Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music. -William Stafford
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About Scottish Dance Theatre Scottish Dance Theatre is Scotland’s national contemporary dance company. We commission choreographers from all over the world to put dancing bodies at the heart of artistic innovation and create adventurous new works. The company tours extensively. We produce dance at our home in Dundee to cross all scales: major world stages, highland halls and intimate rooms – wherever people are. Under the direction of choreographer Fleur Darkin, Scottish Dance Theatre works collaboratively with artists from all disciplines to manifest brilliant visions that can speak to diverse audiences in contemporary ways. Education is at the heart of Scottish Dance Theatre. We create projects that harness dance’s transformational power. Dance can uplift, inspire, tune our sensibilities, and enrich lives. The company promotes and develops access and appreciation of contemporary arts in our local community, aiming to bring a life-enhancing experience of dance to as many people as possible. We contribute to the vibrancy of our community and seek to inspire people of all ages.
Our mission: to inspire Scotland
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“Scottish Dance Theatre has a distinctive identity: lively, quirky and confident.” Dancing Times
“Energy defines Scottish Dance Theatre” The Hindu Newspaper, India
“Risk-taking, innovative, “Scottish Dance Theatre: beautiful, collaborative and nurturing… I hope stylishly done and very good fun” Scotland realizes how lucky it is” The Independent The Skinny, Scotland
About SCALE Scottish Dance Theatre commissions a series of ground-breaking collaborations that transform the city of Dundee into an art canvas. World-renowned artists from the visual arts, music, fashion, film, and dance unite to play with the city‌ and your mind. SCALE is a pioneering, ambitious, multi-strand public art project commissioned as part of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games Cultural Programme. SCALE is a series of events that will be seen by tens of thousands of people on the east coast of Scotland with a predominant focus on Dundee. We will weave together strands of collaboration, community, and celebration to create a significant cultural engagement with Dundee in the months leading up to the Glasgow 2104 Commonwealth Games. We are bringing the city of Dundee to life with projections of giant toddlers, a pop-up park, and other groundbreaking collaborations between internationally renowned artists. SCALE will interact with its audience on late-night streets and in city-centre afternoons. The project will surprise and convert passers-by into contributors and collaborators. Every type of public space will become a playful site of city-wide dance. From civic spaces and buildings to shopping centres, pavements, and lamp-posts we will showcase dancers of all scale inviting audiences to engage of their own volition and at their own leisure. 5
The broad engagement afforded by these large-scale events will be underpinned by engagement with parents and babies in our specialized early years dance residencies. This significant exchange between artists and families will shape the bold aesthetic of the public interventions and refine its style. SCALE’s appearance on unexpected surfaces and in the city square will animate Dundee as a city of wit, imagination and ambition.
SCALE Events FAMILIES Families across the east coast of Scotland participate in a series of play sessions led by early years’ dance specialist Louise Klarnett that encourage increased communication, shared creativity, and interconnectedness. Dates & Times: Ongoing, November 2013 – July 2014 Location: Dundee City, Perth & Kinross, Angus Attendees: approx. 450 in total Target Demographics: Families and children; Cost: Free!
EXHIBITION Dundee’s walls, rooftops, churches, floors, and tunnels become a cinema when stunning video artist Tim Reid (Sydney Opera House, DV8, National Theatre of Scotland) playfully animates the city in a series of bespoke shorts.
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The footage for Exhibition will be collected in a touring Mini-Film studio that will visit Angus, Perth, and Dundee in March to capture infants’ and toddlers’ own unique style of dancing. Dates & Times: 28/29 March 2014 Location: Dundee City-wide Attendees: 80,000 (potential to reach over half the population of Dundee, plus Tayside) Target Demographics: Families, young professionals, students, arts supporters; Cost: Free!
