12th January 2024
Enjoy this short film of our wonderful Day of Dance 2023.
Held on Sunday 3 December at the Brian Friel Theatre in Belfast, all our Youth Engagement Projects came together for a joyful celebration of dance. Have a look!
11th January 2024
January proved the perfect time to launch the next phase of the community dance artist training programme – just before a busy year of classes and projects begin.
So delivering on our commitment to provide exciting opportunities for collaboration with fellow practitioners in community dance, we were delighted to welcome Robby Graham, award-winning choreographer and Artistic Director of Southpaw Dance Company, to host a two day workshop.
Southpaw Dance Company is based in Newcastle, England and, under the artistic direction and unique vision of Robby, who is originally from Omagh, the company creates epic visual spectacle and dynamic physical storytelling sequences in which movement, music, and dialogue are seamlessly integrated. Southpaw is well known for its mass movement projects such as Rush bringing together both professional and community casts to create high quality and innovative work.
“So pleased to be back home sharing Southpaw’s process of co-creating with community. We had a fantastic few days together exploring choreographic processes. Projects like this are vital, allowing space for artists to develop their practices and create the next wave of brave and ambitious work.” Robby Graham, Artistic Director, Southpaw Dance Company
A group of 13 community dance artists met at The MAC, Belfast to start their new year refreshing their own practice and filling their creative cup. Robby generously took us through his artistic process for co-creating with communities, highlighting the importance of facilitating the community voice and ensuring due diligence in the research and development stages to ensure communities are represented appropriately.
“Excellently set up by DU Dance NI, and the delivery by Robby was highly informative, professionally delivered and Robby showed a significant emphasis on the needs of the group and on feeding the group with guidance, tools and experience in preparing and working with communities.” Participant
Not only does this training programme ensure that community dance artists in Northern Ireland are able to keep their practise up to date, the programme also creates an informal network of local community dance artists who can learn and support each other.
“Maintaining connections with local artists, opportunity to be part of that larger dance community and revising and developing skill sets in the area of dance within the community.” Participant
If you are a community dance artist and are interested in finding out more about the programme and further professional development opportunities with DU Dance NI, please get in contact with sheena@dudanceni.com
4th January 2024
Happy New Year! We are back to work and raring to go here at DU Dance as Robby Graham, Artistic Director of Southpaw Dance Company, joins us to deliver the latest element of our community dance artist training programme.
Over the next two days, 15 artists will work with Robby at The MAC Belfast to explore co-creation in an outdoor context with community and professional casts. As he shares his artistic process for mass movement projects such as RUSH we are excited to learn more about ensuring meaningful engagement and high quality work.
You can explore Southpaw’s wide range of work, including RUSH – a spectacular, visceral, large-scale outdoor work inspired by the mass movement of global protest, incorporating 100 local community cast alongside Southpaw’s company dancers, on their website.
We will be sharing more from the training sessions so watch this space.
23rd November 2023
It is that time again (can you believe it!) when we all come together for one of our most favourite events of the year – DAY OF DANCE.
This year all those involved in our Youth Engagement Projects will be travelling to The Brian Friel Theatre at Queens University Belfast on Sunday 3rd December for the annual gathering.
For most of our Belfast Boys it will be a short journey across the city whilst the Sutemos and Suteminis groups will be travelling from Dungannon. And…drum roll please…. this year we are thrilled the lively Alternative Energies group in Ballycastle will be heading down the M2 to join the fun.
It is always a wonderful day with sharing workshops which culminates in a performance for family and friends. And it wouldn’t be Day of Dance if there we were not expecting loads of yummy festive treats and, of course, the annual Christmas dance off!
9th November 2023
Belfast Boys have been invited to perform at the Christmas lights switch-on in Belfast city centre on Saturday 18th November.
They are working on an upbeat routine guaranteed to warm the crowd and get everyone moving. With the Lord Mayor of Belfast in attendance, a preview of the Lyric’s Christmas show and a medley of other local performers on stage at the City Hall, ‘Let’s Glow Belfast’ is sure to be a lot of a fun!
Full event details can be found HERE.
26th October 2023
We are getting ready for the next stage of the Cultural Bridge project, which celebrates bilateral partnerships between the UK and Germany, and heading back to Leipzig for the first of two professional exchanges. This will be an exciting opportunity to delve further into what we can learn from each other and how our organisations can be part of a positive social change.
