International Dance Festival Birmingham - Collective Memory

I can't quite believe that, in the midst of the biggest dance event to hit Birmingham ever, I haven't written about it on this blog. I'm ashamed. No really I am. My excuse? I'm manically busy helping to organise parts of the festival, as part of my role at DanceXchange. Well, with 9 performances at the Patrick Centre over the next week to manage that's not going to change anytime soon so I thought I'd try to pull together all the other good things that people are writing and recording in a weak attempt at something resembling the 'collective memory' things that CiB has done a few of.

So, let's start with the festival blog, updated fairly frequently with various news and features.

Fiona Ferguson is blogging the festival for Birmingham Post here

Here's some video from the amazing Watch this Space

More bits from Watch this Space:
Review here
Some more Youtube footage here and here
Cool pic here
Nice review/comment piece on the piece by Article 19 here
Slightly misunderstanding the concept of the festival but taking some nice pics here

Then there's been a few photos appearing from the On Display performances. Find them here, here, here, here and here.
Great series of photos on Flickr from WelshKaren here

There's a forum for comments on any shows here which also includes reviews on many of the shows, including Saburo Teshigawara, Bare Bones, Cas Public and Akram Khan...

What's on Stage is reviewing some shows...
As is Birmingham Mail...

I'll update this post, or add others on a fairly regular basis...

Get out there and see some dance people!

Coming up...

So, tonight and tomorrow at the Birmingham Hippodrome you can find Nederlands Dans Theater 1 - probably the consistently best contemporary dance company in the world and well worth seeing... As I've said before in this very blog, the very least you get with NDT is beautiful dancing and usually much more besides too...

Then from tomorrow (Wed 9 April) to Saturday (12 April) get down to the Birmingham Rep for Charlie Dark's show 'Have Box Will Travel' at the Door. For those who aren't aware of him, Charlie is a poet, producer, DJ and musician and a seriously nice and inspirational guy. He was one third of the terrific (and very underrated) Attica Blues, does some great work as a poet and producer both performing and working with young people, and, as a DJ, runs a series of great nights including Blacktronica and 'My Dad's a DJ and my Mum is too' (the latter being a sort of nightclub meets playgroup fusion where parents take to the decks and the mic). Anyway, this new one-man show sees him travelling on a personal journey through his involvement in music. From his early dreams of DJ stardom in his South London bedroom, it chart's Charlie's musical highs and lows in a heartwarming and touching show. I've seen bits of it and have worked with Charlie on a number of occasions and can thoroughly recommend this. Check out the link here for a podcast of some of the tracks which inspired the show and a flavour of what to expect.


Attend Have Box Will Travel on Saturday and you also get a ticket to a work-in-progress preview of '81632' by Decypher Collective. The Decypher collective are a group of young grime MCs from Birmingham who have been working with Punch and Charlie Dark for a year or so now, developing their skills as MCs, poets and wordsmiths. 81632 is the story of a missing phone, a pirate radio station and a magic number that unlocks the key as five MCs go head-to-head in a fierce lyrical battle. The show starts at 10pm and is £2 for those who haven't attended Have Box...

That's it for now...more soon...

Broken Beat in Brum

So, since the last post I've been reflecting on some of the little music scenes which sometimes dip under the radar for the wider city. There are loads and I don't think for a minute I'm the best placed to comment on most of them but one that does deserve some highlighting is the city's broken beat scene.

Now, I'm no expert on broken beat. I like listening to it and I've been to quite a few events but there are a lot of people who've been involved in this scene for years - if that's you then please point out any errors or omissions I've made in the comments...ta!

