Lakeside international theatre and dance festival
3 - 12 JUNE 2008
This year the festival welcomed Dynamo Theatre Company from Québec, Det Lille Turnéteater from Denmark, Complete productions from Scotland and the East Midlands Children's Theatre Consortium.
A word from Shona about the 2008 Lakeside International Children's Theatre and Dance Festival
Now that it's over, it's really very hard to pick out highlights because it felt like one big highlight from beginning to end! However, I'll do my best...
Quebecois company Dynamo made their first visit to Lakeside this year with a great piece of acrobatic theatre - Thrice Upon a Time… The company excel in this kind of very physical performance, and I'm hoping to see their new work at in Montréal in November. Lots of you told me how much you’d enjoyed this piece, how you’d liked the use of live music as part of the performance, and how you even loved the ‘scary bits’ when the lad, Lonely-girl and Monkey were making their way deep into the crevice to find the wicked witch’s heart.
Thrice Upon a Time... and Monkey, one of the cast cutting the festival cake at the launch on 3 June
Lots of positive comments too from families with young children who came to Danish company Det Lille Turné Teater’s Dorthe’s Heart in the theatre at the weekend – everyone liked the butterflies in the tummy projection!
Dorthe’s Heart and the audience at the Sunday 4pm showing
However, the biggest audience vote over the weekend was for Complete Productions’ gentle story of Moussa’s Castle which no-one wanted to end.
Moussa's Castle and the audience at the Saturday 3pm showing
Meanwhile, outside in the park over the weekend, in spite of a cooler and even drizzly day on the Saturday you all seemed to have a great time. More of you than ever visited the terrific new structure by Architects of Air – we were thrilled to have secured the first public outing in the UK for Amococo - and it was greeted with sheer delight and continued wonder at just how Alan Parkinson can create such intense colours without the use of any electric lighting! On the Sunday, over 1300 of you visited Amococo making it a record for the number of visitors to that single attraction on one day at our Children’s Festival.
Families explore Amococo
But you also loved the activities – most particularly the paper flower making. Sarah Palmer and her trusty volunteer assistants made over 800 of those amazing flowers over the weekend. On the Sunday some of you were even using them as parasols – brilliant!
Paper Flowers
Paper Flowers all round!
And of course, our festival simply wouldn’t be a festival without Mark Evans leading on the drumming workshops – and who could forget that Sunday evening unexpected addition to the programme when Lyrical Lipz did a bit of beat boxing alongside Mark’s drumming.
Drumming with Mark Evans
Drumming with Mark Evans
Other Activities Included:
Rangoli with Manushi Story Telling with Tell Woman
Compost - Mentis - A compost heap that comes to life!
Children watch Compost - Mentis
Balloonatics - a crack balloon commando team who turned people into balloon helicopters!
Face Painting
Spider man, spider man, does what ever a spider man can!
Dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner!
Dance performances and workshops at the Dance4 Stamping Ground stage
All Play perform on the Dance4 Stamping Ground Stage
The crowd watch All Play perform
Excerpts from the stage adaptation of Horrible Histories
And of course...lots of ice-cream eating!
In week 2, very excitingly, it was the turn of our commissioned work - Telling Tales – to take to the stage. Featuring two duets by Hélène Blackburn of Cas Public (Montréal), and one duet plus a finale by Enrique Cabrera of Aracaladanza (Madrid), this was the first time that we’d programmed something made by 6 East Midlands dancers. We were particularly delighted when visiting Director Remi Boucher of Les Coups de Théâtre asked about the availability of this piece to be part of his 2008 Festival in Montréal!
Telling Tales is on tour from 3 June - 7 July, click here for more details and to view a daily blog to keep you updated with the progress of the tour.
FESTIVAL EXHIBITION
We also had a festival exhibition in the Wallner Gallery showing works by 20 primary schools in Nottingham City. The works were inspired by the Theatres of Life exhibition which was on display at the Djanogly Art Gallery between 12 April and 1 June. Grateful thanks to Nottingham City’s Children’s Services, with whom Lakeside has worked in partnership to develop this exhibition.
Thank you for coming, and for supporting this year’s event. I hope we’ll be seeing you at some of our Sunday Best theatre sessions, and our Christmas Production which will shortly be announced.
In the meantime if you’d like to add any of your comments to our Festival page, please email them to: debs.storey@nottingham.ac.uk
Shona (Powell)
Director
