Yorkshire Dance Annual Report 2009-2010

Yorkshire Dance Annual Review 2009 - 2010 www.yorkshiredance.com

Introduction 2009/2010 was an exciting year for Yorkshire dance with significant growth in community dance, growth in artist development and delivery of high profile events.

This was a period of stabilisation of our core programme with rising ticket sales and major investment in artists.

We worked across the whole of Yorkshire by building a regional infrastructure for youth dance. We were delighted to be a leadpartner in the successful Artists Taking the Lead commission of Leeds Canvas.

The award of ÂŁ83k of Sustain funding is allowing us to reflect on the shifting environment for dance and radically reshape the future direction of the organisation.

This Review highlights the many facets of the work of Yorkshire Dance which enrich the lives of so many people. Having completed our 27th year we are now providing support, encouragement and new opportunities to several generations of artists, participants and audiences. Our longevity is due to the quality of the activities undertaken, our ability to change to meet new challenges, and the support of funders whom we thank unreservedly for their support.

Yorkshire Dance intends to continue to play a leadership role in dance development in Yorkshire and will therefore always seek to extend and improve the quality of its programmes and services in a rapidly changing environment.What is achieved is due to the passion, professionalism and dedication of a remarkable team led by Wieke Eringa whose enthusiasm for Yorkshire Dance to live its vision is boundless.

On behalf of the board I offer them my thanks and a standing ovation for their contribution during the year. My thanks also to the board members who give of their time and skills freely and generously.

Roslyn Beattie, Chair

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Artist Development The two year LIFT programme allowed Associated Artists Gary Clarke and Douglas Thorpe and fourteen artists from a range of practices to join in an intensive professional training programme with CIDA[1], whilst receiving further support with project development, rehearsal space and fundraising.

Excellent results so far include a successful British Dance Edition, newly-focused project planning and exciting creative studio practice.

We held a wide range of continuing professional development workshops for artists and our partnership with the Leeds College of Music resulted in the second Choreographers and Composers Exchange, where 16 artists worked collaboratively led by internationally renowned composer Matteo Fargion.

In partnership with ADAD[2],Yorkshire Dance brought together a panel of national experts and artists for the Presence and Purpose seminar.

Refreshing the debate about the opportunities and threats to black-led dance, this stimulating event contributed to the National Dance Network’s debate about diversity in the dance sector.

An artist led ‘Playday’ started off the year, sparking new relationships between visual artists, writers, musicians and dance artists. The Yorkshire Dance Improvisation Exchange grew from strength to strength, inspiring a new community of dance improvisers in Leeds. The Dance Artist Network had 8 meetings that included skills development (networking, coaching) as well as special meetings with the Arts Council and the British Council. One of the best-loved services provided to the artists is our fortnightly professional bulletin, now distributed to over 2,800 people.

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Douglas Thorpe’s a mind as beautiful

Gary Clarke’s COAL photo © Matthew Todd

Choreographers & Composers Exchange photo © Andy Wood

Creative Industries Development Agency The Association of Dance of the African Diaspora

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Community Participation With 70+ hours of weekly classes we provided a high quality, varied and fun participation programme.

Attendance rose to 25,960 this year with over 97% of dancing customers rating teaching as excellent or good, and 92% as excellent or good value for money.

The Saturday programme for young people drew increased numbers of participants and Yorkshire Dance’s creative dance group for people aged 50+ (The Dance) was over-subscribed each term. We programmed 24 one-off weekend workshops, from Parkour to Clog dancing and Burlesque, introducing many new people to diverse and fun ways to dance.

We provided performance opportunities both at Yorkshire Dance and the West Yorkshire Playhouse, where the fifth edition of Dansopolis shone a light on excellence in community dance from the whole region: from young and old, from Bharatanatyam and contemporary to Hip Hop. Dancing in Time, the new commission by Wendy Houstoun, was a roaring success, both with its intergenerational community cast of 40 and with the audience.

Dansopolis photo © Kirst Wilson

Yorkshire’s 2,012 photo © Andy Wood

We had a unique opportunity to contribute to the celebrations of the Olympic Open Weekend in July 2009 with a mass participation dance event in the centre of Bradford. A 12-move quirky and fun sportsdance was disseminated on the internet and 800 people took part, with several hundred others watching or ‘stumbling across’ and joining in spontaneously.