Anyway, whilst the scene is dominated by artists and labels from West London, Birmingham has always had a particular and important place in the genre. There are a number of Birmingham artists, DJs and promoters who are major players nationally and have been making things happen in Birmingham for a long time now including Colonel Red, Shaun Cope and E Double D. The don of broken beat in the city though must be Bruce Q who promotes the Liquid Fusion nights, which are most people's experience of the genre in Birmingham. I first encountered Liquid Fusion at the Living Room on Broad Street, where it quickly became the place to be on Sunday nights and finish the weekend in style. These Sunday night sessions then moved to Zinc, before ending up at Poppy Red in the Arcadian, where you can now find them every week from 10 till 2. I've not been down to the Poppy Red incarnation yet but I'm told they're as positive, welcoming and downright funky as they always were. Then there's Co-Op - the legendary night which started at Plastic People in Shoreditch, London and was, for a while, the only place you could find this sort of music. Well, now it's come out of the capital and, on the first Saturday of every month, you'll find it at Concrete in the Jewellery Quarter. In addition to these two biggies, there's a plethora of other nights at venues across the city (use the comments to tell me about the one's I've missed people) and nights such as the Foundation events at the Yardbird which regularly play this sort of music. [Update - and thanks to Jon for flagging the fact that I'd omitted the Jigsaw music nights...no longer running but one of the nights which championed broken beat.]

Partly this love of jazzy, soulful, syncopated music in the city is due to Birmingham's rich history of a style of dance usually referred to as 'authentic jazz dance' or 'street jazz'. Characterised by fast flowing footwork, spins and drops to the floor it's a relatively little known form of dance but is seldom forgotten once you've seen it. You can find some examples here, here, here and here and get some flavour of what it looks like. It's a style which has been around for a long time though in its various incarnations, and has continued to develop and be re-invented. It's related to swing dance, Nothern Soul, tap, bboying and pretty much every other footwork based dance style. Check out this footage from the Nicholas Brothers' ridiculously good tap routine in the movie Stormy Weather for one influence, and this from a late seventies disco dancing tournament for later developments (why don't we have this sort of stuff on tv anymore!?). This is a tiny tiny scratch of the surface of these dance styles though and with a bit of research you can find loads more...

You'll see this sort of dancing at most of the nights I've mentioned above, along with the odd bboy and street dancer thrown in...and from a dance point of view it's really interesting to see the mixture of footwork-based dance styles. I'm told that back in the day the battles between jazz dancers trading moves were as combative, posturing and simmering as bboy battles sometimes are today. It seems to be a more mellow scene now though, perhaps because some of the stalwarts of the scene are too old and sensible to get het up about things nowadays. Anyway, it's a great and little recognised form of dance which should be celebrated, and we're lucky to have so many great proponents of it on our doorsteps (some of whom are mentioned above). I've wanted to do something more formal around this style of dance for a while and at some point still hope to make this happen...but until then, get along to one of these broken beat nights to enjoy the music and the moves...

We should talk about last night...

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath for the rather marvellous Efterklang with my lovely wife and our lovely friend. And, as I oooh-ed and aaah-ed at the beautiful harmony, complex rhythms, multitude of instruments and downright prettiness of the music I got to thinking that events like this are one of the reasons I love Birmingham. People like the wonderful Capsule ladies just get on with bringing amazing events to the city with no great fanfare or arrogance or pretension. They're there to collect your money and stamp your hand when you arrive and they're there to whoop and cheer along with the rest of you when the gig starts. They just love the artform (I feel that sentence needs the word 'man' at the end...).

They're not the only ones and I'm scared to list all the great people doing stuff in Birmingham for fear of missing lots of people out but there are countless promoters, artists, venues, designers, arts organisations, festivals, writers and passionate fans out there making the city a great place to be creative. Birmingham's not perfect (but then nowhere is) but the wealth of people who are now making things happen in the city, without waiting for someone to come and give them some money to do things, is really encouraging. And from a purely selfish point of view I kind of like the fact that people from other cities sometimes sneer or look down at Birmingham because we can just have that smug knowledge that we know something they don't know. And if you get the chance to show them what's actually happening here they tend to be so surprised that they become evangelists for our city.

Other moments of revelation last night included catching up with Stef for the first time in a while and meeting Pete Ashton (who thought I was shorter than he'd imagined) and Russ L (who thought I was less obviously Scottish than he'd imagined - I do apologise. I feel I've disappointed you both with my shortness and lack of a Caledonian brogue, tartan and/or bagpipes...). They had some encouraging things to say about the blog which was nice as I had been having a slight crisis of confidence and been considering whether to carry on after my first 'upsetting someone I didn't mean to upset which was all a bit upsetting' moment and the odd sarky comment from elsewhere. Anyway, it was nice to know that there is a point. I also encouraged Pete to act on his idea of the blogging academy as I do feel somewhat in need of help with things like integrating my twitter (I don't really even understand what that means. I just picked a fancy term at random. It does sound vaguely medical though....). I also mentioned that I actually live in Shrewsbury, a revelation which, I fear, may well see me shunned if I make the next Birmingham Bloggers meeting as an interloping Salopian. "Coming in here...writing our blogs. I blame globalisation."