Alongside Darren Ferguson from our Northern Ireland partner Beyond Skin, Sheena and Mags will spend three days hosted by German partners VILLA Leipzig looking at organisational practices and procedures, visiting current projects and seeing first hand the implementation of the artistic methods they deploy.
Our colleagues at VILLA Leipzig, a socio-cultural centre, have an exciting schedule planned with a visit to their popular Open Stage music event, a meeting with the facilitators of the Junior Team to understand their motivations and methods and how they implement political education and participation and finally a visit with the theatre and music pedagogics and the Open Youth Work.
It will be a busy and insightful few days as we exchange ideas, reflect on the ‘Ode to Earth’ project and explore the next steps in strengthening our partnerships.
To learn more about the ‘Ode to Earth’ project, read Sheena’s blog and watch the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s film. Simply click HERE or on the photo below.
We are excited that Little Stranger, our dance-theatre film about a refugee child, co-produced with Powerstone and Tinderbox, is featured in the House of Tolerance Festival at Miniteater in Ljubljana, Slovenia on 17 November 2023.
The project has received much support from the British Council in both Belfast and Vienna and indeed it was great to hear that the British Ambassador to Slovenia, Tiffany Sadler, will be sitting in the audience later this month.
This is wonderful international recognition for the short film performed by dancers aged eight to sixteen from our Sutemos and Suteminis groups based in Dungannon.
9th October 2023
Our work with Newington Day Centre has continued this Autumn with a new project supporting a group of carers and we had some really positive feedback.
By joining the weekly sessions, these women have been encouraged to get out of the house and socialise at a time when they really needed contact with others. New friends have been made with other carers and everyone has looked forward to the upbeat sessions with Sheena and dance artist Helen.
A team member at the centre said the feedback had been great: “The ladies expressed how much they enjoyed each class; the physical and mental health benefits they have experienced through dance as well as the social interaction the class has provided for them. They loved how fun the classes were and how they learnt many different dances as well as reminiscing through the different music pieces that were played.” We hope to be back soon!
3rd October 2023
Community Engagement Artist, Sheena is back dancing with our friends at the Whiterock Children’s Centre delivering dance classes both to the mothers and the children. So far the children have had fun exploring under the sea through dance and creative movement, whilst the women have been learning new dance techniques to promote physical and mental wellbeing.
It has been great to continue to build our relationship with the centre which does incredible work supporting the most vulnerable in the local community. Handily it is also right on Sheena’s doorstep!
27th September 2023
Next week Artistic Director Mags and four Northern Irish dance artists will travel to Jerusalem and Bethlehem as part of our community dance artist training programme. It has been made possible by Mags’s extensive experience of working in the area and the key ongoing relationships she has nurtured. This is a fantastic opportunity for DU Dance to bolster its delivery team and share its best practice in, and ethos on, community dance.
On the project we are delighted to be working with Molly Kelly, a contemporary dancer studying dance at the University of Limerick; Jamie-Lee John Fagan, a Hip Hop dancer and Founder of Urban Motion Company in County Tyrone; Amy Hill, a contemporary dancer teaching at South Eastern College in Bangor and Conor Anthony Downey, a physical theatre artist specialising in Irish dance and Musical Theatre.
The young artists have been invited to participate on the basis that they are working in community dance or are at University with the intention of doing so. They each bring very different dance backgrounds to the project but, in advance of the trip, have worked together in a studio to create and plan. The output has been a team coming together to support and collaborate on a shared approach, finding creative solutions to the artistic challenges this international project will undoubtedly present.
Hosted by Diyar Theatre, who DU Dance were thrilled to host in Belfast whilst they performed at Féile an Phobail in August 2022, the group will enjoy a wide range of new experiences from delivering workshops in schools and the community with intergenerational groups to creating a short piece with Community Dance Diploma Students at Dar Al-Kalima University involving Irish, contemporary and Debke dance. British Council representatives have set up meetings with different artists and made available a local artists studio. The group will also partake in the Bethlehem International Performing Arts Festival which takes place during their visit through attending events and workshops and seeing ground-breaking work.
For many of the group it will be their first time in this part of the world and they are all excited and appreciative of the significant learning, personal growth and networking opportunities the visit will engender.
The group arrive in Bethlehem!
