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Katie Dale-Everett Dance receives the South East Dance’s Pebble Trust Flourish Bursary

Having gained support from The Point, a highly regarded arts organisation/venue and the Arts Council England National Lottery Funding, in October 2017 Katie Dale-Everett Dance has been ‘Experimenting with approaches to creating work for younger audiences & exploring privacy in today’s social media obsessed society’. Phase 1 consisted of a 5 day residency in The Point’s Creation Space where she worked with 6 professional dancers, 2 recent graduates and a group of young people.

The South East Dance Pebble Trust Flourish Bursary is supporting the next phase of development of this work by providing our Artistic Director Katie the opportunity to be mentored by Justine Reeve.

Reeve has extensive experience working in educational settings, developing and devising dance resources and curriculums for established institutions like Sadler’s Wells. She has also successfully produced dance work on and for young people.

Watch out for Katie’s reflection on her time working with Reeve in March!

Katie Dale-Everett Dance would like to thank South East Dance and The Pebble Trust.

 

 

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Young people’s digital wellbeing_Lorna Palmer

I recently attended an event focused on children and young people’s digital wellbeing as part of the Brighton Digital Festival. ‘Our Digital Wellbeing’ was led by Our Future City, South East Dance and Artswork as part of the #BeCollective networking series. For me, the most interesting and thought-provoking moment was being introduced to Katie Dale-Everett, a young woman who refers to herself as a ‘Digital Dance Artist’.

Katie recently completed a film ‘Digital Tattoo’, for The Space, as part of a commission for Channel 4 Random Acts. Through the film she asks her audience to imagine a scenario where all the content we post on social media appears indelibly inked on our torsos like a digital tattoo. At the same time, Katie has been touring to raise awareness among young people, through her film and eloquent sharing of experiences, about the importance of privacy in an online world.

It certainly made me stop to think about the quantity and value of detail I share.

Inspired by a Ted Talk of the same name by academic Juan Enriquez, ‘Digital Tattoo’ looks at the exposing nature of online, but also the permanence of our data, which is likely to outlive the flesh, symbolically shown through film projection onto the body. ‘Digital Tattoo’ hopes to remind its audience of the permanence and uncontrollable nature of online and to encourage them to think before sharing/posting/uploading.

As part of her presentation Katie talked about ‘The Right to be Forgotten‘ – a European Court ruling offering the right to have information disappear from searches made within Europe. Katie shared some alarming true stories of individuals trying and failing to remove detail about themselves from the web.  Under the EU Data Protection Directive, data controllers like Google are now required to remove data, as requested by an individual, that is ‘inadequate or no longer relevant’.

Katie also raised the point that the UK is currently leading the way in Tech Education, but that we are failing when it comes to educating young people in digital wellbeing. Take Estonia, a close second in Tech Education, but where they have a much more refined and comprehensive approach to online security and to educating their young people about digital technology. Estonia recognises that digital habits begin young. At birth, every person is assigned a unique string of 11 digits, a digital identifier that becomes key to operating almost every aspect of that person’s life—the 21st-century version of a social security number. Estonian children learn computer programming at school, many starting in kindergarten. Developing awareness from a young age is a key priority of Estonia’s Cyber Security Strategy. In 2011, Estonia created ‘web constables’ to teach personal cyber security to protect children and young people online. The Information Technology Foundation for Education, or HITSA, offers training to pre-school children, as well as parents and teachers alike.

It’s clear we, in the UK, still have a long way to go. From the issues highlighted by Katie’s work and Estonia’s precedent, we can learn creative and innovative ways of highlighting the dangers of digital technology and implementing solutions that can guide our children from birth. We also need to think much more about responsible technology to affect how people develop and deliver services, especially for our young people.

Finally, Katie also made a key point that to young people, herself included, everything is digital. Older generations may talk about ‘digital safety’ or ‘digital privacy’ etc. but to the generation who have never known life without the web, it’s ALL DIGITAL.

Lorna Palmer_unthinkable_5th December 2017

Source-unthinkable

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37% of Kabecca Films Crowdfunder raised in first day! Find out why you might want to donate!

