The Cottier Dance Project

Posted on June 5, 2014

The Cottier Dance Project, a new Glasgow dance festival, launches this month with new commissions and collaborations and archive film screenings. A strand of the West End Festival, run in partnership with the Cottier Chamber Project, the festival runs at Glasgow’s Cottiers Theatre and the Grosvenor Cinema from June 22 to 27.

The festival opens with a screening of Kenneth MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations, filmed in 1975 with a cast including Monica Mason, Merle Park and David Wall. Christopher Hampson, artistic director of Scottish Ballet, will introduce the screening. Later that day, the Grosvenor Cinema will show the classic Hollywood musical Shall We Dance, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, with a live dance demonstration before the film and a complimentary drink with every ticket.

Live performances in the festival include Footprints (pictured), a new collaboration between award-winning Scots singer Emily Smith, musician Jamie McClennan and the dancers of High Heart Dance Company. Using new and existing music by Emily and Jamie, the artists mix traditional music and contemporary dance.

Watch This Space is a platform for new choreography, with short works by Diana Loosmore, Daniel Davidson, Matthew Hawkins, Fuora Dance Project and Tamsyn Russell.

The festival also features open dance classes and a family concert, presented in collaboration with the Cottier Chamber Concert. This includes the new work The Lady of Shalott. Footprints and The Lady of Shalott will both be performed at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, as part of the Made in Scotland showcase.

See the festival website for details.

Picture: Footprints. Photograph: Andy Saunders

Zoe Anderson

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.