The programme for this year’s Let’s Dance International Frontiers (LDIF), the highly regarded annual Leicester-based dance festival noted for presenting African, Caribbean, and Latin American diaspora voices, was launched recently.
The theme for this year’s festival is ‘Reimagining Tomorrow: New Work, Afrofuturism and Technology,’ something of a mouthful, but that captures the fact that the festival will present an array of new work from the UK, as well as Barbados, Cameroon, Cuba, Gabon, Jamaica, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, Martinique, Uganda, and the USA.
Produced by Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage, it opens as always on April 29, International Dance Day, when Tanzanian dancer and artist, Samwel Japhet will present his autobiographical work Becoming: From the Streets to Now.
Over the years, LDIF has introduced many new choreographers to UK audiences. Perhaps best known now is Kyle Abraham, who, then unknown in Britain, brought his own company A.I.M. and his impressive work, Pavement, in 2015. Abraham has since made work for The Royal Ballet and New York City Ballet and is now much in demand. Elsewhere, Germaine Acogny from Senegal would go on to perform at Sadler’s Wells, Haitian choreographer Jeanguy Saintus created work for Phoenix Dance. Last year, all who saw it could not help but be very impressed by New York’s Ballet Hispanico and CARMEN.maquia.
This year’s headline visitors at the Curve are the New York-based Shamel Pitts|TRIBE, who will close the festival with Marks of RED, another UK premiere. The multi-disciplinary piece by company founder, dancer and choreographer Shamel Pitts is firmly anchored in the distinctive Gaga movement style in which he was trained. Also drawing inspiration from sumo wrestling, butoh, and techno music, the work is described as an “Afrofuturist meditation on Black embodiment.”
Pitts will also be presenting a masterclass, with others by Jamal Callender, Sharon Watson and Javier Torres.
Another UK premiere sees Martinique’s Compagnie Kaméléonite take the stage at Leicester Cathedral with Océan Brun, a duet that reflects on the impact of environmental change, drawing inspiration from the coastlines of Guadeloupe and Martinique.
New dance works will be presented on May 1 in New Work: Solos and Duets, the inaugural edition of a platform which presents the developing works of emerging artists. Signatures and the Black British Dance Platform, two other popular showcases of new work by dance practitioners from the UK and abroad also return on May 6 at the Curve.
Alongside the stage performances is a programme of Dance Dialogue seminars and the Annual Conference (May 5), in which this year’s speakers include Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Shamel Pitts, Julie Felix and Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp CBE.
Artistic Director and CEO of Serendipity, Pawlet Brookes says “I’m very excited for this year’s LDIF; we have some thrilling live performances which I think will entertain as much as challenge our ever-growing audiences. There are dozens of opportunities for festival attendees to access masterclasses, workshops, and discussions run by experienced professionals. Every year these are designed to appeal to dance and theatre practitioners and professionals as well as students and newcomers.”
For full details of what’s on at LDIF 26, visit www.serendipity-uk.com.