Kabecca Films makes up Katie Dale-Everett (Artistic Director of Katie Dale-Everett Dance) and Rebecca Dale-Everett (Film) and was founded earlier this year, following the success of their former film ‘Digital Tattoo: Artefact 1’ which was commissioned by the Ignition Random Acts Network Centre in partnership with the Arts Council and Screen South. The film has toured across the UK as part of Playback, screening at venues such as Leeds Music Festival and ICA, is distributed on Channel 4’s Random Acts website and made-up part of Katie’s choreographic tour entitled ‘Digital Tattoo’ which went to leading arts venues such as the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts.

Having been part funded by the Screen South Ignition Catalyst fund to create a new short film ‘Twenty, Forty, Sixty’ to be distributed to leading arts/dance venues in 2018, they are now running a crowdfunder to raise the remaining £650 needed to complete the film. In its first day (12th December) they raised 37% of their target!

About ‘Twenty, Forty, Sixty’:

‘Twenty, Forty, Sixty’ will preserve the memories of a sixty-two-year-old lady and her relationship with dance. From the dance halls of the 1960s to the present day it offers a unique perspective on the evolution of dance and it’s ability to connect individuals and delay ill health. We’re keen to give a voice to those who are underrepresented and hope to legitimise the older body through this film.

To find out more about about the film and how you might be able to help whether that is by donating or sharing the campaign please visit our fundraiser page here.

Thank you!

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Artistic Director Katie and her film collaborator Rebecca receive Ignition Catalyst Funding!

Having worked together to make Digital Tattoo: Artefact 1, a short film acquired by Channel Four, touring to multiple leading venues across the UK as part of the Playback Tour and as part of Katie Dale-Everett Dance’s touring programme , we are pleased to announce that we have received Ignition Catalyst funding to make a new film ‘Twenty, Forty, Sixty’.

Awarded by Screen South.

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ACE funded residency at The Point Collaborators

Katie Dale-Everett Dance will be commencing a new research and development process for a children’s work at The Point next week!

Find out about her collaborators here: 

ANTONIO DE LA FE:

Antonio is a choreographer and performer with a background in physiotherapy. After coming relatively late to dance and initially studying in Madrid, he moved to London and completed an MA in performance with EDge at The Place in 2010. Since then he has danced for Hamish MacPherson, Florence Peake, Dog Kennel Hill Project, Matthias Sperling, Eva Recacha and Riccardo Buscarini. His choreographed works include Place Prize finalist 2011 Cameo, an open OPENLAB: a hybrid and his Unrehearsed Series, including CROCODILE and Make Me Cool.

EMMIE COXEY: 

Emmie trained at London Contemporary Dance School graduating in 2014. She then continued her training as a member of postgraduate company VERVE15. Performing and touring with VERVE15 she had the pleasure of working with Kerry Nicholls, Theo Clinkard, Luca Silverstrini and various other guest teachers. Emmie is very interested in collaborative-based work combining dance with various other performance styles such as theatre, film, story-telling, live music, set design and installations. She has performed in various projects with Hawk Dance Theatre, while also beginning to explore her own work as a dance artist.

JONATHAN MEWETT:

After graduating from the University of Chichester with a First Class (Hons) degree in Dance, Jonathan toured as a member of postgraduate company MapDance, performing works by Richard Alston, Kevin Finnan, Liz Aggiss and Lila Dance. Alongside KDE Dance, Jonathan has been performing in a series of duets by Tony Adigun, Corey Baker, Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster and Sally Marie as part of C-12 Dance Theatres international outdoor tour Secret Encounters. Jonathan is particularly interested in improvisational performance and work that is of a multidisciplinary nature.

 

SOPHIA SEDNOVA:

Sophia Sednova grew up in New York City where she began her physical training as a competitive gymnast and then began her dance training at the Peridance Capezio Center. She later attended The University of Iowa receiving a BFA in Dance. She then attended London Contemporary Dance School for her postgraduate diploma and MA with EDge Postgraduate Dance Company 2014-2015.She has performed extensively throughout Europe as part of her tour with EDge, and participates in the Florence Dance Festival annually. She has worked with, Itamar Serussi, Robert Clark, Eleesha Drennan, Danae Morfinou, Pietro Pireddu, Arianna Benedetti and many more.

Katie Dale-Everett Dance are also offering two placement opportunities during the residency for recently graduated dancers.

CLAIRE HACKSTON:

Having started ballet and modern classes at a young age, Claire was first introduced to contemporary dance when she started training with Swindon Dance CAT. She then went on to perform with Hampshire Youth Dance Company and the English Youth Ballet before gaining a place at London Contemporary Dance School. Whilst attending LCDS Claire performed works choreographers such as Lea Anderson, Richard Alston, Hofesh Shechter and Liz Aggiss. She has also worked with Rosemary Lee and OperaUpClose.

