Dance Enterprise Ideas Fund winners announced

Dance Enterprise Ideas Fund Winners 2017. Photo: Ben Stanley

Top row (left to right): Joe Garbett, Carolina Adewale, Lisa Hood, Jo Rhodes, Mars El Brogy, Sharon Davis, Tom Rowland-Rees, Jessica Wright, Morgann Runacre-Temple. Bottom Row (left to right): Rashmi Becker, Emma Houston, Clint Sinclair

Six fund winners and four in-kind support winners were announced at the Dance Enterprise Ideas Summit on Friday 31 March.

Bursaries totalling more than £20,000 were awarded to six outstanding dance creatives, with a further four projects offered in-kind support at the 2017 Dance Enterprise Ideas Summit, a day-long event on Friday 31 March, hosted by East London Dance at Stratford Circus Arts Centre.

The Dance Enterprise Ideas Summit is the second annual event offering artists, producers, venues and organisations from East London and beyond the opportunity to share and exchange enterprising ideas in dance.

Fund winners:

Rashmi Becker / Step Change Studios
Project: Step Change Studios
Awarded £4720 and in-kind support from One Dance UK to launch London’s first Dance Company dedicated to inclusive Latin and ballroom dance, including providing disabled and non-disabled people the chance to learn in an inclusive environment and to have opportunities to perform and compete. 
stepchangestudios.com

Sharon Davis / JazzMAD – Jazz Music And Dance Co.
Project: Untitled
Awarded £1440 to support research and workshop concepts for a dance production featuring authentic swing and jazz dancing in East London in 2018, and to produce a short film capturing the results of this process in order to promote authentic jazz dances.
jazzmad.co.uk | @jazzmadlondon

Mars El Brogy / Salah El Brogy Company
Project: Organic Entity
Awarded £3000 to support the rehearsal and production of a pilot event focused on a triple bill of new works by three dance artists working as a pop-up collective, individually exploring the topical subjects of mind, body and transcendence.
facebook.com/OrganicEntity | @melbrogy

Emma Houston / Emma Houston Dance Company
Project: Breaking & Vogue: The Purple Jigsaw
Awarded £1500 and in-kind support from One Dance UK to research the development of a piece of breaking and vogueing dance theatre work into an educational resource for young people at risk from isolation and mental health and sexuality and or identity issues.

Jo Rhodes
Project: Challenge 59
Awarded £5000 to create an educational resource to support a schools-based collaborative digital dance project bringing together dance, film, education and health sectors to help raise awareness of healthy living amongst children in East London.
@jo_rhodesdance

Tom Rowlands-Rees / Cinema Kpatakpata
Project: Boiled Heads
Awarded £5000 to begin building a grass roots platform for dance battles that elevates the artform with a promotional focus on the dancers’ personalities to ultimately bring both the professional and grassroots dancer community to a wider audience.
cinema-kpatakpata.com | raincrewuk.com@tomrrees | @clintsinclair

In-kind Support Winners

Carolina Adewale
Project: Where are the black dancers in classic ballet?
In-kind support offered by English National Ballet
The project looks to prepare and establish an online platform for the entire dance community, but especially black dancers from all around the world to access information about black practitioners and black audience engagement with classical ballet.

Lisa Hood / Avant Garde Dance Company
Project: Untitled
In-kind support offered by University of East London
The project looks to test technology and participation programme ideas in support of a new dance project exploring themes of social inequality, political and societal structures, and how they affect the values and interactions of different communities, in person and online.
avantgardedance.com | @AvantGardeDance

Joe Garbett / Joe Garbett Dance
Project: doubles – Ping Pong vs Dance
In-kind support offered by Studio Wayne McGregor and Redbridge Drama Centre
The project looks to research, develop and test a site specific dance theatre performance based around community concrete ping pong tables, involving bats, balls and four dancers, to encourage communities to come together to enjoy art, sport and healthy living.
joegarbett.yolasite.com | @joegarbettdance

Jessica Wright & Morgann Runacre-Temple / Jess and Morgs Films
Project: Digital Dance Resource Pack
In-kind support offered by English National Ballet
The project looks to create and develop an education resource for young people to make dance films, getting those both with and without prior dance engagement thinking creatively and using the language of dance to get inspired about filmmaking.
jessandmorgs.com | @jess_and_morgs

Supported by Foundation for FutureLondon, the Dance Enterprise Ideas Fund was established in 2016 to enable dance creatives to research, test and/or launch new artistic and entrepreneurial ideas. The Fund offers an award of up to £5,000 plus in-kind support from its supporting partners.

Dance Enterprise Ideas Fund Investing Partners:
Foundation for FutureLondon, English National Ballet, Sadler’s Wells, Dancers’ Career Development, Hackney Council & Discover Young Hackney, Redbridge Drama Centre, Theatre Royal Stratford East

Dance Enterprise Ideas Fund Supporting Partners:
One Dance UK, Rich Mix, Studio Wayne McGregor, University of East London

The 2017 Dance Enterprise Ideas Fund shortlist was: Carolina Adewale, Rashmi Becker (Step Change Studios), Poppy Burton-Morgan (Metta Theatre), Jorge Crecis (SQx / Jorge Crecis), Charlene Davies (Hoop Hop), Sharon Davis (JazzMAD – Jazz Music And Dance Co.), Eleesha Drennan (Eleesha Drennan Dance), Mars El Brogy (Salah El Brogy Company), Joe Garbett (Joe Garbett Dance), Trine Garrett & Camila França ([Foreign Affairs]), Charlie Lee George (Dark Island Dance), Maria da Luz Ghoumrassi (Da Luz Dance Company), Haseeb Chilly Hearn (Rain Crew), Lisa Hood (Avant Garde Dance Company), Kendra Horsburgh (BirdGang Dance Company), Emma Houston (Emma Houston Dance Company), Kwesi Johnson (The Cultural Assembly), Emily Labhart (Dancehall Origins), Mariana Lucia Marquez & Emma Zangs (Marquez&Zangs / Metaspeech), Jo Rhodes, Tom Rowlands-Rees (Cinema Kpatakpata) and Jessica Wright & Morgann Runacre-Temple (Jess and Morgs Films).