Dancers to perform at Coventry landmarks for tourism research project
Thursday 01 November 2018
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Dancers will perform at landmarks across Coventry city centre – from the cathedral to the train station – as part of research looking at how dance can boost tourism.
Films of their performances at the well-known city locations will also help create a series of digital tools and services that can be used by dancers, choreographers and tourists.
The 18-month Culture Moves project, which involves Coventry University, was taking place in the run up to Coventry’s year as UK City of Culture in 2021.
Its aim is to explore the impact dance, content technologies and digital cultural repositories – such as
Europeana - can have on the community, economic growth and job opportunities related to tourism and cultural heritage.
As part of this, researchers from the university’s Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) are encouraging dancers to perform around the city to help them think more about how dance fits with different locations.
They are working with local dance groups, performers, choreographers, arts and tourism organisations.
The dancers will upload video footage of their performances to an interactive Culture Moves website to create their own online storyboard of their performance.
They will then be able to edit their work, add annotations and notes to help others, and share their footage through the online platform and social media.
Researchers hope these digital tools can be developed to help promote tourism to less well-known locations and help dance students, teachers and choreographers learn from others in their art.
Dance researcher Rosa Cisneros said:
We’re taking dance out of the studio and into the city. We want to interact more with our surroundings in Coventry and explore these landmarks as dancers.
We hope at the end of this we will have some fantastic digital tools for dancers, but also have a far better understanding of how dance can impact on tourism.
Dance is often at the lower end of the totem pole when it comes to the arts. We want to change that and encourage people to think more about how it can benefit our city and community.
The 18-month EU-funded project is a collaboration between the university, software developers IN2, Fondazione Sisteme Toscana (FST) and Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL), of Portugal.
The first events for the project take place in November.
CultureMoves: Coffee and Conversation Hour includes a discussion about the relationship between dance, public spaces and tourism. It takes place on 15th November, 1-2pm, dx, Birmingham. For more information visit: www.dancexchange.org.uk.
A talk by artist and choreographer Rosemary Lee, a senior research fellow at C-DaRE takes place on 19th November. There will also be a panel discussion with other artists and individuals working with cities, communities and dance. The event runs from 12.30 until 3.30pm at C-DaRE’s ICE Building in Coventry.
Follow the project on Twitter: @CultureMoves_EU.
