In August, The Place selected NSCD graduates Alethia Antonia, Stuart Waters and Northern Rascals (Anna Holmes and Sam Ford) as Choreodrome 2020/21 artists. The programme is currently underway, and over the past few weeks the artists have been working with leading facilitators to explore new artistic territory and create new work.
Alethia Antonia completed the Foundation course at NSCD in 2014 and returned as part of postgraduate company VERVE in 2017. She is developing her solo Inscribed in "Me" for Choreodrome, exploring feminine blackness in relation to physicality, musicality, vocality and choreographic framing.
Northern Rascals is a community-focused dance theatre group created by Anna Holmes and Sam Ford, who graduated from the BA at NSCD in 2016. Sunny Side navigates the impact of mental illness on young adults - an early version of the piece was performed by an all-male cast as part of COLLIDE, NSCD's boys' dance takeover event.
Stuart Waters, who graduated from NSCD in 1998, is working on embedding audio description and captioning into his stories of marginalisation and queerness during his residency.
As well as these graduates, Choreodrome is supporting several artists who have previously performed work at Riley Theatre with support from NSCD.
Léa Tirabasso, who presented The Ephemeral Life of an Octopus at Riley Theatre in 2019, is making DINGOS, an exploration of death, madness, the animal and the clown. Léa's performance at Riley Theatre was performed as part of a double bill with Yukiko Masui's Falling Family, and Yukiko is also making new work for Choreodrome with Sarah Golding.
NSCD's 2019 Northern Connections programme, which supports the practice of early-career artists, helped dance artist Lizzie J Klotz and dramaturg Luca Rutherford to create and platform A Really Small Dance. The duo are continuing to develop the piece as part of Choreodrome.
Read about the other Choreodrome artists here.
