Finalists announced for The Place Prize

Posted on October 5, 2010

The four finalists for The Place Prize have been announced, following the semi-final performances in September.

Photograph © Benedict Johnson

The highest audience score went to Ben Duke and Raquel Meseguer’s It needs horses, featuring a down-at-heel ringmaster, his glamorous but bedraggled assistant and their increasingly extreme measures to draw the crowds. The other three finalists, selected by a panel of dance experts, are Riccardo Buscarini and Antonio de la Fe Guedes with the trio Cameo, Eva Recacha with Begin to begin, a piece about dead ends, which draws on English nonsense rhymes, and the partnership of Frauke Requardt and Freddie Opoku-Addaie for Fidelity Project, where the two choreographers make decisions based on split-second guesswork. All four works will be performed each night during the The Place Prize Finals next year, with a nightly prize of £1,000 for the audience favourite. The overall winner, selected by a new panel of judges, will win a prize of £25,000. 

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.