KIM STARK:

Kim started her training at The Royal Ballet School, during her five years as White Lodge, Kim has performed at The Royal Opera House in different productions as well as performing at Buckingham Palace. Kim then joined Rambert School to pursue contemporary dance. Kim has worked with choreographers such as Mark Baldwin, Edit Domoszlai, Didy Veldman and Deborah Adefioye.

She is also working with Dramaturge MIRANDA LAURENCE: 

Miranda is a dance producer and dramaturg with ten years’ experience working as a producer/project manager in the dance sector, including roles with Oxford City Council, DanceXchange, Oxford Dance Forum, Crossover Intergenerational Dance Company, Anjali Dance Company, Scarabeus Aerial Theatre, and South East Dance. She has been Arts Development Officer for South Oxfordshire District Council at Cornerstone arts centre since 2012. 

In 2015 she began developing her practice as a dance dramaturg, and has worked with a number of artists including Anja Meinhardt, Joelle Pappas, Cecilia Macfarlane, Paulette Mae, Noelia Tajes, Jennifer Stokes, Hayley Matthews, and Jaivant Patel. In summer 2017 she was also accredited as a Relational Dynamics life coach. Other recent projects include a pop-up artist residency exploring intergenerational dance practice at Annantalo children’s arts centre, Helsinki, in collaboration with Cecilia Macfarlane, and Miranda’s one-year-old daughter Ruth.

She has been supported financially for dramaturgy work by South East Dance through the TEST workshop and the Collaborate programme (funded by Jerwood foundation), and by Oxford Dance Forum through the Evolution programme. She has recently been awarded public funding from the National Lottery by Arts Council England towards her professional development as a dance dramaturg.

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Katie Dale-Everett Dance awarded 3rd Arts Council England National Lottery funding!

 

Katie Dale-Everett Dance are pleased to announce that we have been awarded our second Arts Council England National Lottery funding in 2017 (3rd ever)! This is to develop a new work for children during a residency at The Point, Eastleigh in October 2017, working with 4 professional dancers, two recent graduates and a dramaturge!

If you are a young person aged 10-16 and interested in dance you can get involved. Contact us to find out more: katie@katiedale-everettdance.co.uk

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Katie Dale-Everett on upcoming show Digital Tattoo_ACCA!

Katie Dale-Everett Dance will be with us this October with her innovative piece Digital Tattoo, just one of the many things we have as part of our Brighton Digital Festival programme. The piece explores the impact of our digital footprint and the fictions and lives we create for our online audience.

We spoke to Katie about the impact of social media and how important it is in 2017. Katie said, “I don’t think we need a digital footprint but I think everyone wants to have an impact on the world.” She went on to say, “I try not to have my data on all the time but that means that I miss messages.”

We spoke about the idea of trying not to use social media, but decided that even if we don’t want to use Facebook, it’s difficult to ignore because it’s the main way people communicate. There are many positives to living in the digital age as well. You can access information and videos without leaving your house, you can find family members you didn’t know you had and you can be at the forefront of world news.

Katie said, “But when it’s gone you realise how much you need it. One of the wires that connected the internet from Eastbourne to near Brighton was disconnected a little while ago and everyones internet was down for three days. I had applications that I needed to get into for the tour so I had to go to the library and it closes early … it was quite refreshing in a way.”

The show – not to give away too much – is an intimate portrayal of two lovers and the unintentional outcomes of their digital tattoos.

Katie described a little of what to expect and said, “At one point people without Twitter go in the centre and people who do stand around the edges. They upload a photo of those in the centre to Twitter, to show that even though you might not choose to opt in it is still there.”

We also spoke about the permanence of a digital footprint. Katie said, “I look at Judi Dench and wonder what it’s like to see your life through the films you’ve made, to watch yourself age, it’s kind of amazing but must be confronting.”

Digital Tattoo is on Tuesday 10 October at 8pm.

A film by Katie Dale-Everett Dance also will be in our cafe-bar from 2-10 October – see it on the night or during another visit during the time period.