We worked closely together with a number of partners in three local communities to deliver projects in Seacroft, Richmond Hill and City and Hunslet. As part of the Learning Revolution we were able to work alongside third sector organisations new to us, such as those supporting older people or mental health service users. The biggest shift in outreach work took place in the development of dance with people with learning disabilities. We delivered Connect project work through a strong artistic partnership with Mind The Gap and delivered Moving Bodies Moving Minds with Pyramid of Arts.

This activity led to increased numbers for our weekly dancing sessions, whose attendance numbers rose dramatically.

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Hip Hop Roots photo © Yorkshire Dance

Youth Dance This year Yorkshire Dance launched the first of a twoyear regional strategy for youth dance, driven by the Youth Dance Strategy Manager in partnership with Youth Dance England.

A regional infrastructure for youth dance was created, with five sub-regional hubs including crosssector representation from sport, health, local authority, education and arts professionals. Each hub commenced delivery of its action plan, delivering U.Dance[1] platforms and new project activity. The regional plan was further supported by the Regional Dance Development Network that brings together professionals to discuss pertinent development needs around delivery, advocacy, good practice, training and fundraising.

Sub-regional hub host organisations • North Yorkshire and York Hub Hambleton District Council, Kate Staines (Arts Development Officer) • South Bank Hub Gill Vickers (Arts Development Officer) at North Lincolnshire District Council • West Yorkshire Hub West Yorkshire Sport, Daniel Stanley (Sports Development Officer) • East Yorkshire and Hull Hub East Riding of Yorkshire Council (Arts Development Officer) • South Yorkshire Hub Wendy Harrison, Freelance

© Paul Greenwood

By building this infrastructure Yorkshire Dance started to fulfil a strategic regional role and became the face of youth dance in the region. Advocacy became a central activity and many new friends and dance-fans were made: politicians, councillors and health and sports professionals alike. The regional plan led to a further investment by the Department of Health of £28k which supported nine dance organisations and five youth dance hubs to develop new activity.

The key highlights of the year were two scintillating and well-attended Regional Youth Dance nights as part of Dansopolis 2009 and Fresh 2010 at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, where hundreds of the most talented young people wowed their audiences with a varied programme of an excellent standard.

Several sub-regional Youth Dance Nights have also taken place as a result of the new infrastructure and the number is set to increase over the next year.

To find out more about youth dance development in Yorkshire, visit www.yorkshiredance.com/youth

U.Dance is the national programme that aims to give every child and young person in England the opportunity to take part in a dance performance each year. The programme includes a vast range of dance performances from primary school dance performances that bring together children from across a family of schools, to the national dance performance for hundreds of young people.

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Audience development

Our achievements

We continued to raise the profile of dance which allowed theatres to develop their confidence and expand their dance programme as well as build audiences for dance.

During 2009 – 2010 we:

During 2009-10,Yorkshire Dance presented or copresented 14 performances - 10 professional and 4 community - in 6 venues attended by 3,153 people.

Our strong relationship with The Carriageworks and the Riley Theatre enabled us to bring new work to Leeds and encouraged relationship between those artists, venues and audiences. Professional work was presented either because it was co-produced (by artists we support) or because it provided a highquality ‘added value’ to dance programming in Leeds through experimentation and innovation.

Yorkshire Dance was a leading partner in the National Dance Network’s (NDN) project Dance3 which showcased a ‘new wave of important choreographers’. Ten works, one by Associated Artist Douglas Thorpe, toured in triple bills to 28 venues across the UK, three of which were in Yorkshire. This initiative acted as a pilot for Yorkshire Dance in working with regional small scale venues.

28 shows in Leeds and 41 shows in the region were promoted in the three Dance in Leeds brochures which had a distribution of 15,000 each. With a well attended brochure launch, this initiative brought together the venues and the dance-attending community to share curiosity and excitement, raise profile and increase sales.

• Delivered three major large scale participatory dance events: Dansopolis with a new commission by Wendy Houstoun; Fresh 2010 Youth Dance platform and Yorkshire’s 2,012, a mass participation dance with 1000 people in Bradford, celebrating the Olympic opening weekend.

• Delivered highly structured support for sixteen artists through the LIFT programme, including our two Associated Artists, Gary Clarke and Douglas Thorpe • Supported three artists to create three new dance works: Gary Clarke’s COAL, Douglas Thorpe’s a mind as beautiful, Damien Barber’s Time Gentlemen Please.

• Supported 18 artists/collectives with a total of 203 days of free or vastly subsidised residency space. Most of these artists opened their morning technique class to the professional dance community. In addition a total of 791 hours of free rehearsal space was used under the Stand By Scheme by 65 different artists.

Fourteen public sharings were held by twelve artists.

