The latest from Rosie Kay Dance Company is The Great Train Dance.

On 23 July 2011, The Great Train Dance will transform the Severn Valley Railway into a magical family experience with a puzzle to solve. With dancing at each station and in the train itself by a host of bizarre characters, this totally unique work will reveal all in a finale at the Engine House in Highley.

I’m going to see this on Saturday and if, you’re quick about it, you can win a pair of tickets to it yourself over on the Dancing for the Games website – the deadline for entries is midday today. Or you can book tickets here.

There’s also quite a well-stocked blog about the development of this project.

Rosie Kay received funding through the Arts Council’s Digital Content Development programme to do something interestingly digital with it and 5 SOLDIERS – Interactive Film is the result.

Head to the website and you can watch the ‘director’s cut’ of the piece the whole way through or, at any point, you can click the name of the camera angle to continue watching the piece from one of 13 different viewpoints (including each dancer’s point of view).

Have a play with it and, if you reckon it’s interesting, please use the Twitter and Facebook buttons at the bottom of the page to let others know.

I should say that this is something that Meshed Media (my company) has been involved in, along with Aquila TV and Rosie Kay Dance Company. I’ve written more about it on the Meshed Media blog and freelance web developer Daniel Davies has written about his involvement in the technical side of the project too.

Arts Council England West Midlands’ Digital Content Development (DCD) Programme is a three year programme of investment which aims to catalyse the creation and creative use of digital content platforms for arts organisations across the West Midlands region

The website went up recently and the map on the homepage shows some of the projects, along with how much money they received. Further information is due on the website at some point, but if you look at the page source then you can glean a little more. On the basis that you probably don’t want to ruin your eyes, here’s what I found:

• Birmingham Repertory Theatre – Towards the development of an online multi-user playwriting resource (£27,884)
• Pesky People – Development of a multiplatform approach to venue access information (£25,000)
• Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum – PostCart: creative digital access of art gallery and museum collections (£24,750)
• Library of Birmingham – Development of an Alternate Reality Game for young people (£23,750)
• Talking Birds Theatre Company – Development of The Difference Engine – a multiplatform real time access tool. Some mention of it here (£1,500 + £20,860)
• The Play House – Develop an online resource to match the company’s participatory ethos (£22,349)
• Eastside Projects and Birmingham City University – Piloting a 3D online art gallery (£22,000)
• The MAC – Playground: exploring the use of digital technologies in a new-built art centre (£20,500)
• Royal Shakespeare Company – Creation of a new digital arena for the creativity of the RSC. Pretty sure this was Such Tweet Sorrow (£20,000)
• Audiences Central – To develop a web platform and plug-in for cross regional arts marketing (£18,000)
• B Arts – Development of a new form of arts centre/collaboration (£17,380)
• Rhubarb Rhubarb – To create an online evaluation tool (£17,000)
• Shropshire County Council – Citizen Journalism (£15,612)
• Rideout – To explore the production of creative digital content engaging youth crime statistics (£15,000)
• Radio To Go – A collaboration with the British Library to pilot an online music archive. Called The Pilot Project (£13,750)
• Rosie Kay Dance Company – To create an online version of the touring production, 5 Soldiers (£12,500)
• Indigo Ltd – The development of a pilot online platform exploring new forms of crowd-source fundraising in the arts (launching soon and called Angel Shares) (£11,750)
• Wolverhampton Arts & Museums / Black Country Museums – Research and Development of a collaborative online resource for the Black Country Museums (£10,550)
• Black Country Touring – Exploration of enhancing a site specific, theatrical experience through live streaming (£10,348)
• Multistory – To create a new media platform for celebrating local stories as part of place-making (£10,235)
• Fierce Festival – Towards a Viral Online research game (£8,253)
• Birmingham Opera – Exploring new models of ownership and sales of published works (£6,737)
• Borderlines Film Festival Ltd – Experimenting with mScapes technologies (£5,600)
• Orchestra of the Swan – Research and development towards a strategic plan (£5,000)
• Capsule – To support digitally enhanced new marketing and distribution opportunities (£4,880)
• Welsh National Opera – research and development of phase one of iMaestro. To allow Welsh National Opera to research digital copyright law and the possibility of exploiting full-length opera samples under the Creative Commons license (info about that here) (£4,600)
• Ikon Gallery – Towards the development of a social media project (£3,500)
• The Other Way Works – Professional development around Augmented Reality and Transmedia (£2,575)
• Ex Cathedra – Market development, engaging an online music aggregator (£1,323)
• Dance Consortium – Exploring social media in relation to contemporary dance marketing (£1,000)
• MADE – To explore the use of digital platforms in placing making (£1,000)

As well as these projects, the programme supported a range of other activities including workshops, innovation labs and other events.

