Yippee,an event!

We are pleased to share with you our upcoming performance of The Three Sections, choreographed by Liam Riddick.
You may know that in #lockdown2 our three company dancers Catrin, Julian and Georgina worked with Liam creating a new piece: amazingly we achieved this online.
The online performance of The Three Sections will be on March 27th at 6pm, tickets available to purchase here. We would be so grateful for your support in this difficult time for artists and for theatre.
In the meantime to whet your appetite, we will be showing little teasers, so keep your eyes peeled to our social pages.
Here’s Liam chatting about The Three Sections with Sue, Artistic Director of FFIN DANCE

Birth of The Three Sections

What a marvellous 2 weeks we have just spent in the studio with choreographer Liam Riddick creating our new work for FFIN DANCE titled The Three Sections

The piece is a 15 minute dance work which is inspired by Steve Reich’s orchestral work (1987) titled The Four Sections. The musical score is an exceptional example of “interlocking of similar instruments to produce a contrapuntal web filled with resulting melodic patterns” Steve Reich

Liam has taken three sections of the music and woven together solos, duets and trios for the three company dancers, that interlock and produce a counterpoint in movement bearing a parity to that of the score. Here’s a short film of Liam speaking with me about the work.

You may ask how we did all this through lock down! Zoom of course.
Each day the dancers took class as we would in the studio, but in their own homes. We then began the enormous task of creating an online creative symbience across the miles. It was odd at first. The dancers needing to use screen vision instead of peripheral vision, allowing for a slight time delay in sound, dealing with poor wi fi connections on times but by the end of our studio time together, we actually felt as if we were in the same room as each other. It’s pretty amazing what you can achieve with the passion and hard work that dancers possess. I am incredibly proud of them.

The Three Sections is not a dance piece for film. It’s made online, but not a dance film. We have a very clear idea where we want to take this work and over the next few months we are going to be sharing more and more of this work with you.
In the meantime, here’s a little glimpse of a live stream that we made of Liam working with Catrin, Julian and Georgina

sue lewis

Meet our new Outreach Coordinators

Image Jack William Parry

Due to generous funding from the WCVA Recovery Fund, we have been able to appoint two exceptional new members of staff to expand our Outreach team at FFIN DANCE in this most difficult time.
Catrin and Julian will be working with our current partners and also making new links within the community. We will be finding alternative ways of engaging with everyone, you may wish to have a look at some of our projects by clicking this link.
We are delighted to have this opportunity to increase our work within the community.

Image Catharina Conte

Here are their e mail addresses should you wish to get in touch
ffindancejulian@gmail.com
ffindancecl@gmail.com

We are setting up new projects all the time and would love to hear from you if you would like to be included.


Text 07854 910926 if you’d like to get in touch

Emigrated?

beaufortmavenproblackIn my absence from blogging, you may have thought that I had emigrated or left the planet, and in a way I have.
If you’ve been following the company escapades on Twitter and Facebook, you will know that we have moved in to The Beaufort Theatre in Ebbw Vale and taken over the management of the venue from the Borough Council of Blaenau Gwent. We have been there since the beginning of April and our energies have been spent on getting together a full volunteers programme, a rolling programme of community theatre events and of course establishing a café bar opening throughout the day serving the community with excellent food and drinks at competitive prices. Quite a tall order you may say; and yes it has been.

Well, 6 weeks later and we can boast all the above and more.  We have been joined by 2 Volunteers Coordinators,supported by funding from The Coalfields Regeneration Fund – Jocelyn and Sharon, who are building a great team of volunteers to work with us.

Kahve logoWe also have a new Catering and Bar Manager, Bülent Dilek-Karaosmanoglu who has brought his own excellent brand of Turkish and Mediterranean cuisine to our café with the inventive and delicious Kahve Café Bar. Kahve is the proud recipient of the Wales Food Awards Finalist position, opening from 10am-5pm from Monday to Saturday at Kahve @The Beaufort

In addition to this, we have opened our new show Virago at The Met Theatre in Abertillery and  we’re in the process of planning our next shows at Highgate School, London and The Sanctuary with Zoo Venues at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Please follow our progress, and we hope you can join us in seeing this most special show.

