Image Paul Trask
A date for your diaries – the next ffin dance faktry festival will be at The Met in Abertillery, Wales UK on November 14th 2015. We will be posting more information about the festival and our winter intensives for professional dancers in September 2015
We would be delighted if you could join us for Easter Faktry Festival 2015 at The Met, Abertillery, Wales on April 11th
Image Paul Trask
Building upon the success of the past five twice-yearly festivals, FFIN DANCE is excited to offer to all professional dancers who have completed their dance training
Cost: £40 which includes a free ticket for the Winter Dance Faktry Festival on the Saturday evening
Deadlines for applications Friday 21st November 2014 at 5pm
Please apply via email attaching a current CV or send hard copy to our home address. Details below.
Contact: Sue Lewis
FFIN DANCE Offices
C/O The Met,
Mitre Street,
Abertillery
NP13 1AL
Wales
UK
07854 910926
info@ffindance.co.uk
www.ffindance.co.uk
FFIN DANCE
Degrees of Freedom
Megan Griffiths
Image Paul Trask
The weekend is well and truly over and I’m still reeling over the enormity of the tasks that the company undertook last week.
For the 4th year running we held our Easter dance faktry festival here in our home base Abertillery in South Wales. The week leading up to the festival, hosts our Easter Intensives Programme for professional dancers: this year we had the pleasure of working with 7 dancers from South Wales, North Wales, Bristol, Devon and the Lake District. During the week, Megan and I re-worked sections of my piece Missing Pages to create a lovely new version that was performed at the festival on Friday evening. How we all managed to work from the Ravel score, from John F Wake’s story and learn repertoire I don’t know, but we did! An excellent team effort that culminated in a terrific performance which ended the show.
The dance faktry is the outreach unit of FFIN DANCE and we work with the community facilitating dance activity for children and young people. Since Christmas we have been working with the theme of lines with our groups and over 70 young people performed and shared their work to a completely packed auditorium. Some of the children who were aged only 4 years performed for the first time, I always feel so privileged to be sharing in that experience for the children and their very proud families.
We are often referred to as the FFIN family as we have dancers from infants all the way through to young professional dancers in our faktry and of course the FFIN dancers at the head of the ‘table’ inspiring and motivating the aspiring family members. It’s a model which I believe is unique and rare and one of which I’m tremendously proud.
So we move on now to the second leg of our Inspired Tour with performances in The Met, Abertillery, Chapter in Cardiff and Burg Namedy in Germany. Please join us if you can.
sue lewis
Laura Mumford Photography
Last Saturday was our 5th annual Winter Dance Faktry Festival held at our home base in The Met in Abertillery.
64 community dancers, 10 professional dancers, 2 photographers, 6 volunteers and 3 technicians brought together a showcase performance that ranged from professional dance pieces to works in progress that have been made during community projects over the past term.
We were joined by professional dance companies Ceyda Tanc Dance and Exim Dance, together with our youth groups from the community.
I am delighted to say that we played to a packed house, full not only of excited and supportive parents and friends but also the general public who wanted to come and share our work. The comments and feedback that we have received have been overwhelming with many congratulations on our achievements.
The Festival has grown and developed over the years and each year sees us making new friends and links and truly is a great celebration of our work and commitment to providing opportunities for young dancers and choreographers to stage their work with professional guidance and support.
Easter Dance Faktry Festival 2013 will be our next venture, we look forward to seeing you all again
Please keep following our company progress via Twitter #ffin dance and join our Facebook pages
sue lewis
It’s Social Enterprise Day and Catherine Evans, Wales Co-operative Centre Marketing Manager, is spending some time with Ffin Dance in Abertillery, South Wales.
Ffin Dance performer takes flight!
Ffin (pronounced Feen) Dance is a social enterprise which was founded in 2003 by charismatic Artistic Director Sue Lewis. Sue spent many years developing dance in the South Wales Valleys, first as Head of the Dance Department at Ebbw Vale Comprehensive School and subsequently as Director of Blaenau Gwent’s flagship Youth Dance Company, The Move.
The South Wales Valleys is one of the poorest areas in the UK with disproportionately high unemployment and many families living just below the poverty line. Whilst many urged Sue to set up a dance company in the more cosmopolitan environment of Cardiff, she was clear that everyone should have access to high quality, contemporary art, and so decided to base herself and her company in Abertillery.