Emily_ACCA_7th September 2017

Source_ACCA

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DIGITAL CONVERSATIONS WITH KATIE DALE-EVERETT

 

 

The permanence of print. The delineating of the digital. The staining of tattoos and the discordant nature of social media. All of these issues and more are explored by choreographer Katie Dale Everett in her extended Digital Tattoo programme. On Saturday 10 June, Katie put on her interactive activity Conversations About The Digital, which will return to No34 on Tuesday 13 June. Here’s a short review of the experience…

When you stop and think about social media, it’s quite an overwhelming phenomenon. On the one hand, it’s connecting us with people all across the globe. It’s uniting people who might otherwise never have the opportunity to meet and it’s creating conversations But social media itself is still a little odd. Yes, we’re “talking” to people (though this depends on your definition of talking and of course many conversations that begin online are subsequently taken offline as friendships are formed and relationships forged.) There are times when we’re just shouting loudly into a digital abyss too, only the difference is that the abyss remembers. We change. Our opinions, our views, our appearances, our circumstances – none of these have to be concrete but what if social media suggests otherwise? Are our past opinions tattooed on us for the rest of our (digital) lives?

It’s a valid question, one that Katie unpicks with all three elements of her programme. The film explores the literal sense of the question, with digital imprints shown to be tattooed on the subject’s body. It’s when we feel that this information is unavoidably attached to us that we seemingly become desperate to wipe it away.  In Conversations About The Digital, participants get involved by following along to a pre-recorded activity. When it starts, it feels eerily reminiscent of the oh-so dreaded bleep test forced upon us at school; each time the tape beeps a new instruction is delivered. The different with Conversations About The Digital is that there’s no requirement of excessive running!

The conversation begins by posing some questions to all those taking part. It’s an opt-in activity that requires each participant to have a smartphone. The audio slowly works through various questions and queries surrounding social media, directing people to various spaces within the room dependant on their answers. It’s actually quite interesting to see movement matched with media in this way. Some of the questions would ask us to change our pace, our direction, whether we stood up or sat down. Seeing it happen so visually is a true testament to how widely the digital era has already seeped into our lives. Despite being a relatively new phenomenon, it’s clear digital and social media plays a big part in our professional and personal lives.

As the conversation went on, we started to reflect on our usage of social media. In the background, between the beeps, we would hear people’s own personal thoughts and experiences of using social media. It’s a particularly prominent topic given the current political climate and the discussion doesn’t take long to reach the point of reflection over what is real and what is fake. For some people, their digital tattoo is like a diary. It’s a way to reflect on their experiences and see how much they’ve changed and grown. For others, they begin to query how much of what they see and in turn what they post, is real. We are in a time where we do have to take care in fact checking our sources, when it’s important to distinguish between fake news and real news.

Conversations About The Digital touches briefly on the Right to be Forgotten, a law passed in 2014, by asking the participants to decide who they feel should be in charge of removing information about any given individual online. It’s clear that as more and more digital natives become accustomed to more and more forms of social media, we are starting to understand and appreciate the consequences of the ways we digitally interact. It’s certainly a learning curve that many people – millennials especially – have had to experience as they’ve navigated this interconnected online world. That is one huge benefit of social media – in many ways it lessens the pressure of social interaction for those who find such situations nerve-wracking or difficult. Having the ability to make real connections with people who may share your views or relate to your life experiences can be really positive and life changing, especially if you feel isolated in the offline world. Perhaps the shift is already occurring, with people beginning to prefer online interactions than more tactile interactions. The most uncomfortable part of the activity is perhaps the elongated eye contact towards the end, although it plays an important role in reinforcing the impact that tangible, interpersonal interactions have that screens do not. When separated by a screen – whether that’s a laptop, a phone, an ipad – it’s much easier to forget that your actions online may have significant consequences offline.

There is undoubtedly much to be said about this ever-growing digital era and as always, the choice remains to what extent you wish to engage with it all. We all reserve the right to have the choice of how much we share online and it’s important to remember we can choose how much time and effort we invest.

If you’re interested in hearing a bit more about the digital world and the way different people interact online, then come along to No34 on Tuesday 13 June. There will be opportunities to take part in Conversations About The Digital at 5.30pm, 6.30pm and 7.30pm. It’s totally free to attend so come along!

Jade_Ideas Test_12th June 2017

Source – Ideas Test

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Find out about how to get involved with our tour date in Kent!

You can now listen to the interview on demand with Katie Dale-Everett Dance talking about an exciting dance performance and film project coming to Swale at No.34 Sittingbourne and Oasis Academy.

