Dance organisation FABRIC has chosen seven artists from across the UK for residencies which will provide them with financial investment as well as a space to explore new ideas.
FABRIC has invested £50,000 in the residencies. At least two places were exclusive to artists living and working in the Midlands and at least two more were for artists identifying as d/Deaf, disabled, neurodivergent or with a long-term health condition.
More than 120 applications were received. Four of the artists were awarded residencies for research, designed to provide an opportunity to explore new ways of thinking about and doing dance, movement, and choreography. They are Kesha Raithatha, a choreographer and performer based in Leicester, Claudia Palazzo, a London-based choreographer, Amanda Hose-Hawley, a community dance leader in Nottingham, and Christopher Radford and Sara Macqueen of Linden Dance Company based in Birmingham.
Raithatha said, “my heritage, family history and cross-cultural experiences influence my artistic choices. It’s important for me to advocate working in my home region, the Midlands, where there’s a public invisibility of forgotten South Asians, whilst reinventing narratives for minority artists.”
Three of the artists have been awarded residencies for projects that take existing research and development into their final stages. They are Rosie Heafford, artistic director of Second Hand Dance in Surrey, Tylor Deyn and Jacob Samuel of Bullyache who are based in London and Stuart Waters, a dance artist based in East Sussex.
Waters commented, “in these challenging times, I feel really honoured to have an invitation from FABRIC to develop elements of a project I feel strongly about. This residency is going to be enormously valuable to reach out into communities within the Midlands to co-create new work.”
Formed by the merger of DanceXchange and Dance4, FABRIC will work with the selected artists over six months. They will get access to the company’s fully equipped studios in Birmingham and Nottingham. Applications for further residencies will open in 2023.