Traditionally, arts companies have tended to rely on grants to survive, but since Sue found that many grants came with strings attached, she decided to follow a social enterprise model and rely on income earned from classes, ticket sales and commercial opportunities. This has given the company the freedom to pursue its own strategic goals, and forced them to become more entrepreneurial, ambitious and pro-active as a result. The company also has some high profile supporters as a result of its social enterprise status. Internationally renowned performance architect Sheron Wray made a new piece for the company in 2009, and Gary Lambert, a critically acclaimed performer and choreographer, is now the company’s Associate Director. These high profile connections have enabled Ffin Dance to extend its touring programme and it now regularly performs at international festivals across the globe.
Bending over backwards to make things work!
Today will be a very busy day for the company as it prepares for its Winter Dance Faktry Festival. This is a two-day event which pulls together performances by a number of local community dance groups as well as two fledgling professional companies, who are being given a public platform for the first time to showcase their work. The shows are on at The Met in Abertillery (more details at http://www.the-met.co.uk/events).
The main job for today is to get everything ready for the performances. This means working with the technical team to plan for the final rehearsals, rigging the theatre lighting, making decisions about how to photograph and film the show and making sure all the dressing rooms are ready for when the performers arrive.
Its going to be a busy and exciting day!
Wade In The Water
After another productive day down at TR2 in Plymouth the piece is finally finished!
It’s been such a fun piece to make and both Emma and I have really enjoyed getting to develop our characters within the piece, letting our personalities come through.
Emma and I have quite a close relationship anyway because we have been dancing together for 3 years (and we live together!), there is a lot of trust there which I think has helped us creatively.
After spending most of the morning in a cardboard box throwing clothes around we were able to work all afternoon piecing together the final section with help form Kathryn Hawken who popped in to offer her dramaturgic eye. Her feedback and input really helped especially as this is the first time she has seen the piece.
It was great to get an idea of what an audience might read from the piece. I think one thing we all realised today was that there is a lot of scope in what we have created and when finished we will more than likely have a 40 minute piece with this just being a short extract from it.
We then had to take a short trip to perform the finished piece for Magdalaina Walker our wonderful musician so she can finish off the music for us tonight.
So – tomorrow we are working down at the Barbican Theatre in Plymouth from the day to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse ready for our road trip to Wales on Friday!
I’m so excited to be part of the Winter Dance Faktry Festival , it’s such an amazing opportunity for us to reach a totally new audience and a great chance to take a road trip to Wales! Hope you can join us.
Claire Summers
Dancer – Wade In The Water and Co-Director of Exim Dance Company
Networking
We have all been really busy in the past few weeks in rehearsal for the FFIN DANCE WINTER DANCE FAKTRY FESTIVAL 2012.
I have been in rehearsals for two new pieces for the festival and am really excited to show the work we have done in the last few months. It is very exciting to yet again be performing in the winter dance faktry festival as it is a great learning opportunity for me as I wish to go on to profesional training. I will get to watch many profesional and community class pieces and can really see the progression on performance and techinal skills. It is also a great chance to ask the FFIN dancers and other community class dancers questions.
I enjoy participating in the winter dance faktry festival not just to dance and rehearse work, but to watch the profesional pieces and be part of a profesional show.
Louis xx 😀
Louis Norman aged 15
Working with New Ground
As a member of ‘The Move’ Blaenau Gwent Youth Dance Company, I am currently very busy rehearsing for the upcoming show ‘winter dance faktry festival‘. I am featured in 3 of the pieces. One is performing with ‘The Move’ another with AYDC and finally as a volunteer for New Ground.
I have really enjoyed volunteering for New Ground and feel that it has been a very worth while experience. I am really looking forward to performing all 3 pieces Saturday. The past few weeks of ‘The Move’ classes have been very intense to insure me and my peers perform ‘Deeper’ to the best of our ability. I think this intense process makes me a better dancer in the long run.
I really enjoy being challenged and pushed, because I feel that I improve and gain confidence within this process. I have thoroughly enjoyed learning and rehearsing all 3 pieces and I’m looking forward to performing all 3 pieces in the show on Saturday.
Workshops with FFIN DANCE
We hope that you can support our Festival and show these young artists that they have a future in the arts. You can support by attending the Festival on November 17th at The Met in Abertillery or by making a donation to our future work with young people