royal Society of Arts in London in March 2017, featuring Corrine Bailey Rae and Kaiser Chiefs, placing culture at the heart of the city’s bid. Leeds Dance Partnership was formally launched in April 2016 at our headquarters, the Northern Ballet/Phoenix Dance Theatre building. With a vision for Leeds to be an international centre of excellence for dance, the Partnership was launched to high profile leaders and saw Phoenix perform alongside Northern Ballet, Akeim Toussaint Buck, Verve and Gary Clarke Company. Our Artistic Director, Sharon Watson was commissioned to choreograph a new work, SLICE for acclaimed Wired Aerial Theatre which toured across the UK in summer 2016. A seamless synergy of contemporary dance and aerial technique, SLICE previewed in July 2016 in London, as part of Dancing City, GDIF 2016.
Artistic Director, Sharon Watson received the Yorkshire Woman of the Year Award 2016 from the Yorkshire Awards Committee for significant contribution to life in the Yorkshire county. Phoenix partnered with the Children’s Heart Surgery Fund to support their ‘Wear Red Day’ campaign which helps to raise funds for children suffering from congenital heart disease by producing two short promotional videos for social media to generate support for the Fund.
Photo by Richard Moran
Collaborations and External Commissions
Photo by Justin Slee
Partnerships
phoenixdancetheatre.co.uk Phoenix Dance Theatre St Cecilia Street, Quarry Hill, Leeds LS2 7PA 0113 236 8130 Core Supporters The Liz & Terry Bramall Charitable Trust, The Audrey and Stanley Burton Charitable Settlement, The Emerald Foundation, The John Ellerman Foundation, The Idlewild Trust, Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries, PRS for Music Foundation, The Goldsmiths’ Company, The Leche Trust, The Fenton Arts Trust, The Radcliffe Trust, Hinrichsen Foundation, Leeds Inspired. Commissioning Partners New Adventures, The Royal Ballet, Watford Palace Theatre Access & Education Supporters and Partners Breeze Youth Arts Festival, Leeds Short Breaks Partnership, The Leverhulme Trust, Schools Partnership Trust Academies, Creative Employment Programme, The Apprentice Grant Fund, Wellcome Trust, Challenge to Yorkshire & Humber Schools Scheme (CAPE UK), The Big Lottery: Awards for All, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, The Evan Cornish Foundation, The Zurich Community Trust, Sportivate. Partner Schools & Colleges Cockburn School, Cooperative Academy of Leeds, David Young Community Academy, Leeds East Academy, Hovingham Primary School, Kiveton Park Meadows, Holmfirth High School, BBG Academy, The Dance Space (Doncaster), Meanwood Primary School, Carr Manor School. Donors Many thanks to all our friends and supporters who donated to our Give 35 for 35 Years campaign. Inkind Supporters Addleshaw Goddard Phoenix Dance Theatre Principal Funders