• You Should Be Dancing. Photo: Gregory Lorenzutti.
    You Should Be Dancing. Photo: Gregory Lorenzutti.
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Brisbane Festival offers chances to dance

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Brisbane Festival has a diverse range of dance events on offer this year.

One of the big drawcards for dance lovers will be Ballet Preljocaj’s Snow White. With costumes by Jean Paul Gaultier, choreographer Angelin Preljocaj Snow White is based on imagery from the original Brothers Grimm fairytale of 1812. It's set around the innocence of a character with ‘skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony’, pitted against the envy, deceit and obsession of her stepmother Queen. Snow White plays QPAC 2-11 September.

If you’re a Pharrell Williams fan, you’ll want to check out Rules of the Game, created by choreographer Jonah Bokaer in partnership with visual artist Daniel Arsham and Pharrell Williams! A multidisciplinary work for eight dancers, featuring dance, video and sculpture, it features Williams’s first ever orchestra score for theatre or dance.
Rules of the Game plays the Brisbane Powerhouse Theatre 14-17 September.

Dancenorth’s Rainbow Vomit is an immersive work designed for kids of all ages. It involves 7.6 kilometres of UV rope, choreography and ‘fireworks glasses’ - magical glasses made from holographic diffraction film, which refract light and generate zillions of rainbows. You can read more about Rainbow Vomit here: www.danceaustralia.com.au/news/dancenorth-stretches-in-new-directions. Rainbow Vomit plays Judith Wright Centre, 21-24 September.

There will be several opportunities for audience participation at this year’s Brisbane Festival. The first of these is a work called Galaxy Stomp. A participatory performance, the work is described as, “A little bit yoga, a little bit Jane Fonda, and a lot dirty discotheque.” Audience members are advised to wear something stretchy and no dance or yoga skills are required. Galaxy Stomp plays Theatre Republic, QUT Creative Industries, 13-17 September.

50/50 is also a participatory performance class on Lindy hop. Through conversations and demonstrations, audience members learn the basic footwork before the space becomes a dance hall for everyone to show their best swing moves. Singapore artist Loo Zihan and his collaborators have been Lindy hopping for more than a decade. 50/50 started with an exploration of their sexual and cultural identities in relation to this dance and the Lindy hop community’s definition of authenticity. 50/50 is above all fun, but also challenges preconceived notions of what, why and how we move. 50/50 plays the Judith Wright Centre 15-17 September.

There are more opportunities to get your dance on at “You Should be Dancing”, eight nights of interactive dance experience, from 3-11 September. Presented at a new pop-up venue in Queens Park, “You Should be Dancing” is a series of free social dance nights for everyone, featuring a different style each night. Styles include polka, swing and jive, boot scoot, dance hall, Bollywood, Latin and waltz. 

For more info about all these events and more check out the Brisbane Festival website.

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