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Dateline:
19th March, 2010
First Unlimited Commissions Announced
Arts Council England and London 2012 have announced that over £400,000
of funding has been awarded to ten commissions for the first round of
the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad project Unlimited. Unlimited
will celebrate disability, arts, culture and sport on an unprecedented
scale and is intended to transform the disability arts movement in the
UK.
Unlimited encourages collaborations and partnerships between
disability arts organisations, disabled and deaf artists, producers,
and mainstream organisations to celebrate the inspiration of the Olympic
and Paralympic Games, and produce work like never before.
Theatre/dance-related ommissions are:
Candoco Dance Company performed in the handover ceremonies
of the 2008 Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games – the first
time disabled performers have appeared in both events. Candoco
Unlimited will build on their reputation as leaders in the dance
and disability field to showcase some of the leading disabled artists
working in contemporary dance today. Candoco will engage two disabled
choreographers to each make a large scale dance piece for disabled
and non-disabled dancers, including those from Beijing and Rio de
Janeiro to link the past, current and future Olympic host nations.
This will result in two inclusive dance pieces that will be performed
at a range of festivals and events leading up to 2012.
Graeae Theatre Company's The Garden takes its inspiration
from Blake’s poem Jerusalem and is an innovative exploration
of ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. It is the first
of three Graeae / Greenwich + Docklands International Festival (GDIF)
co-productions aimed at building the pool of disabled sway pole &
street art performers in the UK.
The work will be developed in partnership with Strange Fruit and
features a deaf and disabled artistic team and a new ensemble of deaf
and disabled sway pole/street art performers. The Garden will
make its premiere at GDIF in June 2010. The resulting work will be
developed alongside further pieces over the next three years to form
a single spectacular for 2012.
In the North West Fittings Multimedia Arts will produce The
Ugly Spirit. Using the lives of conjoined Siamese twins Chang
and Eng Bunker as inspiration and metaphor, The Ugly Spirit
will explore the conflicting notions that lie within us in a challenging
and critically engaging performance piece. Developed in partnership
with David Hoyle, Tanya Raabe and Garry Robson, Fittings will work
with disabled and non-disabled young people from the North West to
explore issues of identity. The resulting piece will tour a variety
of mainstream venues and unusual settings around the country.
In Scotland Janice Parker is to create Private Dancer,
an artistically ambitious large scale performance event by professional
and emergent disabled dancers. Performed in and around a real sized
luminous ‘house’, purpose built with a series of individual
rooms, each solo dancer invites audience members to enter their private
performance domain. As well as the individual pieces, the hour long
performance will include disabled and non-disabled dancers performing
throughout the structure encouraging audiences to walk and move around
the house. Private Dancer is the result of research and development
work which received funding from the Scottish Arts Council’s
Disability Arts Open Fund.
In Wales Kaite O'Reilly with The Llanarth Group will create
The ‘d’ Monologues, a dramatic collection of monologues
for Deaf and disabled performers, inspired by the stories and experiences
of disabled and Deaf individuals across the whole of the UK. The Llanarth
Group hope to produce a body of work that will address the dearth
of pieces written from a disability perspective, and parts written
for disabled performers. The ‘d’ Monologues will
be performed in venues in Wales and across the UK.
In Yorkshire Stumble danceCircus will produce Bipolar Ringmaster
(without a Circus), a one-man show performed by actor Eric MacLennan,
demonstrating the wild extremes experienced with bipolar disorder
and enjoyed in circus. The piece plays with the audience’s perceptions
and expectations of mental ill health and performance, blurring the
lines between colourful character and delusional insanity, grand achievement
or endless obsession. The piece will incorporate a short film of new
circus choreography, and will be flexible in performance both for
theatre or non-art settings
Unlimited Commissions is a commissioning fund of £1.5m
for new work which is believed to be the largest single investment in
creative work by disabled artists. The second half of the Unlimited
programme will provide support to artists to develop their talent and
skills and present their work to audiences in the UK and abroad. Through
Unlimited Talent there will be resources and training to foster
young talent and develop skills across the sector, forging new partnerships
between disability and mainstream arts organisations.
Unlimited International will support collaboration between the
artists in the UK and other countries, showcase new work around the
world, and promote a global debate amongst young people about disability
rights
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