PERFORMANCE ‘The Human Scale’
Fleur Darkin creates a full-length evening work on this glorious company of ten inspired dancers, in collaboration with critically acclaimed (and Dundee-born!) British visual artist David Batchelor whose recent exhibitions span from London (Whitechapel, Hayward, Royal Academy) to São Paulo (Centro Maria) by way of Edinburgh (Fruitmarket). Original music will be played live by The One Ensemble, Glasgow-based brainchild of Daniel Padden – “a kaleidoscopic collision… that sounds like absolutely no one else” (Brainwashed). Dates & Times: 4/5 July 2014 Location: Marryat Hall (Caird Hall) Attendees: 700 Target Demographics: Families, arts supporters, businesses, press, VIPs; Cost: £10-15
PARK For 24 hours only, Dundee’s City Square transforms into a colourful, celebratory pop-up park. We invite everyone aged 0 – 99 to join the party for a day-long arts festival. Dates & Times: 6 July 2014 Location: Dundee City Square Attendees: 2,000 (plus as many as 70, 000 passers-by) Target Demographics: Families, teenagers, media, arts supporters, young professionals, students, shoppers, anyone and everyone passing through the city square – the population of Dundee! Cost: Free!
Sponsorship / Partnership
We welcome the opportunity to create significant relationships with local businesses. We will work with you to craft a bespoke package that promotes our affiliation and relates directly to your place in Dundee’s community. Scottish Dance Theatre hopes to create an exemplary public/private model for the benefit of residents and visitors to Dundee and the Tayside area. 7
What we offer Benefit packages will be tailored to your needs and are dependent on the level of support given, but will include some of the following: • Close association with Scottish Dance Theatre, an organisation that is known and highly respected for our innovative and inclusive approach to the arts • Exclusive Press Release announcing partnership, with photo opportunity • Extensive brand exposure and distribution of branded marketing materials • Special invitations to Scottish Dance Theatre SCALE events and tickets to performances • Unique corporate hospitality (e.g. cocktail party for key clients with our company dancers) • Innovative professional development or specially designed team-building opportunities for your employees • Personalized workshops, private performances, or backstage tours of the Rep for your staff and their families • Strong connections with new and existing audiences in Dundee •
Visible expression of your commitment to engaging diverse audiences
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Positive and celebratory collaboration with the community via connection to SCALE events
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Enhanced company profile and increased local recognition
“In my own endeavors, I have play in developing vital crucial impact on
philanthropy and business seen the critical role that the arts stimulating creativity and in communities…. the arts have a our economy and are an important catalyst for learning, discovery, and achievement in our country.” –Paul G. Allen, Co-Founder, Microsoft
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Benefits for our local community Physical Development: Dance involves a great range of motion and is an excellent form of exercise for total body fitness. Participation in dance leads to: • •
healthier heart and lungs, stronger muscles and bones better coordination, agility and flexibility
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improved balance and enhanced spatial awareness increased physical confidence improved mental functioning
Emotional Intelligence: Dance promotes psychological health and maturity. Children enjoy the opportunity to express their emotions and become aware of themselves and others through creative movement.
"I know when I look back I will say I spent the BEST DAYS of my life with Scottish Dance Theatre" - Youth Company Participant, age 15 Social Awareness: Dance fosters social encounter, interaction, and cooperation. Children learn to understand themselves in relation to others, as well as benefit from: • • •
improved general and psychological well-being greater self-confidence and selfesteem
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increased trust better social skills reduced social isolation and exclusion
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Cognitive Development and Education: Movement provides the cognitive loop between the idea, problem, or intent and the outcome or solution. This teaches an infant, child, and, ultimately, adult to better function in and understand the world.
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Target Audience Our media and promotional campaign is aimed directly at the following groups: 1. Families – Single- and two-parent homes in the greater Dundee area. People from all walks of life that have children aged 3 years old and under. For Dundee City alone, this is approximately 15,000 people, or about 10% of the local population. 2. General Arts Audience – Male & Female, 25-45, who generally attend one or more cultural event a month, often attending in groups of 2-4, have active cultural lives. This group makes up a majority of our audience. Audiences for cultural events all over Dundee have steadily increased in the last 3 years, with 2011/2012 seeing a 9% increase in attendance figures overall. 3. Students/Young Professionals – Male & Female, 18-35, occasional to regular arts attendees, likely to attend with groups of family or friends. 4. Females 30+ – Taking on the majority of child-care duties, regular arts supporter, generally mothers/grandmothers, see the arts as a quality time activity for families, and, in particular, to bond with their children. 5. Other markets – People who would rather go to the park or a show than stay home, parents who need to entertain the kids for a weekend, people that enjoy participating in community events.
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Media Support Based upon target market research, we are creating a media plan that will generate high levels of interest in and awareness of all of our SCALE events, specifically targeting key markets. Our budget for paid/promotional media is £19,000. However, we have recently secured Wave 102FM and the Courier as local media sponsors and with that we are anticipating receiving the equivalent of an additional £40,000 in media value through press coverage, editorial features, and live broadcasting of public events. In addition to paid and promotional media, we will embark upon a comprehensive publicity and non-media promotional campaign.
Publicity
We have engaged the services of one of the country’s top publicists, Wendy Niblock, who will design and deliver a campaign to target national press opportunities. Additionally, our own Marketing team will target the local Dundee area for both general and niche media. These campaigns will kick off with a media launch in late February 2014 and will continue through the final event, PARK, in July 2014. We will be providing media access to our high-profile artists and collaborators, including Fleur Darkin, David Batchelor, The One Ensemble, Dr. Suzanne Zeedyk, and our company of dancers for interviews, photos, and commentary. As this event is part of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games Cultural Programme, we will be concentrating a large portion of our publicity effort on the promotion of this association. Businesses partnering with us will also benefit greatly from the promotion of our early years’ outreach and world-class cultural offerings, as this makes up a key part of our strategy. We are also very happy to assist your business in developing a publicity plan that targets your specific consumer and intermediary markets.
Signage In the weeks prior to each SCALE event, we will distribute approximately 20,000 flyers and 200 large posters around Dundee and Tayside. We will also supplement these promotional materials with hand-to-hand leafleting, creative street advertising, and exit flyering at select cultural events.
Web Site/Social Media Our web site generates 138,640 hits annually, with 62% of those hits from unique users. Our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube) have over 12
20,000 dedicated followers. Both our web site and social media channels will include a wide variety of information about SCALE, its sponsors, and participants, and will be featured on all appropriate media promotion and publicity.
Direct Marketing
As we have a strong mailing list, we will conduct our campaign using e-mail and direct mail to over 46,500 people who have attended similar cultural events in Dundee. We will be contacting them, including a link to our site, six weeks prior to each SCALE event and again two weeks prior.
Artist Biographies David Batchelor Born in Dundee, David is a critically acclaimed visual artist living and working in London. Recent exhibitions include: David Batchelor: Flatlands, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and Spike Island, Bristol (2013); House 2012, The Regency Town House, Hove, UK and Slugfest, Galeria Leme, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2012); 2D3D: David Batchelor, Karsten Schubert, London, (2011); Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2011); Gravity’s Rainbow, Ingleby Gallery (2011); Chromophilia, Paco Imperial, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2010). Batchelor is Senior Lecturer in Critical Theory at the Royal College of Art, London, and has written and edited a number of books, most recently; Found Monochromes (2010, Ridinghouse, London, 2010) and Colour (2008, Whitechapel, London / MIT Press). Fleur Darkin Fleur is the Artistic Director of Scottish Dance Theatre. She has enjoyed choreographic stints at Laban, The Place, and the Royal Opera House. Awards/nominations include Jerwood, The Place Prize, Dance Digital, and the 2011 Jardin D’Europe prize. Residencies include Junges Hundes (Germany), P.A.R.T.S. (Belgium), Theatre Mono (Lebanon) and the Bolzano Festival (Italy). Darkin’s large-scale projects include choreography for audiences of over 300,000 on ThreeSixty’s global tour of Peter Pan, three Glastonbury Festivals, the world’s first ever science musical for Channel 4/Discovery and the 2006 commission Parabolic, which played to 25,000 people. Darkin is passionate about education - when her hit show SisGo was invited to the 2013 Edinburgh International Festival, 50 Dundee residents took to the mainstage of the Festival Theatre to perform alongside the professional company. Dawn Hartley Dawn is Education Manager at Scottish Dance theatre and has developed the company’s reputation for offering excellent teaching and relevant Creative Learning engagement opportunities. She has created a creative, ambitious and focused Youth Dance Company, with young people aged 12 – 18 years attending from all over the north east. Dawn programmes a wealth of opportunities for the young people, including the popular annual event, Great Big Dance Show for Dundee Rep. She has initiated strong links between the dance and other 13
communities of Dundee through the development of Light Night, International Day of Disabled People and Dundee Dance Partnership performances, and many other projects. Louise Klarnett Louise is a dance artist specializing in working with the early years. She has developed an extensive dance and movement practice working with young babies to 90+ year olds in diverse communities, leading regular and one-off sessions, projects and workshops in children’s centres, nurseries, schools, colleges, conservatoires, day centres, hospices and hospitals. She leads continuing professional development training focused on early years including for Trinity Laban’s Professional Development and One Year (community) Programmes and Dance Art Foundation’s Breathing Space Programme. She is leading a weekend of CPD for The Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning in 2014. She has worked as Early Years movement advisor for The Darkin Ensemble’s Blake Diptych: Innocence, Green Candle Dance Company’s No Fear! and for Spitalfields Music’s Musical Rumpus, Mudlark Dances, an opera for 0-2 year olds. Louise leads regular classes at Trinity Laban, Stratford Circus, Ivy Street Family Centre, and Kids World Satellite Children's Centre as well as ongoing sessions for the Breathing Space, Dance Art Foundation's dance in healthcare settings programme in children’s hospices in London and West Sussex. Louise graduated with BA (hons) Contemporary Dance from De Montfort University in 1998. Daniel Padden (of The One Ensemble) Daniel Padden is a composer and musician based in Scotland. He has created music for film, theatre and television, as well as for a variety of other projects and commissions. His band, The One Ensemble, has extensive experience performing internationally, having successfully played in over half a dozen different countries. These include Zaragoza Expo in 2008, Südpol, Luzern (Switzerland), VPRO Amsterdam, Kunstencentrum, Hasselt (Belgium), Point Ephemere, Paris and Suoni Per Il Popolo in Montreal. They were recently selected as part of the prestigious Made In Scotland 2013 showcase, and are currently finishing the recording of ‘Saint Seven’, performed at Summerhall in August and November 2013. Tim Reid Tim is a critically acclaimed video-artist based in Glasgow who designs video effects and playback systems for shows from experimental small scale works up to full scale theatre, opera, and ballet productions. He has worked all over the world and his work has been seen in places as diverse as Sydney Opera House and the Shetland Isles … just not on the same night. Alexander Ruth Before starting his research in performance based design, Alex worked as a Fashion Designer in London and Paris. After receiving his MA in Costume Design for Performance from the University of Arts London LCF in 2013, Alex has just been awarded the prestigious Linbury Prize for Stage Design and has been commissioned to design a production for the Scottish Dance Theatre, Room, choreographed by Fleur Darkin. Dr. Suzanne Zeedyk 14
Dr. Zeedyk is a research scientist fascinated by babies’ innate capacity to communicate. Since 1993, she has been based at the University of Dundee (Scotland), within the School of Psychology. She arrived there from Yale University (USA), where she had completed her PhD in developmental psychology. In 2011, Suzanne set up an independent training enterprise to disseminate more widely the science of the early years and now works with organizations across the world.
More info online at: www.scaledance.com or by emailing Aiyana D’Arcangelo at adarcangelo@scottishdancetheatre.com
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(Design sketch by Alexander Ruth, for PARK event in front of Caird Hall)
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