We have been working with a group of children and young people in Blaenau Gwent with the support of Aneurin Leisure and the Arts Council of Wales in a dance engagement project. Our company dancers, led by Catrin and Julian, have been engaged in a number of intensive workshops, to create a piece of work which opened our performance as a curtain raiser.  We were thrilled with both the process and the end result, some great creativity and commitment demonstrated at every workshop.  The audience was thrilled too.  Well done to all!

We are just about feeling comfy with our developments and the growth of the company and welcome you to our new home.  Please drop by and have a coffee, a drink, a light bite or a lunch with us, you will be sure of a good welcome and excellent quality refreshment.

See you soon….

sue lewis

 

 

 

Finishing off

102-a4Just touching base after what was a very busy and enjoyable week here at FFIN DANCE. The main goal of our most recent week in the studio was to finish the creation period of Sue’s new work Virago. Not only was this achieved but we also had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with the brilliant Paul Trask, our photographer as well as some exciting conversations about the next steps for the company.

The creation of Virago has been a very special and personal process that I believe has brought the company firmly together ahead of our next performances. The story of Minnie McGuire along with the social issues it relates to have really pulled on our heart strings as well as conjured up many different images and thoughts that have inspired our creative work in the studio. The movement feels very honest and physically challenging to dance and that combined with the way Sue has stitched the work together makes for something that I’m sure will be very exciting to watch. Beyond the movement is a variety of different music as well as voiceovers and there will be plenty more to please the eye including our striking set and lighting designs. I think I speak for all the dancers when I say we can’t wait to share it with our existing audiences as well as with new ones!

For the first part of the week we were joined by Rochelle who is on work placement from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Rochelle joined us for company class as well as observing our (sometimes chaotic) rehearsal process! With all the current company dancers having spent some of their training at Trinity Laban, it was lovely to welcome Rochelle and we hope she enjoyed her time getting a taste of how a small professional dance company works.

The week was also underpinned by the looming result of our bid to become the new leaseholders of Beaufort Theatre & Ballroom, an exciting prospect that could bring in so many more opportunities for the company and the surrounding community.

Watch this space for more information about all that is FFIN DANCE!

Julian x

Women GOLive

FFIN DANCE Image Paul Trask

FFIN DANCE
Image Paul Trask

The next performance of our current tour – t e n – takes place this coming week at Oxford’s Old Fire Station Arts Centre.
Women GOLive is curated by Dance Critic Donald Hutera and features work by women choreographers, he states “men are welcome too”
We will be performing Memoir and Duetti on Friday 15th July at 7.30pm and Memoir and True on Saturday 16th July at 7.30pm

We hope you can join us, here’s the link for details and how to book tickets

All go

FFIN DANCE Image Paul Trask

FFIN DANCE
Image Paul Trask

So it’s all GO this week in the South Wales valleys. Fellow company dancer, Catrin and I arrived Monday afternoon ready to lead our first workshops passing on the movement material and ideas behind the t e n Tour 2016 to the local community. We had 4 workshops happening across the evening for a variety of ages from infants to seniors from groups including Ffin Infants & Juniors, Ffin Youth Dance Company and Toppers School of Dance & Drama.

The young dancers had an amazing time, showing great energy, enthusiasm and interest in the workshop content. We were also delighted to be joined by Sarah Lee Pryke who will be joining FFIN DANCE later in the summer. Sarah has already begun learning and researching our new repertoire and assisted Catrin and Julian to deliver yesterday’s workshops.
With the première of our new dance works fast approaching, the real work is yet to begin. Tuesday has been a day of admin, planning, costume fitting and photoshopping – not to mention a slice of Grandma’s fruit cake and a cheeky glass of wine!
We’re back in the studio today for some last minute rehearsals and fine tuning. We also have more community workshops and are leading professional company class on Thursday and Friday. This Friday night will be my first full-length performance with FFIN DANCE and I’m especially excited as it marks the beginning of the 10th anniversary celebrations for the company. It’s been such a pleasure to work with Sue and my fellow performers Catrin, Effie and Natasha so far and I can’t wait to share the stage with them.

