The Great Train Dance performers; dancers and students from throughout the region, transformed the Severn Valley Railway into a magical experience with a puzzle to solve. In a Hitchcock thriller designed for families, this fascinating performance drew all ages on the train into the world of the absurd and seduce everyone into hunting for clues.

I missed this – I got stuck in traffic on the way there and just missed the train – so it’s good to see a film’s been produced (by Louis Price). It can’t have been easy to shoot though, there’s all sorts going on and was only performed once. It looks like it was a lot of fun.

Via Dancing for the Games.

Some of Alex’s photos are on Flickr here.

In the spirit of full disclosure I should mention that we’re involved in this project too via Meshed Media (that’s our day job, in case you didn’t know).

During my first stint on Created in Birmingham I had a nagging feeling that there was loads of good dance stuff going on but it was all happening under my radar. I’m pretty much on top of it these days, partly for the reasons given in the disclaimer at the bottom of this post but mainly because there’s so much dance stuff happening around the city this year.

Anyway, from tomorrow until Sunday, British Dance Edition – a biennial showcase of the British dance scene – is in Birmingham. It’s a big deal, with loads of venues hosting performances, events, presentations and debates. It’s a national showcase, not a local one, but there’s a fair bit of local interest:

• Rosie Kay previewing her new piece, 5 SOLDIERS – The Body Is The Frontline
• DanceXchange showing some of their work on The 5 Man Show
• Listen by Ace Dance & Music
• Funny Bones, from dX and Two’s Company Management
• Receptions hosted by International Dance Festival Birmingham, Birmingham Royal Ballet and People Dancing.
• Walking tours of the city for delegates (Digbeth and the Jewellery Quarter)

There’s probably more too. Most of it’s for paying delegates only but there are some good public events too.

Disclaimer – I’m working on/at British Dance Edition (incl one of the debates) and International Dance Festival Birmingham. WestMidlandsDance.com is one of my websites too.

As you’ll have guessed from the title, DanceXchange‘s Autumn schedule has been announced.

It kicks off on 24 September with Rosie Kay Dance Company’s ‘Double Points: K & Supernova‘ which were featured in the International Dance Festival Birmingham back in May.

The rest of the season features:

• 9 and 10 October, Jasmin Vardimon Company – Yesterday
• 21 and 22 October, 2FaCeD DaNcE Company – State of Matter
• 15 November, Jesús Fernández – Pura Emoción
• 4 December, Vincent Mantsoe – Ebhofolo

WhatsOnStage Midlands have some more info and the pic is of Hsiu-Hsien Tang in Supernova.

A nice touch (cos I look for this things) is a blog by the Festival Director, Richard Hawley, who has been posting his thoughts up all this week.

You can see the festival programme but it’s worth highlighting the local talent on show:

• Dancer, director and chereographer, Rosie Kay, will perform her current project, The Wild Party, for the last time at the Garrick Theatre on Sat 5 July.
• Thomas Trotter, Birmingham’s city organist, will play at Lichfield Cathedral on 7 and 9 July.
• PolarBear, described as ‘one of Britain’s foremost performance poets‘, is doing a late night session at the Garrick Studio on 9 July.  I’m listening to the tracks on his MySpace as I type this and he’s really (really) good.

The International Dance Festival Birmingham started today and continues until Sunday 25 May at venues all over the city. Pete mentioned this back in January and pointed out how truly international the line-up is, with performers from Taiwan, Australia, South Africa, Cuba and Russia, as well as “rising star” Rosie Kay from Birmingham.

The full line-up for this week (and indeed the other weeks) can be seen on their events page.

Pulling out highlights would be a fool’s errand but for those looking to sample the impressive wares without parting with their hard-earned, there are a few free events to catch:

• Performances in shop windows around the city centre are taking place daily from midday all this week – head for Oasis, the Puma Store, Bathstore and Chamberlain Square. More details here.
• In Victoria Square on Friday night, 9pm and on Saturday at 4pm and 9pm you can see Watch This Space which I have very high hopes for indeed.

Lastly, the festival has a blog, although I see this hasn’t been updated in the past week. I’m hoping they use it to collect together all the photos, videos and reviews that will be spun out by visitors to the events, similar to the Collective Memories that Pete did here (and that I’ll be continuing to do).

Photo by Brian Slater.