The Place

The Place has announced its first group of Work Place artists. Work Place is The Place’s new programme providing bespoke support for professional choreographers at different stages of their careers.

Work Place artists are: Tony Adigun, Rosemary Butcher, Ben Duke, Simon Ellis, Rosemary Lee, Eva Recacha, Frauke Requardt, Luca Silvestrini, Moreno Solinas, Vera Tussing and Igor Urzelai.

The eleven dance-makers have been chosen by The Place’s artist development team based on their practice and development needs, with a view to forming a cohort which reflects the diversity of the UK independent dance scene.

Each Work Place artist will follow an individually-tailored programme, in which core activities of artistic research and creative production will be complemented with a variety of developmental opportunities: residencies at local, national and international level; coaching, including managerial and financial tutorials; teaching contracts working with The Place’s pre-vocational training programme (Centre for Advanced Training) and vocational training (London Contemporary Dance School).

Artists will be members of Work Place for a period of at least one year, and over the next three years The Place will invest over £500,000 of its resources in the programme.

A new managerial position created to support the delivery of Work Place, will be in place in Autumn 2011. The Foyle Foundation has generously agreed to support the Artist Manager role for the first two years of the initiative. The position will be advertised on The Place website over the summer.

Eddie Nixon, Director of Theatre and Artist Development at The Place, said: “Work Place formalises the relationship that The Place has with some of the country’s most exciting choreographers. I hope that this programme will help them to achieve even more in the years to come. They will also make a big contribution to the overall artistic life of The Place, and everyone who comes into contact with our work stands to benefit.”

Work Place Artists

Tony Adigun
Tony Adigun started his career at 19 in the commercial dance industry, both as a choreographer and a dancer, for many leading recording artists including Whitney Houston, Usher, and Ashanti.

In 2001 Tony founded Avant Garde Dance company, developing his own original style of choreography, defined as abstract street dance theatre.  The company has performed extensively at Sadler’s Wells’ Breakin Convention festival, Stratford Circus, Brighton Dome, The Place, Barbican, Southbank Centre, Hackney Empire and the Royal Opera House, as well as developing a variety of site specific works. Avant Garde Dance also created a broad education programme, Avant Garde Youth, aimed at nurturing new generations of performers.

Rosemary Butcher
Rosemary Butcher made her choreographic debut in 1974, presented a ground-breaking concert at London’s Serpentine Gallery in 1976 and became Resident Choreographer at Riverside Studios in 1978.  For the following three decades she has continued to develop her own movement language and choreographic form based around conceptual art, pure movement and complex use of space that has influenced and inspired three generations of British choreographers, notably Russell Maliphant and Jonathan Burrows.

Rosemary has increasingly used cross-arts collaboration within the choreographic process and has frequently chosen non-theatrical spaces to present her work. Her works have been received to great critical acclaim in the UK and abroad. 

In 2004 the solo Hidden Voices was commissioned for The Place Prize; in 2008 Rosemary was voted 'Choreographer of the Year' by the international publication Ballet Tanz; in 2010 Rosemary curated a Festival of Miniatures at Sadlers Wells. She has been senior research fellow at the University of Middlesex, London, since 2004

Ben Duke
Ben Duke trained at the Guildford School of Acting, before re-training as a dancer at London Contemporary Dance School.

He co-founded, together with Raquel Meseguer, the dance-theatre company Lost Dog, under whose label Ben has co-created and performed a series of works including Pave up Paradise, The Drowner, Hungry Ghosts, The Rain Parade and Salvage.  Ben and Raquel were the winners of The Place Prize 2011 with It Needs Horses.

As a choreographer Ben has created works for Scottish Dance Theatre, Phoenix Dance Theatre, the National Theatre of Scotland and the Gate Theatre, whilst as a performer he has worked with Probe, Hofesh Shechter Company, The National Theatre of Scotland, The Gate Theatre, Punch Drunk, Maresa von Stockert, and the Darkin Ensemble.

Simon Ellis
New Zealand-born Simon Ellis is an independent artist whose practice has included site-specific investigations, dance on screen, writing, digital outcomes, black box works, and installation. He has a practice-led PhD (investigating improvisation, remembering, documentation and liveness) and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Dance (Practice-based) at the University of Roehampton.

His work Gertrud was a finalist in The Place Prize 2008, and, most recently, he completed a new screen project, Anamnesis which was awarded School Jury Prize for Best Film at the InShadow Festival in Lisbon. His latest performance Desire Lines was commissioned for The Place Prize in 2010.

Rosemary Lee
Rosemary Lee has been choreographing, performing and directing for over twenty years. She works in a variety of media, including installation and film and has also created several large scale and site specific works. Rosemary works with a wide spectrum of age groups, from 10 to 80+.

Her recent work Common Dance included a cast of 50 people, across different age ranges, and was specially created for the Greenwich Borough Hall, as part of Dance Umbrella 2009.  She is now working on a new commission for Dance Umbrella 2011 entitled Square Dances, which involves almost 200 performers.

