wings of desire

Links for 25 May 2012

Chris Unitt — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:05:50 +0000

Goldie Speaking after the final performance of Wings of Desire – IDFB 2012
Nice little interview this.
The Golden Age of silver.mp4 – YouTube
“A BBC Production with the Birmingham Assay office as a Key Contributor”
Celebrating Sanctuary Birmingham – Home of Birmingham’s World Music Festival.
Showcasing the UK’s refugee musical culture, both traditional and contemporary, alongside music from across the world
Supersonic Festival – 10th anniversary | WeFund project
Capsule are doing the crowdfunding thing for Supersonic this year
Jewellery Quarter Popup Art Exhibition at The Spectacle Works June 2012
Midland`s artists are invited to submit artwork for inclusion in a selling exhibition to be located at the heart of the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham in June 2012
Birmingham Council garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show
Birmingham City Council is the only local authority in the UK to have a stand at this year’s flower show
Participant Call Out: If Only I Could
“a basic level of physical fitness and awareness of your own body is an advantage”. Sorry, but that bit made me laugh.
Radio To Go: Reggae City. This year, they got The Beat
Yet another good post by Robin Valk – this time talking to Jon Walsh and Ranking Roger about the Reggae City festival (2 June at the Rainbow in Digbeth)
The Voyage rehearsals at Birmingham NEC – a set on Flickr
A sneak peek at the upcoming show

Photos from Wings of Desire

Chris Unitt — Mon, 21 May 2012 07:24:45 +0000

It was a close run thing but, having been excited about it for a while, I finally got the chance to get down to Victoria Sq on Saturday night for the final performance of Wings of Desire, the big, public, outdoor show as part of International Dance Festival Birmingham 2012.

It was good too – the bit where the Town Hall crumbled was pretty spectacular and I’m a big fan of Circa from when they performed as part of the 2010 festival. Of the videos on YouTube, this one of the building projections is alright and gives you an idea at least. In fact it makes it look darker than it was – Birmingham has a serious light pollution problem.

Katja Ogrin probably has the best collection of photos from the event that I’ve seen so definitely check those out. The IDFB blog has collected together some of the various reactions and photos from audience members. I’ve just been trawling Flickr for some more pics – here are some choice ones:

Wings of Desire // Victoria Square Preparation by IDFB

Wings of Desire. Birmingham. by Imagine Bill

Wings of Desire by Imagine Bill

Wings of Desire by Peter Reynolds3636

Angel by fatedsnowfox

Wings of Desire by Peter Reynolds3636

Wings of Desire by fatedsnowfox

Town Hall test card

Chris Unitt — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:12:54 +0000

Via a tweet from Shaun McLernon.

It’s part of the preparations for Wings of Desire, the big outdoor dance/visual spectacular as part of International Dance Festival Birmingham. Happening in Victoria Sq tonight and running until Saturday. It’s free and I bet it’ll be ace.

Wings of Desire excitement

Chris Unitt — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:31:09 +0000

This pic showed up on the Facebook Page for International Dance Festival Birmingham last week.

On the left: David Massingham, Artistic Director of DanceXchange and co-director of IDFB. On the right: Goldie.

It’s for Wings of Desire, a big outdoor spectacular that’s taking place in Victoria Sq in mid-May, that will also feature:

2 Faced Dance Company, who are based in Hereford and do amazing contemporary dance/breakdance stuff (have a look at this vid)
CIRCA, who left me slack-jawed with amazement when I saw them perform at IDFB 2010 (check this out)
Seeper, who do that cool architectural projection mapping stuff (among other things)

Basically, if this is anything less than incredible I’ll eat my hat.

More info here.

The launch of IDFB 2012

Chris Unitt — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:09:01 +0000

Yesterday lunchtime I went along to the launch of International Dance Festival Birmingham 2012. For the uninitiated, IDFB is a massive festival of dance organised by Dancexchange and the Hippodrome.

There’s a good round-up of what’s being planned over on West Midlands Dance.

There’s plenty of good stuff lined up, but the bits that made me nudge the person next to me and go ‘huh, that’ll be interesting’ were:

Wings of Desire (the big dance spectacular in Victoria Sq), with Circa and 2FaCeD DaNcE Company
Dave St-Pierre Company – Un peu de tendresse bordel de merde! (which generated a tonne of controversy in London a couple of months ago)

I like IDFB. It was probably the first one, back in 2008, that got me interested in dance in the first place. I then worked on the 2010 festival and managed to pack in 18 shows over the course of its month-long run. This one looks like being another good one.