After many a snow filled adventure to get back to hotel rooms on the Saturday night, Sunday morning began relatively calmly with performances by Champloo and Hetain Patel and digital installations by Nic Sandiland at Stratford Circus.

Then it was back to Sadler’s Wells for the final reception and handover to Scotland for British Dance Edition 2014.

Photo: Belinda Lawley

Delegates gathered for the final round of speeches and thank yous from the consortium before handing over to Creative Scotland and Morag Deyes from Dance Base.

Photo: Belinda Lawley

Photo: Belinda Lawley

Neither Kate, Project Manager nor Fran, Festival Coordinator could be found when the thank you’s were starting!  Luckily they were there to collect their flowers!

Photo: Belinda Lawley

Photo: Belinda Lawley

Tony Mills of Room 2 Manoeurve and Big Taj perform to delegates as a taste of what to expect from British Dance Edition 2014.

Photo: Belinda Lawley

Sunday flew past very quickly and soon our 300 delegates were saying goodbye and heading into the final performance of the festival; Russell Maliphant.

Photo: Belinda Lawley

Photo: Belinda Lawley

Photo: Belinda Lawley

All that remains to say is thank you to everyone who made British Dance Edition London 2012 happen; the producing consortium, production team, technical, front of house, event managers, venues and volunteers. The artists and companies that performed and the delegates that travelled to see what British dance is all about.  Thank you.

Saturday started at The Place with the second day of the Trade Fair and a performance by Luca Silvestrini’s Protein. Despite being half way through the festival delegates were still going strong and the Theatre Bar was packed for a lunch time reception.

Photo: Kate Scanlan

We also had a surprise visit in the office from poster boy Dickson Mbi, fresh off the Eurostar from Paris and the first performances of Russell Maliphant‘s The Rodin Project.

Photo: Kate Scanlan

After polishing off our hot lunches the BDE blue army of volunteers lead us on walking party number one: The Place to the Royal Opera House. We’re pretty inconspicuous on the streets of London, don’t you think?

Photo: Kate Scanlan

Photo: Kate Scanlan

Destination reached…and on time!

Photo: Kate Scanlan

After performances from Aakash Odedra, Ballet Black, Claire Cunningham and Charles Linehan the second walking party of the day was a little darker and colder: Royal Opera House to Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Photo: Kate Scanlan

Photo: Kate Scanlan

After the final performance of the day from Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion our DJ Billy Biznizz cranked up the tunes and delegates, artists, dancers and managers hit the dance floor.

Photo: Kate Scanlan

Friday was a busy old day with performances, artist talks, site specific shows, digital installations and a Cabaret taking place across three venues; The Place, Laban and Greenwich Dance.

Jonzi D takes the mic at one of our three Artist Talks in Studio 1 at Laban.

Photo: Kate Scanlan

The Cabaret at Greenwich Dance was a huge hit with delegates….

Photo: Belinda Lawley

And our compere’s for the evening, Tom Roden and Pete Shenton of New Art Club got all 300 of them on their feet!

Photo: Belinda Lawley

The wonderful Frank Moon and band keep the music going until its time to head back to North London

Photo: Belinda Lawley

Despite the excited butterflies, it was straight down to business on Thursday welcoming all the delegates at registration desks at both The Place and Sadler’s Wells.

Photo: Belinda Lawley

Delegates catch up with each other, meet new faces, check out the jam-packed British Dance Edition London 2012 programme over a glass of wine at the opening reception.

Photo: Belinda Lawley

Meet the team! Kate Scanlan, Project Manager (right) and Francesca Moseley, Festival Coordinator (left). Glad rags on ready for the first night reception at the Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler’s Wells.

Photo: Sarah Blanc

The Lilian Baylis Studio soon fills up quickly!

Photo: Belinda Lawley

We open proceedings with the triple bill of Wayne McGregor | Random Dance, Candoco Dance Company and Hofesh Shechter Company on the main stage at Sadler’s Wells. Whilst the delegates are enjoying the show, we are setting up for the second (!) reception of the evening..more wine anyone??

Photo: Kate Scanlan

Some of the now infamous BDE Blue Army at the ready….

Photo: Kate Scanlan

Months and months of preparation came to a head on Wednesday 1 February as our team took over the Theatre Bar at The Place

First up was sorting 300 individual delegate packs with the right tickets, passes and schedules for the four days. As demonstrated below by Festival Assistant, Sarah Blanc, whilst sat second position at about 11.30pm!