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Writing About Dance Review_The Circle Arts Centre 21st April 2017_Nicholas Minns

A new company, a new venue. Katie Dale-Everett, artistic director of KDE Dance, studied choreography at Falmouth University, graduating in 2014. She is a freelance dancer, teacher and choreographer and has wasted no time in putting together and performing projects with a focus on how dance can be written and read. In Digital Tattoo she is exploring writing dance in the service of a social project. In this context, Dale-Everett’s writing takes on the French use of the word ‘écrire’ (to write) to describe the notation of the choreographic process whereas in English we prefer the verbs ‘to make’ or ‘to create’.

Recently I have seen different approaches to writing dance: Joe Garbett’s work No. Company takes its point of departure from choreographic text messages; Fevered Sleep’s choreographic performance of Men & Girls Dance is wrapped in a written project, and here in Digital Tattoo is a trio of works within a single program that comments on the concept of privacy in social media. Such an approach has its strengths and weaknesses. Whereas dance can provide an emotional entrance to the understanding of a social concept, there is always a danger that the written aspect, if taken too literally, will take precedence over its imaginative choreographic content, that the image becomes too directly linked to its meaning. It doesn’t have to; it is worth remembering that fairy tales in their written forms were imaginative vehicles for understanding social concepts or cultural values even if today the production values and aspects of the performance — in say the balletic form of The Sleeping Beauty — tend to obscure those lessons. Dealing with contemporary social concepts through dance is thus a complex balance between the rational and the imaginative, one that Dale-Everett sets out to resolve by dividing Digital Tattoo into three separate elements.

The first, Artefact 1, is a short film, subsequently picked up by Channel 4’s Random Acts, with a simple overlay of social media images on a naked female torso, equating privacy with sensuality. The underlying focus of the tripartite program is the notion of the Right to be Forgotten — the right to erase our online footprint whenever we choose. In the film (with John Hunter as director of photography), we see a woman, Caileen Bennett, reaching round her back to erase the projected images by frenzied scratching but the merging of the two surfaces is an illusion. All we see is the scratched red marks underneath the images becoming deeper and more painful while Bennett’s breathing becomes more strained and frantic. The message, like the image, is simple and strong.

The second element, Conversations about the Digital, brings us back into the everyday through a performative quiz on stage with eight willing members of the audience (one male, seven females on this occasion), each with his or her own smartphone. The quiz consists of a series of recorded questions about smartphone usage to which the participants — classified demographically at the beginning as either digital immigrants (born before 1980) or digital natives — respond through gestures, movements, selfies and tweets. The goal is to promote awareness of our online digital presence, the influence it has on our social behaviour and on our understanding of our world (fake news is a current hot topic). Even though the questions stimulate an element of self-reflection, the self-confessional nature of the staged format leaves too much wiggle room for dissimulation which waters down the effect.

The third element, Digital Tattoo, is essentially a recapitulation of the first two in a danced duet performed by Jonathan Mewett and Sophia Sednova with a musical score by Tom Sayers that traces the development of their online meeting, its development and, once concluded, a unilateral effort to erase it from digital memory. Even if the preceding context informs our understanding of it, the structure of the duet is clear (as one would expect with Lou Cope as dramaturg), so that it could stand alone in its depiction of love at first byte, highlighting the self-comment, self-deprecation and self-consciousness engendered by the creation of an online relationship. Dale-Everett enhances the choreographic message with an effective use of digital light (developed with the help of Nic Sandiland), giving Mewett and Sednova the ability to use their fingers as on a keyboard to write on each other’s bodies their interjections and exclamations expressed through ubiquitous emojis. Real life events, like a scene at a party where Sednova loses control, are witnessed through selfie gestures as they might appear on a tagged Facebook page with self-accusatory hashtags.

It might seem counter-intuitive to depict an online relationship in a choreographic duet; the structure is necessarily complex, constantly blurring the distinctions between online and offline. My principal concern is that the educational framework of Digital Tattoo holds back the emotional aspect of the choreography; while Mewett and Sednova are convincing as its exponents, it appears circumscribed by its didactic function. In using dance for purposes that are not inherently choreographic this will always be a danger, even if the social orientation of the project is effectively served.

Link to original post: http://writingaboutdance.com/performance/katie-dale-everett-dance-digital-tattoo/