Bristol Dance Futures appoints a new Producer

Arts Council England recently awarded a grant to Bristol Dance Futures – an association of South West arts organisations and practitioners – to develop the city’s dance offer. This is extremely welcome and exciting news.

The group – Arnolfini, Theatre Bristol, Circomedia, PDSW, Trinity, artist Laila Diallo and producer Katy Noakes – is working together to grow investment in dance. Earlier this year BDF announced that Deborah Baddoo has joined the project as Producer to lead this development.

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Deborah is a performer and choreographer, and has served as artistic director of State of Emergency productions since its founding in 1986. In 2010 she was awarded an MBE for services to British dance.
Bristol 24/7 caught up with Deborah to find out more.

What intrigued you about this role, and the prospect of working in Bristol?

I have been connected to dance work in Bristol for many years, mostly through working on projects with my company State of Emergency.  I am familiar with many organisations in the city and have presented work at several venues and Festivals.

I have been aware of the rise and fall and rise of dance activity over the last decade and was excited about the new movement, the new strategy to embed and develop dance in the City. It is an ambitious and far reaching role and it was an exciting prospect to ‘get under the skin’ of dance in Bristol and help to spark a new era for dance in the City.

What is your opinion of Bristol and its current arts and dance scene?

Bristol is a vibrant City and a cultural hub. However I think that the profile and opportunities for dance presentation and activity is lagging behind the other art forms. We need to celebrate, develop and run with what we have. Bristol has such huge potential for embracing dance.

Deborah Baddoo by Irven Lewis

What are some of the first things you hope to accomplish as Producer?

We aim to set up specialist Dance Hubs in three venues which will be knowledge centres and places of activity, one for youth dance, one for dance in health and one for audience development research and activity.

We will also be launching Dance Connect – four long term dance residencies in four organisations. We have sent a call out to welcome dancers and choreographers working in any dance form, and both traditional arts venues as well as settings like health centres, community centres and any other places with ambitions to embed dance in their activity, to come to a meeting at Arnolfini on the 23rd April* 2-5pm to find out more about the programme.

Dance seems to be a strangely under represented and marginalised art form in Bristol.  Have you noticed this?  And how can we change that?

Yes this is historic anomaly. With the rise of populist dance programmes like’ Strictly’,’ So you think you can dance ‘and many others dance is in the public realm on a daily basis. We need to capitalise on the surge of public interest in dance and try to make dance accessible in a variety of ways.

Moving Bristol is an ambitious programme where we want to embrace and support artists and artform development, whilst at the same time embedding dance in the infrastructure of a number of organisations and developing new audiences and new applications for dance in the community.

Needless to say as is usual in the arts, there are big ambitions and a small budget to achieve our aims, but we hope that this project will be a catalyst for raising the profile of dance on which to build for the future.

To learn more about Bristol Dance Futures and Moving Bristol, visit: www.trinitybristol.org.uk/about/news/2020/dance-futures-funded

To find out more about the call-out meeting at the Arnolfini on April 23 visit:  my.trinitybristol.org.uk/dance-connect-meeting/

*This event is postponed owing to the coronavirus epidemic, likely to be rescheduled in June.

Main photo: Rise Youth Dance workshop with Ucnehnna Dance at Trinity Centre. Image KoLAB Studios

Read more: Where dance can go next