I’ve heard of one or two of these projects, but the vast majority are new to me so it’ll be interesting to hear a little more. I should probably also add that I’m involved in the Rosie Kay Dance Company project – that’ll launch next week so I’ll blab a bit more about it then.

Travel advice aside, arts and culture will be getting a foot in the door a few times over the duration, including this lot:

• Jonathan Watkins (Director of Ikon Gallery) has been invited by Jeremy Hunt MP to speak on Sunday. His speech will apparently “highlight the cultural wealth of Birmingham and promote Ikon’s ambition for the creation of a new museum of modern art in the city”
• Screen WM are putting on a fringe event called City as a Platform (reminiscent of the much-referenced, lesser read Dan Hill post) on Monday
• Ed Vaizey MP will be off and about on Monday. He’ll be officially opening Zellig and later on checking out BCU’s Skillset Media Academy
• Rosie Kay Dance Company will be performing Double Points: K at the Symphony Hall on Tuesday

There’s probably more happening too, but those are the ones I’ve come across.

I’ve also been invited, with a bunch of other local bloggers, to go and meet Sayeeda Warsi (Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party and Cabinet Minister without portfolio) and Andrew Mitchell (MP for Sutton Coldfield and Secretary of State for International Development) later today.

5 SOLDIERS: The Body is the Frontline is the new piece by Rosie Kay Dance Company that’s getting it’s first ever full showing tonight as part of IDFB 2010. Tickets for it sold out a while ago, but there might still be some for tomorrow and the dates at Warwick Arts Centre.

Rosie was interviewed on R4’s Today programme this morning.

I’ve written a piece elsewhere about the impressive amount of development work that’s gone into the performance – two weeks training with the 4th Battalion of The Rifles, time spent at Headley Court, bringing an injured soldier into the studio and so on – and there’s an interview with Rosie here:

Rosie Kay – 5 Soldiers from Mr Nat Higginbottom on Vimeo.

At this point I should chuck in a disclaimer that I’ve been working with the festival’s organisers for a year or so on how they approach things online. However, that does mean that I’ve got a bit of a clue about what the line-up includes. Which is nice, because there are any number of ways of slicing and dicing a festival’s programme – this is my attempt to group it up a bit.

There’s more going on than I’ll mention here so see the IDFB website’s What’s On and Taking Part pages for the whole caboodle.

Local stuff

• Rosie Kay Dance Company – 5 SOLDIERS The Body is the Frontline – Rosie’s based in Birmingham and this is a new commission which will explore the physical toll taken by war
• Colin Dunne – Out of Time – Colin was born in Birmingham, was nine times world Irish step dance champion and also principal dancer in Riverdance. This is his first full-length solo work
• DX Productions & Two’s Company – Funny Bones – something for the kids: a brand new in-the-round double bill of contemporary dance for over 5’s.

Big ticket items

• Akram Khan Company – Gnosis. See pic above.
• Mark Morris Dance Group – L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. This has had more 5 star reviews than I’ve had hot dinners.
• Ballet Nacional de Cuba – Magia de la Danza and Giselle.
• Outspoken Weekend. Something you won’t see anywhere else – a season dedicated to new performances from Arab artists, 8 shows in all (see the What’s On page for the lot)

Something a bit different

• Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui/Sadler’s Wells London – Sutra. 17 Shaolin monks. A set designed by Antony Gormley. Sharp suits. Nuff said.
• C!RCA – Circa. Described as ‘a thoroughly new circus’. This was a big hit at last the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
• Chris Haring – Running Sushi. I don’t know much about this other than that it’ll be at Ikon Eastside and the order of the 12 performances will be chosen by audience members who picking sushi off a plate

Free stuff

For IDFB 2008, Victoria Square was taken over by two stages, gantries, firecracker-stuffed cars and three dance companies. It was so good I went twice. This year we’re told that:

contemporary dancers will form a brand new dance company collective alongside Russian, Spanish, Indian and African folk dance groups, all moving to the turbo-folk Gypsy and Balkan beats of Birmingham’s very own band The Destroyers

The event’s called UTOPIA and will be performed a few times over the Bank Holiday weekend of 1-3 May. In the words of the choreographer:

There’ll be bits of furniture all over the place and basically it’ll look like 40 people, plus the band, have attacked the square

Which sounds pretty good. As does Waves, which is right up my street. Wander past the Hippodrome between 8-11pm from 22 April to 5 May to see/play with that.

Put Your Foot Down is the final showpiece on 15 May – an afternoon of free performances and dance demos, with a mass synchronised hip hop/street dance routine lead by Salah, a hugely popular hip hop artist from France, in St Martin’s Square, Bullring.

Taking part

There’s also a whole bunch of workshops and classes you can get involved in.