Dance Umbrella announces 2022 Festival programme

Dance Umbrella, London’s annual international contemporary dance festival, has announced the full programme for 2022. Bringing together the world’s most exciting international contemporary talent to stages across London, and online for audiences worldwide, this year’s programme has a particular focus on intersectional, diverse, innovative, international and national female dancemakers.

Artistic Director and Chief Executive Freddie Opoku-Addaie’s first full Dance Umbrella festival will take place from 7 – 23 October across the capital and via danceumbrella.co.uk. As well as returning to iconic dance venues, Dance Umbrella will be bringing the festival to the National Gallery, Brixton House and Studio 3 Arts in Barking for the first time.

Oona Doherty, photo Luca Truffarelli

Coming to London in October are eight UK premieres over 17 days in 12 locations. Award-winning choreographer Oona Doherty (Northern Ireland) makes her Sadler’s Wells debut, returning to Dance Umbrella after critically acclaimed productions Hard to Be Soft – A Belfast Prayer and Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus, with the UK premiere of her latest, large-scale work Navy Blue. Doherty’s films Hunter and The Devil also feature in this year’s digital programme. Italian performer, director and choreographer Chiara Bersani (Italy) brings her award-winning work Seeking Unicorns to the National Gallery for its London Premiere. Exploring the concept of the ‘Political Body’, Bersani’s latest work centres on the experience of the historically abused and misinterpreted unicorn.

Multi award-winning international artist, nora chipaumire (Zimbabwe/USA) makes her Dance Umbrella debut with the world premiere of ShebenDUB an audio-visual dub culture adventure. chipaumire will be joined by international artists including tyroneisaacstuart (UK), Yinka Esi Graves (UK/SP) and Marguerite Hemmings (US). You can also catch chipaumire’s film #PUNK online during the festival period.

Three international artists perform at new-to-the-festival venue Brixton House in Change Tempo, a specially curated mixed bill exploring themes of transformation, transmission and representation. Across two nights, audiences will have the chance to watch Joy Alpuerto Ritter‘s (Germany) BABAE, Linda Hayford‘s (France) Shapeshifting and Luiz de Abreu (Brazil) and Calixto Neto’s (Brazil / France) solo work O Samba do Crioulo Doido. Neto’s documentary O Samba do Crioulo Doido: Ruler and Compass is also featured in this year’s digital programme, providing fascinating insight into the making of the piece.

Opening this year’s festival are Georgia Tegou & Michalis Theophanous (Greece) with the UK premiere of new work Reverie, a piece that combines movement and visual art to conjure a fantasy-like world. Alleyne Dance (UK) and the local community in Lewisham are co-creating a brand new large-scale outdoor performance, Close to Home, which features an intergenerational cast of 200 – 400 performers, as part of Lewisham London Borough of Culture. This year’s touring production for family audiences is Dutch company de Stilte‘s Do-re-mi-ka-do, who create a multi-sensory world of colour, movement and sound, where play is encouraged and imagination knows no bounds.

Dance Umbrella’s Four by Four next generation international talent commissioning programme culminates with the world film premiere of Abby Z and the New Utility’s (USA) Radioactive Practice. Chosen by Stephen Petronio as his ‘choreographer of the future’, Abby Zbikowski’s film explores a full arsenal of physical possibilities to test its performers to their physical and mental limits. Rounding-off Dance Umbrella’s dance film programme is SAY: AF (And Friends), a collaboration between dance artists Sarah Golding and Yukiko Masui (SAY) and an exciting range of music artists.

In its second year as hybrid festival Dance Umbrella has again produced and selected a number of digital works for global and national audiences. Joining the programme of films, is Forging Paths, an online panel discussion with award-winning Candoco (UK) and Boy Blue (UK), chaired by artist, academic and dramaturg Dr ‘Funmi Adewole Elliott. Celebrating landmark anniversaries this year, the two companies come together to talk about how they forged their paths within the dance sector, in the UK and beyond.

From left to right: Saburo Teshigawara (photo Akihito Abe), Hetain Patel (photo Oliver Parker), Wendy Houstoun (photo Brian Slater)

Dive into some of the most exciting minds in contemporary choreography as Dance Umbrella’s Artistic Director Freddie Opoku-Addaie chats to guests in Choreographer’s Cut. Now in its third year, Saburo Teshigwara (Japan) who was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale this year; Wendy Houstoun (UK) and Hetain Patel (UK) will each select a dance work of their own to delve into.

With a strong dance / music collaboration strand to this year’s programme, Dance Umbrella launches its first-ever podcast series: Sound in Motion. Exploring the vital relationship between composer and artist, Dance Umbrella will be joined by Amy May, Mikey J Asante MBE, and Vincenzo Lamagna. Additionally, dance artists Julia Cheng (UK) and Qudus Onikeku (Nigeria) have been commissioned to write feature editorials for the festival.

Dance Umbrella’s Digital Programme can be accessed by purchasing the Digital Pass, which is Pay What You Can (minimum £5) and will give audiences exclusive access to the entire digital programme within this year’s festival. All content will be released on the first day of the 2022 festival (7 October) and will be available on demand until Monday 31 October.