Photo: Kate Scanlan

With the help of the Front of House team we covered our ‘Hub’ with British Dance Edition blue logos

Photo: Kate Scanlan

We were loving our BDE blue so much and went all out with balloons and blue beaded candles holders.  Our ‘Hub’ was well and truly dressed for the occasion

Photo: Kate Scanlan

The clock struck midnight and we left hoping that we were ready for what Thursday would bring…..

The team behind the event are of course the London Consortium:

• Dance Umbrella’s Betsy Gregory
• East London Dance’s Kiki Gale
• Greenwich Dance’s Brendan Keaney
• ROH’s Theresa Beattie
• Sadler’s Wells’ Emma Gladstone
• Southbank Centre’s Wendy Martin
• The Place’s Eddie Nixon and Emma Southworth
• Trinity Laban’s Brian Brady

They are joined by the Producing Team:

• Kate Scanlan, Project Manager
• Francesca Moseley, Festival Coordinator
• Deann Frost, Programme  Assistant (seconded from Dance Umbrella)
• Sarah Blanc, Festival Assistant

Finally is the massive team of 43 volunteers from across London and beyond who will be on hand throughout the event! Dance Umbrella will be out in force with their full team on hand for the event.

Thursday 2 February 2012
Cable & Wireless Room, Sadler’s Wells
14:00-17:00

FREE – bookings details at the bottom. You must book in advance.

British Dance Edition London 2012 opens with a three hour Learning Symposium featuring a range of examples of initiatives using dance as a tool for creative engagement and participation in the UK.

Chair: John Kieffer
John is a freelance consultant who works with organisations and businesses on strategic planning. Throughout his career he has been closely associated with encouraging innovative practice and finding new ways of opening up the creative process to a wider constituency. He is currently the chair of A New Direction.

The afternoon will feature presentations from:

Big Dance 2012 / Foundation for Community Dance
Ken Barlet, Director, Foundation for Community Dance
Chris Stenton, Development Director, Foundation for Community Dance

Building on the successful London programme Big Dance 2012 is going National and is set to be the UK’s biggest ever celebration of dance. It is part of Festival 2012, the finale of the Cultural Olympiad celebrating the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Foundation for Community Dance is the professional organisation for anyone involved in creating opportunities for people to experience and participate in dance

JumpStartMove
Amy McGann, Co Director, JumpStartMove
Phil Hill, Co Director, JumpStartMove
Shonique Brown, Peer Mentor

JumpStartMove projects use the power of dance theatre as a creative intervention. JumpStartMove has had notable success in reaching marginalised and vulnerable young adults whose complex needs require respectful and dynamic leadership.

Independance, Dare2Dance
Judi McCartney, Director, Independance

Independance is the producer of the B Supreme Festival, the Dare2Dance Project and Studio B.
Based in Brixton, South London, it specialises in the development of Hip Hop dance.
Dare2 Dance targets young women aged 14-25 who previously were inactive. The project is a partnership between Independance and Pro-Active London that was first launched in 2008.

Dance United
Siobhan Maguire-Swartz, Dance Director, Dance United
Nikki Crane, Special Advisor, Dance Umbrella

Dance United works to transform lives through dance. Working with young people who find themselves marginalised the company release their positive potential. Contemporary dance training and performance of the highest quality has the power to achieve this, but only when that potential is unleashed as a result of tightly-focused and highly disciplined artistic endeavour. No hiding places, no short-cuts, no excuses, Dance United have consistently seen how this uncompromising approach has changed the lives of young offenders, street children in Ethiopia, and people from across the divide in Berlin and Northern Ireland. We reach the hard-to-reach.

Panel Discussion
The afternoon will end with a panel discussion featuring:

Mark Baldwin, Artistic Director of Rambert
Rambert Dance Company has a large Learning and Participation department which works with tens of thousands of children, young people and adults, delivering a range of activities that engage people in contemporary dance and the work of the company

Kate Prince, Artistic Director of ZooNation
ZooNation is a professional company that creates full-length narrative Hip Hop Dance Theatre work including the award-winning West End show Into the Hoods and Some Like it Hip Hop. Since 2007 the company has run its own school, the ZooNation Academy of Dance (ZAD), which currently trains over 150 students, aged from 4 to 21 years old, in all styles of Hip Hop dance. ZooNation also runs a youth company with dancers aged from 8 – 18 years.

Luke Pell, Head of Learning and Development
Candoco Dance Company has a large engagement programme that includes work in Schools and Colleges, Youth Dance, Training and work with professional Artists. They are a world leading company in the field of integrated dance practice and their learning and development work reflects that.

