Guest Blog: Emma Gladstone Previews This Year's Dance Umbrella

Dance Umbrella, now in its 41st year, continues its mission to celebrate 21st-century choreography with international performers and choreographers in events happening across London.

I joined as Artistic Director and Chief Executive in 2013. At that time, the scene was changing here in London, and I was keen to create a defined role for the festival that fitted in the new landscape. My focus was to invite artists new to the UK, to build on the choreographic palate of the programme, and partner with non-dance venues.

Having worked in theatres for years, it has been great to be freed from fitting work onto particular-sized stages to how we work now, which is basically to see performances first, and then find the right frame in which to present them.

We've had a big drive to take dance out across the city to reach audiences where they live as well as work, and the festival now includes an established touring network with arts centres in outer London, and a record number of venue partners spanning 13 boroughs.

Each year there are a few artists returning, but the vast majority are new to London or new to Dance Umbrella. Some are established names like Lucy Guerin doing her first DU performances, others like Georgia Vardarou are coming to the UK for the very first time. We also have Jay Jay Revlon and Cai Revlon at The Big Pink Vogue Ball at Shoreditch Town Hall. The Ball will be a celebration of ballroom culture and its history, which can be traced back as early at the 19th century, and gained prominence in New York's Harlem renaissance of the 1920s. It was led in the 1980s and 1990s by influential figures like Crystal LaBeija, and of course is now gaining much wider coverage.

The Ball is part of Out of the System, a strand within the festival which choreographer, performer and educator Freddie Opoku-Addaie guest curates for Dance Umbrella.

Now in his third and final year in that role, Freddie has programmed an afternoon of Sunday Shorts at the Barbican Cinema, as well as a mixed bill at the Bernie Grants Arts Centre featuring seasoned performers like Jonzi D and his Aeroplane Man, alongside emerging talent like Ffion Campbell-Davies and tyroneisaacstuart, Becky Namgauds and Theo Inart.

Opening the festival will be Gisèle Vienne's Crowd in her first visit to London, inspired by the vibrant club scene in Berlin in past years, paying homage to rave culture. The piece will fill Sadler's Wells' stage with tons of earth, with 15 performers revealing hidden scenes of love, violence, intimacy and aversion while the pulsing beats of electro music are playing. It will be a powerful start to the festival.

Our Featured Artist for 2019 is Oona Doherty, an emerging talent in contemporary dance, also performing for the first time in the capital. Having recently received a wave of 5* reviews from critics at Edinburgh International Festival, Oona brings two shows to Dance Umbrella, Hard To Be Soft - A Belfast Prayer (Southbank Centre, 11 October) and her solo performance Hope Hunt & The Ascension into Lazarus (The Yard, 14-16 October). Her prize-winning work evokes themes of masculinity, gender, class and religion. Hard To Be Soft features music by DJ David Holmes, who's composed the soundtrack for Killing Eve.

For the first time we are doing a festival within a festival with DU: Fairfield Takeover, taking place at the newly refurbished Fairfield Halls in Croydon 18-19 October. The Takeover will see performances by Mythili Prakash, The Urban Playground Team, Cie Philippe Saire and Boy Blue, presenting their new production REDD to Croydon audiences following its run at the Barbican. This mini festival will feature many other free and participatory events, and builds on our connection with Croydon that started a couple of years ago.

The two artists we are delighted to welcome back this year are Gregory Maqoma with Cion; Requim of Ravel's Bolero at the Barbican, and of course Merce Cunningham with Sounddance performed by CCN-Ballet de Lorraine in a special triple bill also featuring young French/Senegalese choreographer Amala Dianor, which we will be presenting with the Royal Opera House.

I love this time when artists and audiences are heading our way, after all the planning. It is always intriguing to see what people are drawn to, and how often the shows I feel might be more risky are actually the ones audiences are most keen to see. Surely a lesson to be learnt there.

Dance Umbrella will take place in various venues across London 8-27 October. More info at danceumbrella.co.uk

Photo credit: Andy Day, DCM Photography, Valérie Frossard

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