About the Artist 

 

Linden Dance Company is a Birmingham-based professional dance company led by Christopher Radford and Sara Macqueen. The company creates bold, visually arresting performances that combines exceptional physicality, striking design and emotionally accessible storytelling. Blending Contemporary and Afro-fusion dance, Linden’s work explores themes including identity, belonging, connection and hope, creating accessible experiences for audiences in theatres, festivals, schools, public spaces and unusual settings.

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Workshop Description

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Morning

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Start the day with a high-energy, physical class rooted in musicality and expression. The class will explore dynamic phrase work, grounded movement, rhythm and full-bodied physicality, drawing on Linden’s Afro-Contemporary dance style.The class will be challenging but open and supportive, creating a positive studio atmosphere where dancers can take risks, push their physicality and enjoy moving together

We will then move on to phrase work and rep from Linden’s new outdoor show, Beautiful Future.

Expect to move with power, freedom and intention, working through shifts in texture, rhythm, weight and dynamics. The focus will be on finding individuality within the material and allowing performance and expression to sit alongside technical detail.

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Afternoon

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We will move into a creative exploration based around our new work, Beautiful Future.

Beautiful Future is Linden Dance Company’s new outdoor dance, live music and installation work: a raised sundial world that transforms public space into a stage for extraordinary physical performance.

 

We will explore use of the voice, creating voice loops to evoke movement, and explore how we can shape movement from voice and words. There will be time to delve into the themes and manifest them as expressive movement. We will also challenge the balance between abstraction and literal story telling within this.