Tom Dale Company and Inspire Youth Arts presents
UBX – SUB:VERSION
for Nottingham Light Night 2023

Premiere performance commissioned by Nottingham City Council in association with Inspire Youth Arts.

FRIDAY 3RD FEBRUARY                        6pm , 7pm  8pm at Nottingham Contemporary 

SATURDAY 4TH FEBRUARY                  6pm , 7pm  8pm at Nottingham Contemporary 

Urban Explorers is Tom Dale Company’s flagship annual dance project integrating TDC professionals with youth dancers from across Nottinghamshire, working in partnership with Inspire County Youth Arts.

Celebrating light, choreography and electronic music SUB:VERSION at Nottingham Contemporary will bring the audience directly into the performance space for a new kind of interactive viewing experience.

A dynamic lighting design will enable the audience to move to designated areas and enjoy this unique dance and light event from an array of perspectives.

The boundaries between performer and audience will shift as the performance spaces and viewing spaces literally change shape, creating spaces within spaces.

Urban Explorers particularly targets young people from areas of high deprivation and low arts engagement, giving young dancers the unique opportunity to make and perform work alongside professional dancers, supporting progression routes into creative careers or higher education. 

SUB:VERSION will be Tom Dale Company’s new touring production, which goes into rehearsal in January 2023. LIGHT NIGHT Nottingham provides a company of youth dancers the unique opportunity to work with the dancers in rehearsal and perform alongside them for what will be an unique taster performance for Nottingham audiences…. a glimpse of the professional touring production to come.

SUB:VERSION

Ten dance sketches: bold and bristling with the urgency of undiluted connection to WEN’s experimental club music.

TDC’s new group piece is an elegant selection of dance work that weaves a hypnotic journey through an array of electronic music sub-genres using WEN’s album EPHEM:ERA –“a sophomore album study on the mercurial warp and weft of modern UK dance music” boomkat

The evolution of both Dance and Electronic Music are inseparable and TOM DALE COMPANY’s new group piece for 2023  – SUB:VERSION takes its inspiration from the weft and warp of these connections.  

Using music from WEN’s album Ephem:era,  SUB:VERSION is a series of electronic dance studies – an elegant exploration of movement and melody, space and form, full of temporal pauses – exploring the connections between transient and momentary experiences.

Wen’s album offers a framework for performers to connect with their bodies and each other – exploring the pleasure of moving to music in a score which evokes rather than dictates. This compulsion to move and connect is crafted by Tom and the dancers adding an experiential layer to the music.

We move through hypnotic club music to gossamer-like melodies through to dissonant and then weightless ambiance collecting together different, distinct moods all explored in the physical form. The result is a core celebration of dance itself: the body, and the limitless possibilities that music can evoke. 

SUB:VERSION will be premiere in March 2023 at Lakeside Arts as a double-bill alongside TDC’s iconic solo SURGE. It will be touring across the UK in March and April 2023.  

Our funders include: