Yorkshire Dance and Yorkshire Sculpture Park are working together to offer residencies and artist retreats to dance artists working in the region and further afield.

The idyllic Yorkshire Sculpture Park offers artists and members of the public an opportunity to “challenge, inspire, explore and delight”, just 20 minutes from central Leeds – and it’s the perfect place to take a retreat, research and develop or create.

Working in partnership means that we can offer the best of both worlds: at Yorkshire Dance, purpose built dance studios, a central location and access to staff with a wealth of industry knowledge; at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, some indoor space, lots of outdoor space and overnight accommodation (subject to availability).

Vanessa Grasse, Bettina Neuhaus and Phill Harding are taking up our first joint residency, working at Yorkshire Sculpture Park from 29 May – 6 June, then at Yorkshire Dance in Leeds until 18 June. Find out more here.

If you’re interested in finding out more about this opportunity,
please contact Hollie Harkness-Gowers:
hollieharknessgowers@yorkshiredance.com

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Find out more about residencies at Yorkshire Dance here.

North East, North West and Yorkshire Professional Dance Development Seminar

Yorkshire Dance, Leeds
Wed 3 July, 2013

Lunch 12:30pm
Seminar/Discussion 1:15-5:00pm
Performances 5:30-6:30pm

Who is it for: All those who are working in/or for the professional dance sector, focused on, although not exclusive to, those creating, making and producing work. For dance makers, dance organisations, dance agencies, dance producers and venues.

What is it: Feedback on the work done so far to map the provision for professional dance development opportunities in the North of England. A debate on where the gaps are and what the future development landscape should be?

Your input is vital to securing a vibrant dance ecology for the North in the allocation of future funding and resources. This will not be a dry discussion but an inclusive and relevant consultation of what happens next for dance artist development in the North.

There will be performances by artists from each of the regions in the North at the conclusion of the day.

Travel bursaries are available on a first come first served basis. Please contact Sarah Spanton at sarahspanton@googlemail.com for more information.

To book your place call 0113 243 8765
Tickets to this seminar are free but limited.

OverWorlds & UnderWorlds:
Come and Play

Can you remember what you were doing this time last year? In this week in May 2012, Yorkshire Dance was getting ready for OverWorlds & UnderWorlds, one of the biggest most unusual events of our lives, created for the Cultural Olympiad.

It took us out of our usual environment, into the Dark Arches, into the Victorian arcades of Leeds, onto the streets of the city centre, to the expansive green of Seacroft, down to the River Aire and up to the canalside at Thwaite Mills. Hundreds of lights were wired into public spaces like the Dark Arches to create performance spaces for dancers and miles of cable laid to carry projections and sounds. Shop windows were filled with automota, models and monitors. Then on 18th May 2012, the water rose up into the city; marching bands, water carriers, a choir of children serenading us from ornate balconies, and more…..

Did you explore? Did you get lost, find your way, return home again with a different experience of the city?

Come back and play again this week in The Worlds – the performers, musicians and artists from all over the region are there already, waiting for you to arrive. It’s an online treasure hunt, a map for you to search, a creative archive where you can relive one unreal weekend, or create a new journey for yourself.

Or will this be your first time?
We’re waiting for the missing player. You.
Lose yourself, play the music, watch the films….

Look out for new works by Gary Clarke Company, Mad Dogs Dance Theatre, Rachel Krische, Northern Ballet & Charlotte Vincent with Phoenix Dance Theatre…

enter The Worlds…

Leeds Canvas is a creative partnership between
Yorkshire Dance,
West Yorkshire Playhouse,
Phoenix Dance Theatre,
Opera North,
Northern Ballet,
Leeds City Council,
Leeds Met Gallery
and Studio Theatre and Leeds Art Gallery
www.leedscanvas.com
Copyright © 2012/13 Leeds Canvas,
All rights reserved.

Supported by:
The 2012 Cultural Olympiad
Arts Council England

A National Dance Network initiative delivered by DanceXchange

The Jerwood Choreographic Research Project (JCRP), is designed to develop a new culture of investment across a breadth of choreographic research to benefit dance and the wider arts/cultural ecology in Britain. The project seeks both to stimulate new ideas and thinking in choreography and underpin the development of research projects with the aid of an innovative group of producing partners from across the arts. Therefore the JCRP seeks to broaden the understanding and value of choreographic material within the arts and cultural sector.

The JCRP will address the way in which research is discussed and carried out. This will be achieved by bringing a wide range of investors (the producers) together from across the cultural sector to define the strands of enquiry for the research. When research projects are subsequently funded, these producers play a lead role in realising the research alongside the successful artists.

The Jerwood Choreographic Research Project will be launched for applications in late April 2013. For more information about how you can get involved, please contact Kate Jackson, Programme & Marketing Assistant, 0121 689 1092.

www.dancexchange.org.uk/production/the-jerwood-choreographic-research-project

Volunteer Opportunity – U.Dance 2013

National Youth Dance Festival – Leeds
Thursday 18 – Sunday 21 July

• Are you interested in Dance or Arts & Event Management?
• Are you looking for valuable experience in the cultural sector and a fantastic addition to your CV?
• Are you over 18?
• Are you available on Saturday 6 July (Volunteer Training Day) and one or more of the following dates 18, 19, 20 and 21 July in Leeds during the daytime and/or the evening.

We are looking for enthusiastic and friendly volunteers to help us deliver U.Dance 2013, a National Youth Dance Festival, which is attended by around 500 young people from across the country. Working in prestigious venues such as The West Yorkshire Playhouse, Yorkshire Dance, Northern School of Contemporary Dance and the Northern Ballet Theatre Building, we are looking for people to assist with Front of House and Backstage roles throughout the festival.

You can find out more about U.Dance here

You will be given full training and briefing before the event and you will be working as part of a busy and friendly team.

If you are interested in this opportunity please contact Portia@yde.org.uk with your

• Name
• Age
• Phone number
• Email address

and we will get in contact with you!

Are you fairly fit & enjoy dancing or performing?
Would you like to have the experience of a lifetime?
Did you always think you had to be a size 6 to do classical ballet?  THINK AGAIN!

We’re looking for ladies who are larger than a size 12 & gents who are larger than a 32 waist to take part in an exciting, enlightening and rewarding new TV series being filmed by TV company Rare Day.

Over the next 6 months a former ballerina and an ex-principal of the world’s top ballet companies will be training up a group of dancers to put on an ambitious & inspiring show at one of the UK’s leading ballet companies.  YOU could be in our hand picked team!

We’d love to hear from would-be ballerinas from any discipline: Ballet, Salsa, Tap, Zumba, Bollywood, Ballroom, amateur dramatics – you name it.  Maybe you’re simply a performer who relishes a challenge.

If you’re interested or want to hear more please get in touch ASAP with Saskia on 0771 5111997 or saskia@rareday.co.uk

Sustained Theatre Artists Yorshire (STAY) exists to support the deveopment of quality performance work by Black, Asian & Minority Ethinic (BAME) artists, and to enable those artists to become economically successful.

STAY invites BAME artists to perform in Friday Firsts #15: STAY Connected at Yorkshire Dance on Friday 5 April. Whatever your artform – dance, theatre, spoken-word, music – STAY would love to hear from you.

Download more information here
and a proposal form here

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www.facebook.com/stayuk
Twitter: @STAYHub
http://stay-uk.org

STAY Connected

Dance artist and facilitator Zoe Parker shares her thoughts on dance and wellbeing for learning disabled adults at Yorkshire Dance, in an article for Animated magazine (Foundation for Community Dance, Winter 2013)

Read it here

If you raised your voice in support of the BACC for the Future campaign, you might like to read this message from its Project Manager, which we received on Thu 7 Feb:

You may have heard already that the government has backed down over their proposed English Baccalaureate Certificates – replacements for selected GCSEs.

The Government has also agreed to introduce a new accountability measure for schools that will include creative subjects…Quite a result!

The report in The Independent that broke the story credited the Education Select Committee’s crushing report and the letter delivered to Number 10 from 100 creative industry and education leaders (coordinated by Bacc for the Future and others) as being the final straws.

This is excellent news and we helped make this happen together.

However, the EBacc league table remains in place: You can act now!

This means that there will still be a league table at GCSE level and at A-level which is devaluing and downgrading creative subjects.

Please write to your MP about the EBacc and A-level league tables

We know that Michael Gove is willing to change his mind.

Now we are calling for EBacc and A-level league tables to either be changed to include creative subjects or abolished.

Please write to your MP

You can still encourage others to sign up to support creative subjects in secondary schools on the Bacc for the Future website.

Thank you for your support so far, today we have had a real impact on the future of creative subjects in schools.

Jonathan Smith
Project Manager
Bacc for the Future campaign
jonathan@ism.org

Yorkshire Dance is delighted to be doubling as a gallery in February, hosting Karolina Szymkiewicz’s ‘A Study of Dance’.

The exhibition opens on Friday 8 February and will be here indefinitely. Do come and have a look!

Karolina Szymkiewicz (aka “karolful”) graduated in 2011 from Edinburgh College of Art with a Masters in Illustration, and now lives in Leeds.

Website