In the first of her regular blogs for Birmingham Hippodrome, Chief Executive and Artistic Director, Fiona Allan, fills us in on her long-standing love-affair with dance and her top show picks for 2017.

Dance has always been synonymous with the Hippodrome. Over 100,000 people see dance here every year, we are home to Birmingham Royal Ballet and DanceXchange, and invest much of our own panto surplus back into making sure that the best international contemporary dance can be seen in Birmingham. It’s no wonder that we are known as one of the UK’s great dance hubs.

I’m lucky that a big part of my job involves always being on the lookout for new and interesting shows to present, and for me this last month in particular has involved lots of dance.

Firstly there was my quick trip to see Danish Dance Theater, a return visit to catch up with this company based in the stunning waterfront Opera House in Copenhagen. This intimate double bill was performed in a small studio space quite like the Hippodrome’s Patrick Centre : very useful food for thought as we come closer to announcing this year’s Patrick Centre programme.

Inspiration can also come from much closer to home and back in the UK I managed to catch Motionhouse: Scattered at our neighbours The Old Rep – truly spell binding. I also popped to Nottingham for the first UK performance on the 2017 tour of Danza Contemporanea de Cuba. They are touring thanks to Dance Consortium, which is a national dance organisation made up of a number of large venues including the Hippodrome, and are now based in our offices – it’s handy to have them so close to home, given I’m also their co-Chair.

Collaboration within the arts is very important to me and along with Sadler’s Wells and The Lowry, Birmingham Hippodrome is part of a dance partnership called The Movement. Our most recent meeting was at Sadler’s Wells and I stuck around on the Friday night to see Sadler’s Wells: Sampled. The idea is that you get to ‘sample’ a variety of dance forms on one night and I was particularly taken by the two Argentinian tango dancers – fast and fancy footwork – and the crazy Catalan B-Boy crew Iron Skulls Co. This makes it even more exciting that both groups will be performing here when Dance:Sampled lands at our very own Hippodrome on 3-4 March.

Back in Birmingham and Sir Matthew Bourne arrived with The Red Shoes, which had completely sold out before it even opened. We’ve been incredibly lucky to snaffle up another week of the tour from 19-22 July so my top tip is to get booking now! Matthew and his company were so generous with their time, helping us through several fundraising events that week. I’m delighted that we were able to raise over £15k towards young dance development, whether that results in Curtain Raisers on the main stage or more performances like Hodge Hill Primary School’s Little Shoes in our foyers.

From one ballet to another, our current show is Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Cinderella which has been another treat and completely magical.  Every time I see them, I realise what a privilege it is to have such an incredible, internationally successful company based right here.  They’ve also been doing lots of exciting work with young dancers through their Cinderella Dreams performances, and to develop young audiences too through First Steps shows.

And of course we can’t forget the upcoming Billy Elliot. Ok, it’s a musical, but it’s ALL about dancing, and how wonderful that as a result of the film and musical, we now have more boys dancing than ever.

Looking further ahead Milonga returns for tango lovers for just two performances and we have the wonderful Shobana Jeyasingh Company (well two of them at least) performing Material Men: redux in the Patrick Centre. It’s a virtuosic duet that contrasts between classical Indian dance and hip hop, and is one of a series of hip hop related shows we will be presenting in the Patrick Centre this year. Not least of which, our second ever B-Side Hip Hop festival taking place on 19-21 May.  Last year it attracted over 5,000 visitors – this year we are aiming for even more!

Now I may be a bit biased, given I have a slight dance addiction, but I think there is something in our upcoming dance programme to tempt just about everyone.  Dance, after all, is a universal language.

Look out for the next instalment of Fiona’s blog coming soon. For more information about our forthcoming Dance programme, visit our What’s On Pages.