Kimberley Harvey, dancer with Cando2 and Ambassador for Youth Dance England

Shonique Brown, Peer Mentor, JumpStartMove

Places are limited, please email to book your place. kate.scanlan@theplace.org.uk

The Place, Robert Cohan Studio, 16 Flaxman Terrace, London. WC1H 9AT.

Class time: 09.00 – 10.30

Cost: £4

Line up:

Monday 30 January: Charles Linehan Company (Rahel Vonmoos)
Rahel’s class draws from her personal movement research, her performance practice, her experience in Body-Mind Centering and her training of Aikido. She investigates the different movement qualities of the body’s physiological systems focusing on the volume/ support of the organs and the connection of the centre to extremities and space.
Tuesday 31 January: Matthias Sperling
Matthias’ class will draw on elements from Release and Limon-based techniques, the practice of American choreographer Deborah Hay and Matthias’ own recent choreographic practice, to encourage maintaining a sense of one’s individual practice as an artist while participating in a fairly structured group class.
Wednesday 1 February:Vocab Dance (Alesandra Seutin)
Alesandra will be delivering a special workshop in which she will be sharing her unique contemporary style she names Afro-Eclectic, which takes its roots in Western and Southern African dances, combined with contemporary and the dynamic of urban dance. Alesandra will lead you through a fast paced, fun and inspirational dance workshop that will challenge you physically!
Thursday 2 February: Champloo Dance Company (Wilkie Branson)
‘Champloo’ is derived from the word ‘Chanpurū’, Okina-wan for ‘something mixed’. Figuratively speaking, this has come to mean the mixing of unusual components to produce something with a unique flavour. Champloo Dance Company places the importance of a work’s expression at the heart of its ideals, and as such the techniques and media it draws on to achieve this are highly varied. There are strong parallels between this approach and the company’s roots in bboying. As in all hiphop culture, expression is paramount, and the borrowing of ideas, techniques and inspirations is always unlimited in the pursuit of this aim.
Friday 3 February: Hofesh Shechter Company (Phil Hulford)
Phil has been dancing for Hofesh Shechter Company since 2006 and teaches a high energy improvisation based class.

theplace.org.uk/professionalclass

Greenwich Dance,The Borough Hall, Royal Hill, London, SE10 8RE.
Class time: 10.30 – 12.00
Cost: £4.30
Line up:

Monday 30 January: Avant Garde Dance
Avant Garde Dance is a London based company who are at the forefront of innovative hip-hop/contemporary dance theatre, led by Artistic Director Tony Adigun.
Tuesday 31 January: Michael Clark Company class (Brenda Last)
Michael Clark Company will open up its morning ballet class to other professional dancers. The class will be taught by one of the company’s long-term ballet teachers, Brenda Last. Hailed by The Independent on Sunday as ‘British dance’s true iconoclast’, Michael Clark creates work that reflects his classical dance training and contemporary taste, and ballet classes form a key part of the company’s training
Wednesday 1 February: Nigel Charnock +Company
Company class with Nigel Charnock will be a vigorous, fun, inspiring dance class, using various techniques and energising music.
Thursday 2 February: Vocab Dance (Alesandra Seutin)
Alesandra will be delivering a special workshop in which she will be sharing her unique contemporary style she names Afro-Eclectic, which takes its roots in Western and Southern African dances, combined with contemporary and the dynamic of urban dance. Alesandra will lead you through a fast paced, fun and inspirational dance workshop that will challenge you physically!
Friday 3 February: Aakash Odedra Company
Aakash Odedra Company is a new venture led by performer and artistic director, Aakash Odedra intended as a vehicle for his own choreographic work. Trained initially in the classical Indian styles of Kathak and Bharatanatyam, Aakash has performed with a diverse range of local and international artists. This class will be Kathak based.

greenwichdance.org.uk

• Luca Silvestrini’s Protein with their much applauded production LOL (Lots of Love)

Photo: Nuno Santos

• Shobana Jeyasingh’s Classic Cut

Photo: Chris Nash

The preview also features Akram Kahn with Desh. Whilst that is not part of British Dance Edition, Akram has made a brand new solo on Aakash Odedra which will be featured at the Festival.

A great start to our count down to British Dance Edition London 2012!

As the offical Media Partner for British Dance Edition London 2012, Londondance.com will be featuring a series of unique articles and interviews over the coming weeks in the lead up to the event itself.

We launched just last week with an interview with British Dance Edition Project Manager Kate Scanlan and this week the first featured article has been published.

Sarah Crompton’s A World Capital for Dance looks at London and its richness as a global dance capital. Sarah is the Arts Editor in Chief for the Daily Telegraph.