• Achieved a ‘2’ Ofsted rating for our Adult Community Learning courses • Achieved a total of 29,000 people dancing and 3153 watching contemporary dance performance.

• Continued building audiences for dance by launching two Dance In Leeds brochures with a distribution of 15,000 each • Expanded our Community and Learning capacity with significant new project work with adult social care and informal adult learning.

• Provided strategic leadership in developing the infrastructure for young people’s dance in Yorkshire.

Demon Barber Roadshow’s Time Gentlemen Please supported by Yorkshire Dance

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Financial Overview 2009-2010 Income £ Core income Core: Arts Council England Core: Leeds City Council Core: West Yorkshire Grants Other public funding Arts Council England Youth Dance England Transformation Fund Leeds City Council Earned income Classes, courses, workshops, box office Tenants and hires Other Trusts and Foundations Total income*

195,130 65,000 10,095 187,621 171,172 27,009 23,849 120,378 149,953 28,675 25,000 1,003,882

Expenditure Community and learning Audience development / professional performances Community commissions Artist development and professional programme YDE Regional dance development Building and admin overheads Marketing Salaries, training, expenses Total expenditure

£ 95,338 6,413 48,017 13,676 56,003 237,890 40,158 315,950 813,445

The information above is derived from the Detailed Statement of Financial Activities contained in the audited annual accounts for the year ended 31st March 2010. Full audited accounts and Trustees’ report can be obtained from Yorkshire Dance.

* of which £158,531 grant funds (project and capital) carried forward for use in 2010-11

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Board of Directors

Yorkshire Dance staff

Ros Beattie (Chair) Andrew Coggins David Edmunds Gill Cooper Gill Greaves Graham Webb Margaret Coleman Paul Wood Richard Nolan Victoria Hunter

Wieke Eringa Edwina Simpson Bill Vince Sofi Lundgren Antony Dunn Dawn Wilkinson Kim Lofthouse Kate Ferris-Neely Lauren Houghton Judy Rose Susan Davies Nattylyn Jeffers Eleanor Edwards Warren Hudson

Executive Director General Manager Youth Dance Strategy Manager Community & Learning Manager Head of Communications Facilities Manager Youth Dance administrator Community & Learning Project Coordinator Administrative Assistant Finance Administrator Finance Administrator Community Engagement Officer Front of House Front of House

Front of House

Grace Harrop Maria Jardardottir Felicia Scully Amy West

Jason Thompson Paul Marshall

IT Support Technician

Artist Advisory Group Andile Sotiya Balbir Singh Beth Cassani Charlotte Vincent Sarah Spanton Sharon Watson Simon Birch Youth Dance Regional Strategy Group Pam Johnson (ACE,Yorkshire) Gill Waite, Learning Manager (LSC Yorkshire) Jan Burkhardt, Health improvement specialist (Leeds PCT) Heather Kennedy – Regional Development Manager (Sport England) Associated Artists Douglas Thorpe Gary Clarke The Fourteen Bobak Walker Caitlin Smith Daliah Toure Gerry Turvey James Jackson Karen Bartholomew Kathinka Walter

Manuela Berndt Mia Nielsen Pauline Mayers Rachel Dean Rita Marcalo Sheena McGrandles Vanessa Grasse Artists supported through residency space (min 1 week) Balbir Singh Beth Cassani Damien Barber, The Demon Barber Roadshow Douglas Thorpe Emma Clayton Errol White Gary Clarke Jennifer Lynne Karen Bartholomew Manuela Berndt Mathilde Improv collective Mish Weaver, Stumble danceCircus Rachel Dean Rachel Krische & Matthias Sperling Rash Dash Sarah Spanton Strati Collective Wayne Sables Tenants Acting School North Ascendance Rep

Yorkshire Dance Centre Trust Company Ltd Registered 2319572 England Registered Charity No. 701624 VAT No. 418 0193 70

Ashlee Hitchens Bee Ladd Daliah Toure

DEP Arts Production & Balbir Singh The H2 Company Phoenix Dance Theatre Red Ladder Theatre Company SAA-uk With thanks to all our funders and partners for 2009 – 2010 Arts Council England Leeds City Council West Yorkshire Grants ADAD (the Association for Dance of the African Diaspora) Adult Social Care The Carriageworks CIDA (Creative Industries Development Agency) The Department of Health Education Leeds Extended Services Find Your Talent Leeds College of Music The Legacy Trust The Riley Theatre The Rix Thompson Rothenberg Foundation SAA-uk Space 2 The Transformation Fund West Yorkshire Playhouse