For the second year, the annual Leicester-based Let’s Dance International Frontiers festival is to be staged online, with 11 days of events on offer.
Pawlet Brookes, artistic director and chief executive of Serendipity UK, producers of Let's Dance International Frontiers, said, "as we move through this challenging period, arts and culture will be crucial in playing a key role in re-engaging society, helping mental and physical health and stimulating the economy.
“With this in mind, we're pleased to announce a full programme for Let's Dance International Frontiers 2021. As well as world-class performances, we’re giving audiences a number of opportunities to be involved in the conversation online alongside leading artists and practitioners, and workshop opportunities for emerging and mid-career artists."
The festival will start on Thursday 29 April with Colonisation in Reverse, an exhibition by Haitian choreographer Jean-Léon Destiné. It will feature archival materials, some of which have never been presented in public before. It can be viewed at the Colonisation in Reverse web site and will also be available at Leicester’s Curve theatre from Monday 17 May.
As part of the first day of the festival, Serendipity will be showing the online film series Born to Manifest by Jospeh Toonga in anticipation of the live outdoor performance of Born to Protest which will take place in Leicester in June.
A range of national and international dance performances will be available online during the festival. Streamed from Curve, Black British Dance Platform (30 April) is a showcase of new work by British-based artists from the African and African Caribbean diaspora. Work by Dani Harris-Walters, Paris Crossley and Fubunation has been selected as part of an initiative to affect long-term change in dance through leadership and collaboration.
The 2021 conference, Creating Socially Engaged Art: Can Dance Change the World? on Tuesday 4 May, will highlight “the impact that black communities have made to the international dance ecology”. Contributors will include Chanon Judson, Urban Bush Women (USA), Greta Mendez (Trinidad / UK), Maya Taylor (USA), Marlene Myrtil (Martinique / UK), Wanjiru Kamuya (Kenya / France) and nora chipaumire (Zimbabwe / USA).