Collaborators
In 2024, we are delighted to be collaborating with Patricia Okenwa, who has choreographed both dance and opera for companies including Rambert, English Touring Opera and B-Motion Festival, and international award-winning choreographer Jamaal Burkmar, who has been commissioned by and received support from Dance Hub in Birmingham, Leeds Dance Partnership, Phoenix Dance Theatre, Mobius Dance and more, for our new programme Play, Pause, Repeat.
© Djenaba Davis-Eyo
COLLABORATORS
Each performance season we commission guest artists to collaborate, create new choreography and to partner with us on our engagement programmes.
If you're interested in collaborating with Fertile Ground, get in touch at ad@fertileground.org.uk.
Current collaborators
2024
Patricia Okenwa is a choreographer and dance artist, trained at John Neumeier School of Hamburg Ballet and at Rambert School. Patricia was a dancer for Rambert for 12 years and was commissioned to choreograph for the company in 2016. Hydrargyrum toured the UK and had its London premiere at Sadler's Wells Theatre. A founding member of New Movement Collective (NMC) focused on Interdisciplinary, site or specific work. Most recently she co-created and performed Les Noces - The Departure at Woolwich Works, London. She was part of the second cohort of Sadler's Summer University 2015-18.
Jamaal Burkmar is an international award-winning choreographer from Jamaican heritage. He has been commissioned by and received support from Dance Hub in Birmingham, Leeds Dance Partnership, Phoenix Dance Theatre, Mobius Dance and more. His work has a strong relationship to music.
Previous collaborations
2021
Malgorzata Dzierzon is a dance artist, producer and a former co-artistic director of Fertile Ground. Born and trained in Poland she performed with Rambert, Gothenburg Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet amongst others. Her choreographic credits include Flight for Rambert, Sleepless for Ballet Central, Rasputin11 for Wroclaw Opera Ballet and film commissions from Serpenitine Galleries, Kettle's Yard Gallery and Dance City. Working with New Movement Collective she produced and co-choreographed several multi-media productions including Casting Traces, Nest, Please Be Seated, Collapse and Project XO. Malgorzata is a Clore Cultural Leadership Programme Fellow.
For the creation of her dance film and stage production Somnium, Malgorzata Dzierzon has invited cellist and composer Oliver Coates to create the music score.
Oliver moves at the intersection of classical minimalism, ambient drone and doom metal. He has performed music by Pauline Oliveros and Morton Feldman, supported Radiohead, shared the stage with Mica Levi and Dean Blunt, collaborated with Arca on the soundtrack for the latest catwalk show from the house of Dior, and released a great deal of music for films and on albums (including on RVNG Intl).
2021
Filipe Alçada (Somnium) originally trained as an Illustrator and Animator completing his studies at the Royal College of Art. After graduating he set-up an animation company, with two colleagues. Their first project was an animated music video for the band Add ’N’ to [X]. The video won best music video at the ‘New York Underground Film Festival’ and opened Nick Cave’s Meltdown at the South Bank Centre in London. Recently he has also collaborated in animated projects as a freelancer for Passion Films, including work exhibited on the bird's nest stadium in Beijing and a take-over of New York's Time Square’s screens.
Filipe also collaborates with musicians and contemporary dancers on Arts based projects producing work for live-performances, installations and several live-action short films. His film work has been shown at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery as part of ‘Sublime Spaces’, the Design Museum in London as part of ‘Sparkle the Dark Up’ and at Bloomberg Space as part of Comma 40-The place.
For the creation of his stage production Labyrinth, Renaud Wiser is collaborating with French sculptor Marie Lelouche.
Marie Lelouche is a French artist whose practice questions space and volume. Born in 1984 in Saint Junien, she is a graduate of the Ensba de Paris, the Sorbonne, Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains and is currently pursuing a doctorate in re
search/creation at the Université du Québec à Montréal and Le Fresnoy tittled « Post-digital Sculpture ». Her work, of minimal and abstract aesthetic, has been shown in Belgium at ArtBrussels, in France at the Musée du Lam or the Mirage Festival, in South Korea at the Studio National d’Art Contemporain, in Brazil at the Casa de Bailar, in Italy at Spazio Thetis and in Berlin at the Mazzoli Gallery.
Marie Lelouche is represented since several years by Galerie Alberta Pane (Paris/Venice).
Florent Berthaut joined Renaud Wiser and Marie Lelouche on the creation of Labyrinth. Florent is an Assistant Professor at the University of Lille, France and Researcher in the MINT team of the CRIStAL. He obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Bordeaux, in the SCRIME/LaBRI and the INRIA Potioc team. He then conducted a two years project at the University of Bristol with a Marie Curie fellowship.
