ACE dance and music are kicking off the new year by offering professional dancers the opportunity to participate in an intensive residency with internationally acclaimed South African choreographer Vincent Mantsoe. This professional development opportunity will take place at the ACE dance and music studio, the Link Dance Space, in Birmingham from 19  – 23 March.

Multi-award winning Vincent Mantsoe previously collaborated with ACE dance and music on their celebrated production Skin, which toured successfully both in the U.K. and abroad from 2007 – 2008. ACE dance and music are looking to build on this creative relationship and use this residency as a research and development period for their next production ‘Mana’.

Ace dance and music are also welcoming back Revival, its dance and drumming project from 6 February.

Photo: Bill Cooper

Birmingham Royal Ballet artistic director David Bintley picked up the Best Classical Choreography award for Cinderella at the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards 2011.

The awards, held at The Place’s Robin Howard Dance Theatre in London this week, are decided by the 60 members of the Dance Section of the Critics’ Circle after an extensive round of nominations and voting. To be eligible, performances had to be given in the UK between 1 September 2010 and 31 August 2011.

The current Birmingham Hippodrome season features a host of David’s other work, including the full-length narrative ballets Hobson’s Choice (22-25 February 2012) and Far From the Madding Crowd (20-23 June 2012). He is also creating a brand-new one-act work to be performed as part of our Summer Celebration programme. David’s one-act jazz tribute to Dave Brubeck, Take Five, will also be performed as part of this year’s International Dance Festival Birmingham.

For more background on the making of Cinderella, you can check out BRB’s Creating Cinderella blog.

Parisian streetdance group Elektro Kif are giving you the chance to dance in the opening act at the Southbank Centre as part of a national tour that stops at Warwick Arts Centre in March.

For a chance to win the digital dance competition all you have to do is create a one-minute video in front of an iconic landmark in your city and upload it before the 6th February deadline. If your group wins you will be dancing in the opening act for Elektro Kif at the Southbank Centre on Fri 2nd March 2012.

If there is enough interest from dance groups in the West Midlands dancers may also be asked to perform at Warwick Arts Centre. Pick a landmark and get entering!

International Dance Festival Birmingham are looking for 1000 individuals from across the West Midlands to contribute towards Home, an inventive new dance production that will move through the streets of Birmingham city centre during International Dance Festival Birmingham 2012 between 23 April – 13 May 2012.

We are collecting creative contributions in any art-form from individuals, friends, families, work colleagues, community groups, and professional artists – anyone who would like to share their thoughts of home and be a part of this flagship festival project.

If you could sum up what home means to you, how would it look? What would it say? How would it sound? What would it do? How would it move? When you think of home what do you see, hear, taste, smell and feel? Is it about feeling like you belong, having a sense of identity, or being part of a community?

To get involved download the application forms on the Home website. You can find out more about the creative process behind the performance on the Home blog and you can see some of the submissions made so far on the Home YouTube channel.

ACE Youth dancer Natasha Smith, 18, from Wolverhampton has been selected by internationally-acclaimed choreographer Hofesh Shechter for the U.Dance Ensemble.

The U.Dance Ensemble is a joint initiative, managed by Youth Dance England in partnership with YDance (Scottish Youth Dance), National Youth Dance Wales, DU Dance (based in Northern Ireland) and Southbank Centre.Twenty dancers from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have been selected to form the first UK-wide youth dance company.

You can read ACE dance and music’s post about it here and read DanceXchange’s post about it here.

Dancing for the Games has put together a list of the social media links for the projects and dance organisations that are working, or have worked, under the Arts Council-backed scheme.

Many are on Twitter and Facebook to update people about their events and activity during the Cultural Olympiad in the West Midlands, so they’re definitely worth a follow or a like. See the full list on the Dancing for the Games website.

Remember, you can follow West Midlands Dance on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

Big Dance is a biennial celebration of dance and dancing with 9 days of dance events in unusual places throughout the UK and will form part of London Festival 2012 the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad next year.

In the West Midlands, Big Dance is being led by DanceXchange with a group of organisations including Dancing for the Games, Dancefest, danceScape, Dudley Performing Arts, Shropshire and Telford Arts Partnership, and Staffordshire Council working together as the Big Dance Hub.

Here’s more about Big Dance:

Big Dance is London’s Legacy Trust UK programme led by the Greater London Authority in partnership with Arts Council England and Foundation for Community Dance. Big Dance supported by major organisations including: Sport England, NHS London, London Councils, Museums, Libraries & Archives, London and the British Council.

Big Dance, originated by the Mayor of London in 2006 in partnership with Arts Council England, is the world’s biggest and most influential dance initiative and is delivered through a network of London’s leading dance organisations: East London Dance,English National Ballet, Greenwich Dance, Sadler’s Wells and Siobhan Davies Dance. This Hub network has now developed across the UK.

You can get in touch with your local hub organisation to discuss your ideas and get involved with their plans, and to discuss region-wide plans contact Lucy Kenny, Community Engagement Manager, DanceXchange on westmidlands@bigdance2012.com.

Birmingham Royal Ballet has appointed Barry Wordsworth as its Music Director Laureate.
Wordsworth joined Birmingham Royal Ballet almost 40 years ago on the conducting staff of the then Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet and since 1972 has been influential in bringing the greatest of ballet scores to audiences around the world.  Wordsworth’s relationship with both The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, alongside an illustrious concert career, has made him one of the most notable Music Directors working in the ballet arena today.

Here’s some more information about Barry Wordsworth provided by Birmingham Royal Ballet:

Wordsworth is Music Director of The Royal Ballet having also previously held the position from 1990-95.  In 2006 he became Conductor Laureate of the BBC Concert Orchestra, having served as its Principal Conductor since 1989.  He is also Principal Conductor of the Brighton Philharmonic. Wordsworth has appeared with many of the world’s leading orchestras both in the UK and overseas, including the Philharmonia Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, Sydney Symphony, New Zealand Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the Seoul Philharmonic. He has made regular appearances at the BBC Proms with the BBC Concert Orchestra, and in 1993 he conducted the “Last Night of the Proms” with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. As Principal Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra for 17 years, he toured extensively with the orchestra, including visits to Japan and the United States.

Photographer Richard Battye‘s dance photography is opening for a public exhibition in Birmingham tomorrow.
His Still Dancing collection will be open to the public at The Old Joint Stock in Birmingham from Tuesday 29 November until 3 February 2012, so catch it while you can.

Here’s the flyer for the exhibition:

You can see more of Richard’s dance photography on his website.

To mark the return of The Nutcracker to Birmingham Hippodrome on Friday 25 November, with the season running until 11 December, Birmingham Royal Ballet have pulled together a collection of posters from the last twenty years of its Nutcracker performances.

You can view all of the posters in the slideshow below. Which is your favourite?

Here’s the trailer for BRB’s Nutcracker:

Nutcracker at Birmingham Hippodrome 2011 from Rob Lindsay on Vimeo.