Two-part festival aiming to make up for lost time.
Birmingham International Dance Festival, the city’s signature festival, returns to celebrate, share and shine a light on the region’s amazing dance offer, offering an incredible opportunity to connect people in a joyful, inspiring, celebration of dance and togetherness.
Produced by DanceXchange, the exciting two-part festival brings an entirely new dimension to BIDF, with an online summer edition from 3rd-13th June featuring new film world premieres and digital screendance commissions, followed by an autumn edition, 21st September–3rd October, featuring a live outdoor programme.
In collaboration with ZOO, which pioneered online presentations at last year’s Edinburgh Festival, BIDF will launch a new online platform BIDF TV as the ‘venue’ for the digital summer edition of the festival. The full programme featuring new screendance commissions, workshops, dance classes and panel discussions will be announced in May and include:
• the online World Premiere of newly commissioned dance film Chotto Xenos from Akram Khan Company.
• Birmingham Royal Ballet’s new short film The Burning Building by Javier de Frutos, plus the first screening of City of a Thousand Trades, choreographed by Miguel Altunaga, which will receive its live World Premiere, just before broadcast, at Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
• the World Premiere of region-wide youth participation dance and digital project, Beyond Borders, led by DanceXchange, the West Midlands Dance Development Leaders Group and Arts Connect.
• a screendance showcase curated in collaboration with Flatpack Film Festival.
• Midlands Made screendance programme featuring World Premieres of two major new films, produced by The Motion Dance Collective: Don’t Play with L(Kn)ives by Brooke Milliner and Anywhere’s A Dance Floor, a new collaboration between choreographer Jason Guest and drag artist and cultural producer Fatt Butcher.
The summer edition of BIDF will also host an impressive programme for dance professionals from across the world and features Outdoor Dance Collection 2021, a dance and outdoor arts industry programme of events which includes UK Dance Showcase and Dance & The Outdoors Symposium.
Find out more at bidf.co.uk.