That's all for now. I'm conscious I haven't written about dance specifically for a while. Sorry about that. I will soon, I promise. As soon as I have something interesting to say. OK...maybe not so soon then...

The cultural consumption of the cabinet...

As you'll no doubt have noticed...the resolution about blogging more frequently isn't quite holding fast...I blame the International Dance Festival Birmingham, for which I am organising several of the performances as part of my role at DanceXchange.

Anyway, I made some flippant comment yesterday on a Guardian blog post by Luke Jennings about new funding for dance education. Me and Luke then had a bit of a debate about exactly what we should expect from our government ministers which I found really interesting. Basically, Luke's view is that, as the highest funded funded dance organisation in the UK, ministers should regularly visit the Royal Opera House. His assertion was that, as they hadn't attended then they weren't interested in dance. I put forward the view that you could be interested in dance without attending the ROH.

All of this raised more general questions for me about what a cabinet minister's role really is. To be an advocate for their portfolio area? Certainly. To have some experience of the area they are covering? Probably. Passion for all areas of the portfolio? Extensive knowledge of them? I think this is desirable at best and we'd be naive to expect this of our ministers.

Take David Lammy as a recent example. I heard David speak, and spoke to him personally, on a number of occasions about the arts. He always spoke very eloquently and passionately about the value of the arts in their own right but also of the transformative nature of participation in the arts, particularly for young people, and would often reference his own past as a choral scholar. He was a really good advocate and the most high-profile culture minister we've had for a long while. And for me these were his most important qualities. I wouldn't expect him to have extensive knowledge of constructivist sculpture, neo-classical architecture, the laws of the Scottish sport shinty, modern museum collection management techniques, library acquisition policies, grime music, contemporary jewellery-making practice and, indeed, classical ballet. As long as he can advocate for the importance of them to society and for their continued support, and can support the Arts Council and other bodies to employ the necessary experts that they need to assess the quality of the work and fund its continued development then what more can we expect? That's just good management isn't it - realising that you can't know everything but you can employ those who know about a particular area and support them to make the decisions they need to make? That's why we have civil servants.

Of course I want our culture ministers to have a passion for sport, or the arts, or museums or another area of the portfolio and to advocate for all of them. I don't, however, expect them to be equally passionate about all areas of the arts and if they'd rather visit an art gallery or a gig than watch Swan Lake in Covent Garden then that's fine by me.

About me...

My blog won't let me have a bio over 1200 characters. That's rubbish. I've done far to many things to fit it into 1200 characters. That's it - I'm going to move to a wordpress blog soonish...in the meantime though I just thought I would post my bio here and just link to it in my 'about me' section.

Wechtie is Paul Burns and vice versa. In simple terms, it's the trading name for Paul's freelance work. That's me. I'm going to write in first person. I like it better that way.

So, I have an arts background covering a range of artforms, but I first trained in Visual Arts and Music. After graduating (in History of Art from Manchester University) I worked in the book trade, as a professional classical vocalist, and in local authority arts development. I went on to work for Arts Council England, West Midlands for 4 years, in the Visual Arts and Policy departments, and latterly as a Policy and Resources Officer with responsibility for Arts and Regeneration activity.

In 2003 I moved onto Punch - an arts organisation in Birmingham who I'd got to know whilst at ACE - where I held the position of General Manager.

During my time at Punch, I did lots of interesting stuff. I developed and produced a number of projects including the two-year What is Urban programme, Urban Tribes (a dance, music, film and theatre piece for middle-scale venues), Imperceptible (an artist's moving image project), a PR and Marketing service and, in 2005, DJs for Life - an international DJ conference, the first of its type in Europe, featuring over 40 artists. I also managed a huge range of education work in a wide range of education settings including primary and secondary schools, youth centres, pupil referral units and arts venues.

