Three weeks of “show-stopping free performances and opportunities to get dancing” will be on offer during Birmingham International Dance Festival in summer 2018.
The programme, “from the wacky to the sublime”, will invite audiences into the city’s theatres as well as taking over streets and squares so that “the extraordinary happens in the most unexpected spaces”.
The 2018 festival programme is inspired by themes of imagination and digital art, reflecting the diversity of dancers’ bodies.
Festival artistic director Lucie Mirkova said, “the 2018 festival has a strong curatorial voice and vision reflecting current and new dance practice and looking to the future.
“Our aim is to grow the festival’s reputation and significance as a place where the best of international and national dance is presented, reaching out to new audiences, and offering a platform for change and development.”
There will be a world première and ten UK premières at the festival including Compagnie Didier Theron with its tongue-in-cheek AIR. Portuguese choreographer Rui Horta returns to the stage after a 30-year absence with Wasp and there will also be performances by ISH Dance Collective from the Netherlands with Elements of Freestyle, “high-octane hip hop with a twist” D-Construction from another Dutch company Compagnie Dyptik and the “gravity-defying wizardry” of Israeli artist Ofir Yudilevitch in Gravitas.
Leading British choreographers Wayne McGregor and Rosie Kay head up a programme of UK talent. McGregor’s company will produce Atomos at the New Alexandra Theatre while Kay will choreograph a professional cast and community chorus at Birmingham REP in the world première of Leo Butler’s new version of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck.
Birmingham Royal Ballet will present a triple bill, Polarity and Proximity, which includes a new choreographic work by George Williamson.
BIDF 2018 will be produced by Birmingham-based DanceXchange and will run from 1 until 24 June.