LEAP 2010 announces second half programme of year of dance
The second half of Merseyside Dance Initiative's year of dance events in celebration of eighteen years of the LEAP Contemporary Dance Festival has been announced with a range of events across Merseyside between July and December.
Highlights include Chicago-based Joel Hall Dancers with an evening of works including In the Shadow of Nina Simone and El Gato Negro, former Riverdance star Colin Dunne and New York-based Kyle Abraham's mix of contemporary dance, ballet and hip hop as part of the ManMade triple bill with choreographer Gary Clarke and Darren Suarez for the Homotopia festival.
The programme also includes Club Fisk from Denmark with their comic piece Forestillinger, Phoenix Dance Theatre's brand new show Declarations, “RUNWAY” - The Justice Vogue Ball—a fantastical showcase of high fashion, performance and dance featuring some of Europe’s finest Voguers, Whackers, and House-Dancers—and a collaboration with DaDaFest International10 and Homotopia for Guillermo Gomez Pena and Roberto Sifuentes’s politically-charged Corpo Illicito.
More information about events and venues can be found at the festival's web site www.leap2010.co.uk.
Bicycle Ballet participants wanted
Manchester International Arts is looking for 80 volunteers to take part in Bicycle Ballet—a 30-minute dance piece performed on bicycles—which will be performed as part of Manchester's Urban Moves festival next month.
The participants will need a bike and a certain level of cycling proficiency but it is open to all ages, it is free to take part and no dance experience is necessary. To register or to find more information, see www.bicycleballet.co.uk or www.urbanmovesfestival.co.uk, e-mail [email protected] or call 0161 232 7179.
Urban Moves International Dance Festival will take place between 23 and 25 July in Manchester with a programme of open-air dance performances including performances in a shop window, abseiling down a wall and starring roles for a JCB as well as the Bicycle Ballet on the last day.
Gillian Taylforth replaces Bernie Nolan in Mum
It has been announced that former Eastenders, Footballers' Wives and The Bill star Gillian Taylforth will replace Bernie Nolan on the tour of Mum's The Word, which will be at Manchester's Palace Theatre next month.
Taylforth will join fellow ex-soap stars Tracy Shaw and Sally Ann Matthews, both former residents of Coronation Street, in this comedy created by six Canadian actresses in which five women tell five different stories about motherhood. Nolan withdrew from the show for health reasons. The show will be at the Palace from 8 to 10 July.
NW productions
The stage version of Victoria Wood's Dinnerladies, based on her TV comedy show and starring two of the original TV cast Andrew Dunn and Sue Devaney, will be at Manchester's Palace Theatre from 21 to 26 June.
Illyria comes to Rose Theatre in Ormskirk with its open-air production of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare on Sunday 27 June.
The 1972 film The Harder They Come is brought to the stage complete with the songs of Jimmy Cliff by the film's writer and director Perry Henzell with a live reggae band at The Lowry in Salford from 22 to 26 June.
Also at The Lowry from 22 to 26 June, Britain’s Got Bhangra charts the rise of British Bhangra music from the sequin-clad 80s through to the RnB fusion of the current charts.
The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester again revives Brandon Thomas's classic farce Charley's Aunt directed by Braham Murray and running from 22 June to 7 August.
Slung Low's interactive installation Small Worlds will be at Liverpool Playhouse from 22 to 26 June.
Mike Livesley plays Vivian Stanshall in a recreation of his 1978 LP Sir Henry at Rawlinson End at Unity Theatre in Liverpool on 22 and 23 June.
London Classics's production of The Caretaker by Harold Pinter will be at Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal on 22 June.
In Caroline Mentiplay's Toxing It at The Lowry from 24 to 26 June, Leslie goes undercover to investigate the New You Cosmetic Surgery Clinic but gets more than she bargained for.
A children's TV favourite comes to New Brighton's Floral Pavilion in Peppa Pig's Party on 26 and 27 June.
Penguin from Long Nose Puppets at The Lowry on 27 June is for ages 3 to 7 and features songs by Tom Gray of Gomez. Ben is delighted when he opens his present and finds a penguin inside. “Hello, Penguin!” says Ben. Penguin says nothing. What can Ben do to make Penguin speak?