8TH ISAN IDEAS SUMMIT WEDNESDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2011 SCOTTISH YOUTH THEATRE, GLASGOW Produced by: In partnership with: Welcome to the Ideas Summit, part of the 5th Biennial ISAN Conference. The Ideas summit has become an indispensable element of the ISAN conference. Now in its eighth year the event harnesses the immediacy and simplicity of a ‘speed dating’ format to ensure that the maximum number of delegates are introduced to a selected group of artists and companies. In past years the Ideas Summit has been instrumental in inspiring new commissions and creative collaborations and forging new working relationships between street artists and promoters. A record number of artists submitted proposals for this years’ event, demonstrating the vibrancy and enthusiasm of the outdoor sector in the UK. It is never easy selecting from such a wide variety of projects; the 2011 line up consists of 33 companies selected carefully to offer work of a variety of scales and styles and of the best possible breadth and diversity. This booklet not only includes information about the artists and companies presenting but also those who are unable to attend. We hope this booklet will be a useful reference for your work for long after the conference. For those of you who are new to the format of the summit, the artists stay stationary, each with a table space and some chairs, whilst the delegates move round. The idea is to get right round the room and have around 5 minutes with each artist/company. If you’d like more time because you’d like to develop the idea discussed, please arrange a meeting with the company for a later point – that’s the whole point of the summit. We hope you enjoy this event and we look forward to hearing your feedback. The selection panel for this event was Bev Adams (Faceless Company), Bill Gee (Independent Producer/ISAN Board), Frank Wilson (Event International), Maggie Clarke (XTRAX) and Roger Hartley (Bureau of Silly Ideas). CONTENTS ARTISTS PRESENTING Contrapticus Copperdollar Akademi Curious Planet CIC Artizani / Abbozzo Debbie Robbins Bash Street Theatre DeLighters Bread and Butter Theatre Company Dodgy Whiskers Breaking Cycles Estelle Rosenfeld & Philip Parr Bright Night International Festive Road Bureau Of Silly Ideas Fighting Fit Productions C-12 Dance Theatre Fine Artistes Canopy Freestyle Engineering City Arts Nottingham & Kinetika Frenetic Engineering Cocoloco Heels Over Head Dance Theatre Dizzy O'Dare Presents Impossible Dudendance Theatre Jon Hicks Fittings Multimedia Arts Joy Bain Green Ginger Kinetika – Design Studio Helen Clyro Kivikidance Instant Dissidence Li Lu Jane Pitt Lucid Incident Lucid Productions Max Calaf Seve Macnas Ireland Megrez7 mimbre Phizzical Mischief La-Bas Pitch Black Arts Molly Orange & Circus Diaspora Position Doubtful Nofit State Circus Prospero Dance Company Pif-Paf Theatre Rachel Dean Ray Lee Company Ragroof Theatre tangled feet Reckless Invention The Hurly Burly & Circus Kinetica Restless Nights The Other Way Works Rovambira Arts Network Zimbabwe The World Famous Sauce and Spit Upswing Scarabeus Aerial Theatre Walk the Plank Small Encounters Sophie Stuff Wet Picnic Blaze with More Music and Dan Fox Big Band ARTISTS NOT PRESENTING Take New Take Talking Birds 30 Bird Productions TeatrodeCERCA Alexandria Patience The Delegates Bicycle Ballet The Sonic Manipulator BiDiNG TiME with Tangled Feet Theremin Hero Bootworks Theatre Tumble Circus Bright Shadow Wayne Sables Project Bui Bolg White Rabbit Chester the Giant City cic Witchfinder Productions Cirq'ulation Locale ARTISTS PRESENTING AT THE IDEAS SUMMIT 2011 AKADEMI - SONG OF THE CITY / PARDISO Monique Deletant Bell Administrative Director Interchange Studios, 213 Haverstock Hill, London NW3 4QP E: [email protected] W: www.akademi.co.uk Akademi champions and encourages excellence in the practice of South Asian dance in contemporary Britain. Through the production of innovative South Asian dance events in unusual spaces we engage the widest possible public with an art form that while rooted in classical tradition is at the cutting edge of contemporary culture and a particularly British creative force. Song of the City is an abstract piece of dance theatre created to celebrate the 150th annivers ary of the birth of Rabindranath Tagore who was a Nobel Prize winner for Literature and lived in the UK. Inspired by his sketches and doodles Akademi brought CS Deepan (Dramaturge and Design), Ash Mukherjee (Dancer/Choreographer), Arun Ghosh (Clarinetist/Composer), Will Huntley (Film maker) and Professor William Radice (Tagore Scholar and authority from SOAS in London) to create a production to be performed in a Victorian Tunnel at the Southwark Playhouse, London. This production is a site specific experiment adaptable to the needs of a variety of spaces. Featuring ballet, bharatanatyam and contemporary dance set to a haunting musical arrangement, song of the city reveals the soul that pulses within the city. In our piece we have two men, one a Romantic or Creative and the other a Realist or Executive trying to live and co exist in a city. Together they represent the duality within a human being, in this case a Woman/Muse. We find this Woman/Muse striving to find harmony with these dual forces. We also find that these forces are at times unwilling to meet. What happens when they do meet? ‘Devam especially brings a serpentine intensity to every step. What started as a celebration of India's greatest writer has evolved into an engrossing urban seance.’ Clifford Bishop, The Independent Type of show: Small scale | Estimated costs: Approx £2500-£3000 Paradiso is a site-responsive, open-air dance performance inspired by William Blake's vibrant illustrations of Dante's Paradiso and the language of South Asian classical dance. This piece aligns creative and operational aspects in a simple performance framework, producing a clean and seamless event. Paradiso is a powerful yet calm piece which takes a mobile winding pathway. A creative outline of the work Concept Paradiso is a low impact and highly portable outdoor promenade dance production, created for gardens, parks and green spaces. Inspired by Dante’s third installment of The Divine Comedy and the paintings of William Blake, audiences will be taken on a journey through the nine circles of heaven, encountering colourful and other-worldly characters in each new environment. Three artists, using the site to represent the journey from Purgatory into Paradise, appear from behind site specific architecture or landscaping. Using bharatanatyam and contemporary dance, they wind their way towards a circular finale, through crowds and the outdoor site. This is a lyrical dance experience with softer musical dance interventions.The development of this piece drew on dance workshops with the local community in Sheerness .The length of the performance is 28 minutes and is available for touring from 21 July – 9th September 2012. Type of show: Medium Scale | Estimated costs: Approx £2500 ARTIZANI / ABBOZZO - YOUR NUMBERS UP! James Macpherson & Sian Haslock Artistic Directors Hey Barn Farm, Glossop Rd, Little Hayfield, Derbyshire SK22 2NR E: [email protected] | [email protected] W: www.artizani.net Abbozzo is a new street arts company set up by Sian Haslock. Sian is a young woman described as an irrepressible force of nature – winner of the Manchester Evening News best newcomer award, co-director of Manchester’s brand new circus space: the Circus House and member of up and coming neo-Balkan rave-circus: Slamboree. Sian is a graduate of Greentop’s Circus Performance course, Lake’s Alive Street Theatre summer school and Artizani’s training show, the Cabaret of Dr Caligari. Abbozzo aims to realise her ideas in the street-arts arena where her twisted surreal humour meets hard edged urban steam-punk visuals. Artizani is an established international street arts organisation touring a wide repertoire of performances from small to middle scale and with a strong record of collaboration and arts funding. Your Number’s Up! is an installation concerned with investigating external and internal space simultaneously, designed for a large urban space or park. Although available for one day bookings, ideally the installation (which consists of two stacked shipping containers) would be delivered to the space earlier. In this phase it is wrapped as a giant parcel addressed to the festival/event both as tease and publicity. Once unwrapped, externally we see the two containers – industrial, functional and out of place. To gain entry to the internal space the public take a ticket and just like at the cheese counter, wait until their number is up…. Only the entry is visible and so whilst in progress passers-by are presented with an image of people waiting their turn to be packed into a container with all the resonances of immigration and human trafficking that has. When your number is up you will be processed: shoes and bags removed, documentation stamped and masks and goggles fitted. Squeeze through a small opening and enter a 3d maze, inspired by Dante’s Inferno and Odysseus’s journey through the underworld. Dark tunnels, textured sound, video temptations, internal winds bringing smells, and then surprising rooms of tranquillity or challenges to overcome in order to move on. Like human snakes and ladders, you move onwards and generally upwards until the last room at the very top where you will need to make a leap of faith to escape – down the slide and back to everyday life, (where your shoes will be waiting). Applications for funding are currently being made and we intend to tour minimally in 2012 and fully in 2013. As well as the two main collaborators we have a team of experienced designers and makers lined up in a range of areas. These include: Dr David Southall, engineer; Karen Lauke sound design, Sidsel Bech; Scenography; Designs in Air, sound and light in inflatable sculptures.