Intro

Hannah Robertshaw

Encounters is a festival series led by Yorkshire Dance that brings together inspiring dance artists with a diverse crowd to share food, conversation, participation and performance in Leeds. We welcome everyone – those who don’t normally come to performances as well as those who frequently do.

We are building a community of activists from all walks of life around performances, workshops and discussions to address some of the big questions of our age.

We believe that dance can make the world a better place, creating deep connections between different sorts of people, sparking new thinking, conversation and connections.

Because we are interested in how people respond to the Encounters festivals, in capturing new and different perspectives, we asked Writing Squad writers to respond creatively to festivals on women in dance, gender diversity in dance and reimagining age through dance. Having commissioned the Squad over the three Encounters Festivals, we have been delighted by the range of responses which have often been surprising and surpassed expectations.

We continue to be interested in how writing and dance respond to each other, both in how one can feed the other and also what collaboration between writers, dancers and choreographers might look like.

 

Hannah Robertshaw

Programme Director, Yorkshire Dance

January 2020