Dance Umbrella 2023, Dance Umbrella 2023, London’s annual international dance festival is taking place between 6 – 31 October in venues across the capital and beyond.
This year the programme of live and hybrid performances showcases the very best of hip hop culture, performance art, audio-visual experiences and operetta from artists originating from Cameroon, Greece, South Africa, Taiwan and Croydon.
Live programme includes:
- Change Tempo returns for 2023 to introduce London to two international artists whose transformational works blur the line between dance and visual art, challenging cultural biases. The double bill features SU PinWen’s performance art piece Girl’s Notes and Alexandre Fandard’s Comme un symbole at The Place (6 – 7 October)
- London Battle curated by Jade Hackett will take over Somerset House’s iconic open-air courtyard for a day packed with showcases, workshops, cyphers, live DJs and a big outdoor party. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip hop culture and with Breaking set to be the highlight of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Dance Umbrella and Somerset House are bringing together some of the most exciting talent from the four corners of London to go head-to-head across a diverse range of styles (7 October)
- Athens-based Ioanna Paraskevopoulou brings MOS to the Barbican. Witness the stage transform into a cinematic soundscape, as two performers create a captivating audio-visual experience. Using everyday objects: umbrellas, plungers, and of course, coconut shells, MOS evokes the movie sounds made by expert foley artists for film and TV (11 – 14 October)
- Award-winning Cameroonian-Finnish choreographer and artistic director Sonya Lindfors presents ONE DROP at Battersea Arts Centre, a speculative summoning, a decolonial dream, an autopsy of the Western stage, and an operetta (19-20 October)
- For children aged 3-5 years, Skydiver by Xenia Aidonopoulou will tour venues around London on the Orbital Touring Network, which celebrates its 10th year. Prepare to soar through the fluffy clouds where flocks of birds and butterflies flutter. Explore the dream-like world that waits above us, in this multi-sensory dance experience for families (21 – 29 October)
- Get ready to experience a collision of analogue and digital worlds as hip hop movement architects BirdGang Ltd bring together an intergenerational cast from the communities of Croydon for Family (dys)Function at Stanley Arts (21 October)
- Intoxicating expression and pulsating rhythms combine as the award-winning South African dance company Via Katlehong returns to Dance Umbrella, to debut on the Sadler’s Wells stage with Via Injabulo (27 – 28 October)
Digital programme includes:
- Dance films from Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, Trajal Harrell, Vincenzo Lamagna & Danilo Moroni, and SU PinWen
- Choreographer’s Cut with Trajal Harrell: Now in its fourth year, this edition of Choreographer’s Cut sees Harrell selecting his 2019 work Dancer of the Year to discuss exclusively for Dance Umbrella audiences
- Stopgap Dance Company’s Dance Tapes: a series of choreographies of speech and sound created by Disabled artists from the UK, Japan, and Zimbabwe. These artists are Kazuyo Morita, who presents On The Way To My Body and Shyne Phiri with Within My Own Bones
