Update on Cohan Collective 2020

As detailed below, in light of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, we have had to postpone the launch of the Cohan Collective: Birmingham residency this July. It is currently scheduled for 2–14 August 2021. We are grateful to our host partners, Birmingham Royal Ballet, DanceXchange and SAMPAD for their continued support, and look forward to working together next year.

Submissions are now closed and will reopen for choreographers and composers in autumn 2020. Dancer applications will open in early 2021 with auditions expected to take place in May 2021.

We are, however, going ahead with some of our plans for the pilot of Cohan Collective Phase Three—Realisation, originally scheduled to conclude in Bournemouth this summer.

Two sets of artists were chosen to return for this final phase, bringing all they have learned through Phases 1 and 2 to a final three-week creative period. The artists were to spend two weeks in their own locations working intensively on a new work with mentors and directors visiting their studio to support them during the creation. The third and final week would have taken place at Pavilion Dance South West in Bournemouth where Phases 1 and 2 were hosted, concluding with a public performance.

Due to scheduling conflicts in relation to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, we will only be able to complete a very revised version of this final phase of the CC residency with one of the collaborating teams, choreographer Edd Mitton and composer Edmund Hunt. (We will be in discussion with the second team, choreographer Josh Ben-Tovim and composers Hollie Harding and Ben Oliver about completing Phase 3 with them in 2021.)

Beginning 3 August, Mitton and Hunt will be working in the studio with four dancers and three musicians. Hunt and the musicians will be working remotely for some or all of the residency. Cohan Collective director Yolande Yorke-Edgell will be on hand to run the residency while artistic directors, Sir Robert Cohan and Philip Feeney, as well as mentors, Kate Flatt and Kenneth Hesketh, will be on hand (virtually) to guide the artists as work is completed. A final performance of their creation will be live-streamed for an invited audience and recorded for future audiences.

Like all artistic ventures at this point in time, this version of the residency continues to evolve and respond to the world around us. We are grateful to Pavilion Dance South West and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for their continued support. Perhaps more than ever before, the Cohan Collective will be a voyage of innovation, collaboration and discovery.

Stay tuned here and on the Cohan Collective social media for news about the results…