Professor Christopher Bannerman
\nFirst posted: September 2018
\nUpdate: March 2021<\/small><\/p>\n
DU 2018 talks, panels and events<\/strong><\/p>\n This part of the DU at 40 website is particularly significant as it captures some of the things that occur around the performances, both the pre\/post-performance talks that are offered where artists speak about their work, as well as lectures and panel discussions addressing wider issues that relate both to the arts and society more generally. This is a significant feature of Dance Umbrella and of some other arts organisations that is often under-reported, and the sessions demonstrate not only an active engagement with issues of the day, but also a contribution to those issues and the discourses that surround them, from an arts and\/or artist perspective.<\/p>\n Even the 40th<\/sup> Fling<\/em> event, the party to celebrate the anniversary could not just include the usual speeches but had to feature an interview with the two former and one current festival director chaired by Rose Fenton the founder of the LIFT festival. I say \u2018had to feature\u2019 as DU rarely misses an opportunity to engage with ideas, intellectually stimulating ideas, thoughtfully presented as an essential part of the festival. <\/p>\n These are curated as an intrinsic part of the festival and, in the case of the \u2018Out of the System\u2019 discussion below, extended over a three-year period curated by Freddie Opoku-Addai who has now (March 2021) become DU Artistic Director\/CEO, following Emma Gladstone\u2019s departure. This website captures the 2018 festival sessions and includes interviews with DU directors past and present and with DU artists featured in 2018, so that they are available for future reference when other web records may no longer exist.<\/p>\n Also included in this section are the London-based Studio Sessions from the 2020 festival and in this case, the website captures material that is beyond public view and reveals another aspect of DU\u2019s role in the dance ecology. The Studio Sessions are attended by inter\/national arts professionals who are introduced to work-in-progress often by emerging artists and who then are able to link with artists and colleagues as a way of producing or presenting new dance works.<\/p>\n This work is equally important to those who wish to understand how dance artists develop and grow and to academics who so often look only at the work of artists without examining or accounting for the wider arts context in which they operate. At this moment, as we begin to emerge from the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic and as artists seek opportunities, the work of the arts professionals involved in producing and presenting dance is more important than ever.<\/p>\n <\/br>Friday 28 September<\/strong>
\nVoices Off<\/em>: A conversation with Annie-B Parson and Emma Gladstone
\nThe Old Vic<\/p>\n