His research focuses on building connections between the fields of 3D User Interfaces and of New Interfaces for Musical Expression. In particular, he has explored 3D interaction techniques adapted to musical interaction and mixed-reality displays for augmenting digital instruments on stage.
2019
In May 2019 we welcomed to Newcastle Cynthia Loemij from the renowned Belgium Company Rosas.
Born in the Netherlands, Cynthia has been a member of the full-time core of the company since 1991. She taught repertoire from the iconic work Rosas danst Rosas by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker to Fertile Ground dancers and development programme participants.
Created in 1983, Rosas danst Rosas has since become a benchmark in the history of postmodern dance. In this work abstract movements constitute the basis of a layered choreographic structure in which repetition plays the lead role.
In 2019 invited Wendy Houstoun to create a new film for the Company which will be opening our programme at The Maltings in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Dance City in Newcastle upon Tyne, Jacqueline du Pré Music Building in Oxford and London. Wendy Houstoun has established an artistic life creating solos, performing with companies and collaborating with artists across many genres. Her strongest associations have been as a performer with DV8 Physical Theatre, Forced Entertainment and Tim Etchells, performance artist Rose English, film maker David Hinton, artist Vlatka Horvat, icon Nigel Charnock, and theatre maker Charlotte Vincent. Her work straddles large and small stages, specific sites, film and installation and more recently writing.
The 2019 creation by former artistic co-directors Dzierzon and current artistic director Wiser was accompanied by live music. Fertile Ground had a unique opportunity to be collaborating with Quebec based Quatuor Voxpopuli for the autumn leg of the Twilight Dances tour.
Quatuor Voxpopuli is an international string quartet from Montreal who perform classical music in a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere. Quatuor Voxpopuli concerts appeal to both devoted music lovers and newcomers.
During our 2019 spring tour, the music was performed by emerging North East musicians Laura Armstrong, Abi Hammet, Rebecca Howell and Andra Vornicu.
Chris Swain is a lighting designer based in Bristol. He has worked extensively with Gecko - lighting design for the company includes 'a little space', ‘The Dreamer’, ‘Time of Your life’, ‘Institute’, & 'Missing'. He is currently working with the company to develop their next production which will premiere in 2022. Other lighting designs include: multiple shows for Tobacco Factory Theatres - including 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf', 'Beautiful Thing', and ‘Blue Heart’, ‘We Can Time Travel’ for gig-theatre maker Dom Coyote, 'Oz', ‘Flies’ and ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ for Pins and Needles, ‘Paper Architect’ for paper and projection artists The McGuires, and designs for dance companies Fertile Ground, New Movement Collective, Renaud Wiser Dance, and TrashDollys. Chris has toured extensively as a production manager and re-lighter both nationally and internationally with companies such as Kneehigh, Headlong, Gandini Juggling, and Mark Bruce Dance Company.
Fabritia D’Intino (ITA, 1986) is a dancer and choreographer. Together with Clémentine Vanlerberghe she will stage their work Plubel as part of Fertile Ground Myths and Dreams programme. Fabritia graduated from Accademia Nazionale di Danza (Rome) and ArtEZ (Arnhem, NL). From 2013 to 2019 she has been the artistic coordinator of Barcelona International Dance Exchange - BIDE. Since 2018 she has been part of companies Chiasma (Rome) and Cats & Snails (Lille) as dancer and maker. Her activity includes stage performances, public space interventions, participatory projects and research formats. Fabritia’s work, mostly in collaboration with other artists, has been awarded with national prizes (Ingenerazione, Tu35 Expanded) and presented in different international contexts: Théâtre De La Ville, Festival Avignon OFF, Sadler’s Wells, Sismograf among others.
Born in 1987, of French and German ancestry, Clémentine Vanlerberghe is based in Lille, France. She received dance education from the School of Ballet du Nord and at ArtEZ in the Netherlands. She has worked since 2006 with numerous choreographers in France and abroad, including Carolyn Carlson, the CCN de Roubaix, Cyril Viallon, Erik Kaiel, Amélie Poirier. She received in 2016/2017 the grant « Pas à Pas' ' from DRAC Hauts-de-France within Le Gymnase CDCN de Roubaix Hauts-de-France. Since 2016 she is mentored within the Junior Ballet : a space for emerging artists from Les Nouveaux Ballets du Nord- Pas-de-Calais set by Amélie Poirier. This year together with Fabritia D’Intino she will stage their work Plubel as part of Fertile Ground Myths and Dreams programme.