Eva Recacha
Eva Recacha trained at London Contemporary Dance School, where she now teaches Composition and Choreology. She has performed with Frauke Requardt, Lost Dog (UK), and inFlux (Switzerland). In 2001 she founded Proyecto Babel in Spain, a dance project focused on interdisciplinary and site-specific work.

With Proyecto Babel, Eva made works responding to the urban landscape, such as the Caixa Forum in Barcelona and the Goya Fountain in Zaragoza. Eva was one of the four finalists in The Place Prize 2011, with Begin to Begin: A Piece About Dead Ends.

Her latest work, P&J, was commissioned for EDge, the London Contemporary Dance performance company, and is currently on tour in UK and Europe. Eva's choreographic practice is focused on exploring ways of relating movement and text, creating works that draw from the poetic and humoristic juxtapositions of both media. 
 
Frauke Requardt
German-born London-based choreographer, Frauke Requardt trained in Germany, New York and London. Her choreographic work is characterised by a sense of dark humour and surrealism, expressed through physically challenging movement, and strong theatricality.

Through the use of text, live music both abstract and emotionally based movement, Frauke creates highly engaging work. She was an associate artist at The Place between 2004 and 2006, and she is now associate artist at Greenwich Dance. Frauke has presented her work in the UK and internationally, following residencies in Colombia, Portugal, Italy, The Netherlands, Ireland and Germany.

Her full-evening body of works include Jammy Dodgers, a fantastical world, with a rolling line up of bands from the London contemporary Jazz scene; the Lynch-esque Roadkill Cafe; and Pequenas Delicias, an absurdist site-specific piece for cafes and restaurants; Electric Hotel, created in collaboration with experimental theatre director David Rosenberg and co-produced Fuel and Sadler’s Wells; and her new work Episode which premiered at The Place in June 2011.

Luca Silvestrini
Born in Italy, Luca studied Performing Arts at Bologna University before moving to the UK in 1995 to complete his dance training at Laban. His choreography dates from 1997 when he co-founded Protein Dance.

As Artistic Director of Protein he is known for idiosyncratic dance theatre work provoked by its deep connections with the everyday. His Protein catalogue includes the site-specific international hit Publife, stage works The Banquet, Big Sale, Dear Body and the most recent LOL (lots of love).

His personality is stamped on large-scale cross-generational and participatory events including the world record breaking Big Dance Class, Eat London (which won a Visit London Gold Award) and Big World Dance 2010, both of which took place in Trafalgar Square.

He has created full length inter-generational productions in Valenciennes and Athens; and taught and presented Protein’s participatory work at schools and conferences in Singapore, Spain and Italy. Luca has created work for Transitions, Intoto, Bare Bones, CandoCo, From Here to Maturity, Funny Bones, Company of Elders at Sadler’s Wells and Sankalpalm. Theatre and opera credits include work for English National Opera, Theatre Rites, Royal Court Theatre, Duckie and Youth Music Theatre UK. He has won a Jerwood Choreography Award, a Bonnie Bird New Choreography Award and The Place Prize 2006 Audience Award and was one of the first recipients of a Rayne Choreography Award (2006). Protein is currently resident company at Greenwich Dance.
 
Moreno Solinas
Moreno Solinas graduated from London Contemporary Dance School in 2009.

After having worked as a performer with Bonachela Dance Company, DV8 Physical Theatre, Stan Won’t Dance, and Earthfall, in 2007 Moreno started to create dance works in collaboration with Igor Urzelai (see below). The collaboration between the two artists has led to the foundation of BLOOM!, which is currently developing a body of new works.

Vera Tussing
Vera Tussing graduated from London Contemporary Dance School in 2005, and has worked as choreographer and dancer in the UK, Belgium and Europe.

In 2007 she began collaborating with Albert Quesada, with whom over the last years she has created Trilogy, consisting of three singular pieces (Beautiful Dance, Your Eyes, and Oh Souvenir) exploring musical structures. Individually these pieces have been presented in the UK, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. Trilogy premiered at Monty Theatre, Antwerp in January 2011.

Alongside her work with Albert Quesada, Vera collaborated and created work for a number of projects, including Be Water, with Rosalind Masson and Andrew Macdonald, Arches Live! in Glasgow, and the Arcola Theatre in London.

Vera performed in One/Zero by Belgian choreographer Benjamin Vandewalle in April 2011, and she currently is starting to create her next piece, Edit, which will premiere in May 2012 at STUK in Leuven (BE).

Igor Urzelai
Igor started his studies in Madrid combining an acting degree with his dance training at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Danza, before graduating at the London Contemporary Dance School in 2009.

Igor is pursuing an independent career as a performer and choreographer, and has collaborated with Moreno Solinas since 2007.  Both Igor and Moreno are amongst the co-founders of BLOOM!, as part of which they are currently developing their choreographic careers.

BLOOM!'s work CITY  received  an award at the Prix Jardin d'Europe 2010 and won the Rudolf Laban Award for best dance production in Hungary in 2010. Igor is also co-founder of Hiru Dance Organisation, a network of collectives and individuals making and facilitating contemporary dance projects.

Contacts

For further press information
The Place Communication Office
Marta Bogna, Press and Media Manager
020 7121 1025/