It was during this period that I also became seriously interested in contemporary dance. I started to see lots of shows, learn about the artform and started this blog. Last year I even married a contemporary dancer, just to prove how interested I really was.

On leaving Punch in 2006, I worked as the national Marketing and Communications Manager for Arts Award - a new national accredited qualification for young people.

During this period, I also began to develop my freelance work, under the name Wechtie (it's a Scottish thing). Then in 2007 I started work on Wechtie full-time.

Since setting up Wechtie I have worked with a range of clients including major national schemes, the funding system, arts organisations and a number of individual artists, focusing on dance and music. I also write about dance and music and have been lucky enough to have had my reviews and criticism published in various publications, including the Independent newspaper and a number of specialist publications. I have particular experience in producing, programming, project management and artist development.

In November 2007 I began a temporary contract managing the programme at the Patrick Centre at Birmingham Hippodrome for DanceXchange, the National Dance Agency for Birmingham and the West Midlands.

In my Wechtie guise I also continue to manage and produce for a number of Birmingham based dance artists, including Laura Dredger, Donald Edwards and Mickael 'Marso' Riviere.

In between all these bits and bobs I'm a national nominator and assessor for the BBC's Fame Academy Urban Music Bursary and I'm a board member of Belmont Arts Centre in Shrewsbury.

Blogging....

So, I've had this blog for a little while now and I'm having a bit of a think about refining what I'm doing...

First a little history - When I started writing this, it was largely a way of reminding myself what I thought of dance performances I had seen. I was completely new to blogging and was pretty unaware of the many other creative blogs out there. Then the odd person noticed it was here and there was a little bit of interest. It's strange how you think more about things you write when you know people actually read it and, whilst I'd always worked to the 'don't write anything you wouldn't say to their faces' theory of critical writing, the odd comment did get me thinking. Luckily, at this point I happened to have lunch with Stef, one of Birmingham's many blogging gurus. After some useful advice from him I paid a little more attention to who else was writing blogs in the West Midlands and in my artform. Whilst there seems to be relatively few UK dance blogs, with the notable exception of Article19 which is a blog and quite a lot more besides, I discovered the incredible world that is Birmingham blogland. Blogs such as Created in Birmingham, Birmingham - it's not sh*t, D'Log, Podnosh, Russ L and Stef's (and many, many more) are an incredibly valuable resources which have certainly replaced all traditional media for me, in terms of discovering the latest creative news, as the Birmingham Post's new website seems to acknowledge.


For me, the best thing about the above blogs, and many others which I've failed to mention I'm sure, is that they use the form to its best effect. I also read the Guardian's Arts Blogs most days and, whilst they often initiate interesting debates, they are frequently disappointing in that they regularly consist of ill-considered, badly constructed or just plain inane short opinion pieces by the Guardian's stable of critics. Articles regularly have content like:
"So, I was listening to Nirvana's Nevermind album last night and I thought "wow, this is a really good album!". It's amazing to think that it came out 17 years ago isn't it? What do you all think?".
That's really not an exaggeration. In contrast, there is a wealth of considered and eloquent journalism going on in these Birmingham blogs. I don't know any of their authors (well, I don't think I do) apart from Stef but their knowledge of the city and it's cultural landscape is fantastic. It also seems to be a genuine network, with signposting to each others blogs, helpful tips for newbies like me and a real sense that these people have a real passion for culture in Birmingham.

So, anyway, I got to thinking about my own humble efforts, and have made some blog resolutions:

1. I will write more regularly - at least once a week
2. The focus of my blog will be dance (there's not a lot of writing about dance so I think it's good to keep that focus)
3. I will, however, also write more generally about the arts particularly in areas I feel qualified to write about (note to self - do a proper 'about me' page so other people know what your qualified to talk about too)
4. I will mainly write opinion pieces and criticism, plus some dance news (as I think people find that useful)
5. I will make a concerted effort to understand the technology a bit more (I've only just worked out what an RSS feed is...I know...I'm ashamed...)
6. Actually, maybe one of these should be 'I will try to persuade one of the more experienced Birmingham bloggers to start a 'blogging hints, tips, advice and protocol' blog'

And that's it. Hopefully I can stick to these resolutions.