Previous education projects
Retina’s education projects range from one-off workshops to month long choreographic residencies. Below are just a few examples of some of the projects that Retina has led in the last few years.
Retina Springs was Retina’s first Nottingham based Easter dance festival. This participatory event offered the opportunity for young, old, amateur and professional dancers to work with the Retina company for two weeks to create a performance work. The aim of the festival was to bring dancers together from different abilities and experiences to engage in a dance project that encourages embodiment of Retina’s movement style as well as an exploration of own ideas. It was so successful that it is becoming a yearly event and Retina Springs 2008 is already in the diary.
PAGE1 is a unique professional training project for recent contemporary dance graduates. This Arts Council England East Midlands funded project enabled six graduates selected from audition to develop their creative, performance and teaching skills. After training and creating, the group taught workshops in the East Midlands under the guidance of Retina and performed their exhilarating work in ten regional venues with astounding success.
Iudanza University students in Venezuela enjoyed a course of technique and choreography with Filip and Natalie. Using Laban Movement Analysis as a tool for movement training and choreography, they focussed the course on movement efficiency and choreographic devices as well as Filip creating a new work for the students to perform.
ConneXion and X:SitE were projects specifically tailored to regional needs in Yorkshire and the South East supported by Regional Arts Lottery Programme funding. These projects were designed to provide an opportunity for local dancers to perform alongside Retina. Connecting students, professional dancers and dance enthusiasts from across the regions, Retina created dance works to be performed by the participants. These projects encouraged participants to explore their movement potential, create material and perform in a local theatre.
Romeo and Juliet was a performance project for students at Hoger Institut voor Dans in Lier, Belgium. Filip created the work on 18 advanced students for a performance with the Antwerp Philharmonic orchestra at The Singel, Antwerp.
Triggered was a commission from the South Bank Centre London. In collaboration with composer Duncan Chapman, Filip created a dance and live music performance installation with Gamelan instruments and ultrasound beams triggered by movement. Workshops were also offered throughout the production period on the ballroom floor at the South Bank Centre and were attended by a range of people from young children to mature adults, all exploring the possibilities of dancing and creating sound simultaneously.
Coming Of Age for Akademi was created in 2000. An extensive and elaborate site specific performance event in and around the South Bank Centre, Filip choreographed a section of this work for Kathak dancers, which led to further work in India in 2002.
Triplicity was created for Blitz at the South Bank Centre. Initiated with three separate groups in England, Ireland and Belgium, each creating and performing their own site specific works, the project culminated in bringing 50 young people together for sharing, learning and creating material for a performance in the ballroom of the South Bank Centre. A truly integrative project with live music from the Jules Maxwell Project.