If you haven’t yet booked your tickets for the show, we’d love to see you there!

t e n poster FinalFriday 20th May, 7:30pm – The Met, Abertillery – tickets are £8/£6, call the box office on 01495 355800 to book

Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and our website for updates on our future performances and projects.

Thanks, Julian

Happy new year

Memoir

Memoir

The company started back in the studio in February 2016 and started our new year with 2 weeks rehearsing my new work True and also re-working my 2008 piece Duetti.
It was a very odd journey going back in time to the early days of our company life as so much water has gone under the bridge since then, and the company has come so far.  We celebrate our ten years as a company this year and it seemed right somehow to bring one of my older pieces back for the season.
In addition to these two pieces, we are also presenting work that is a joint collaboration between our company dancers Catrin and Julian.  A duet called Memoir which takes the form of an autobiographical journey which promises to be funny, sad, happy, poignant, and everything else in between.  The dancers have been in the studio this week making the first steps to choreographing the work.

Here’s a little preview

Catrin and Julian are also performing with Traceworks very soon at the Swallowsfeet Dance Festival in Brighton, catch them if you can.

More details to follow with our t e n Tour 2016 we hope you’ll tune in.

sue lewis

 

 

 

t e n Tour 2016

10FFIN DANCE is ten years old this year and we celebrate with our new triple bill   t e n

In just a week, our company dancers are all back in the studio, and we can now share the content of our new triple bill line up.  We started work on my new piece True back in the Autumn of 2015, and we’ll be just finishing off this delightful quartet for the full company next week.

The second piece is a New Work, that’s a collaboration between myself and 2 of our company dancers Catrin and Julian.  Performed as a duet, it will be very much a reflection of the 2 dancers and their personalities.  Watch this space over the coming weeks for more blogs and tweets.

And to complete the bill will be Duetti, which I made for the company back in 2008.  Accompanied by the haunting songs of Björk, Duetti is as the name implies, a series of duets. Sometimes working with the songs and other times existing as 2 separate elements, the dancers execute lyrical duets.
The organic nature of the songs from Medúlla refer to the purest essence of something and explore the ritual power of the voice in a way that’s primal and elaborate. Several of the songs are sung in Icelandic, which work particularly well with movement. The rolling r’s, guttural stops and elongated vowels reflect the alternately chopped and soaring arrangements behind them.
Unfettered sensuality winds through the songs, with Björk’s voice being miked very closely giving the sense of listening to her from inside her larynx. I was originally inspired by the landscape of Northern Tuscany, when I created the duets: often jagged but occasionally silky and always stunning, the duets unfold in a seamless and intricate order, each one developing from its predecessor.
Described by an audience member at Chisenhale in 2008 – “DV8 meets Matz Ek”

As always we will be posting blogs and tweeting our studio experiences, hope that you’ll join us in our conversations.

sue lewis

New company dancer – part 2

523238_10151376905219344_497662062_nYou join me after the end of a jam-packed first week with the company. We have started working on Sue’s new work for next year’s tour, True as well as rehearsing the current triple bill, The Power of 3, for the performance at Bedwellty House & Park in Tredegar and this coming Friday in London.

As a new dancer, I have been included in Catrin’s work, d-cay and have learnt a couple of sections for these performances. From my perspective, it has been the perfect balance to learning some repertoire and jumping straight into the performance mode but to also take a back seat during the other 2 pieces and appreciate the performances of my fellow dancers. It is inspirational to see how refined and ‘in-the-body’ the existing work is on the other 3 dancers and it fills me with energy as we move on to the new work. This week also saw the first Desire to Dance project in which we created a new piece on students from Tredegar Comprehensive School in only 2 sessions to then be performed on the Friday evening. The project was a great success and it filled all members of the FFIN DANCE team with immense satisfaction to see how much was achieved by every individual in such an intense process. Well done all!

Until next time… and if you’re in the London area this Friday, don’t forget to book your tickets to see the current triple bill (The Power of 3) as well as a guest performance from Vision Youth Dance Company (Highgate School).
Venue: St Paul’s Community Centre, Marylebone. Tickets are £10, call or text 07854 910926.

See you there.
Julian