MOVE IT 2012 opened at London’s Olympia today, Friday 9th March and continues Saturday and Sunday. So there is still time to visit the show and visit the Harlequin stand. Experience the sprung floor that is the same as the dancers are using on the Main Stage. And if you are into ballroom there is news here as well, with Harlequin also providing the floor for the MOVE IT Ballroom and of course the ever popularHarlequin Masterclass Studio.
Friday afternoon Harlequin’s Mark Rasmussen is teaming up with Dance UK’s Helen Laws on the Big Dance Interview Sofa to discuss the subject “Preventing Dancer Injury”.
MOVE IT 2012 is the UK's biggest dance event - a 3 day festival of dance expected to bring 20,000 dancers to Olympia - British Harlequin are located on on stand 130 exhibiting its full range of dance floor products and accessories in the main exhibition area, plus stand T03 in the ‘trade only’ section.
The MOVE IT Main Stage equipped with Harlequin Liberty™ and Harlequin Cascade™ “hosting spectacular performances from some of the most exciting artists and dance companies from all over the UK”, including Flawless and English National Ballet collaborating on a unique piece that fuses streetdance and ballet.
The Harlequin Masterclass Studio is a dedicated, intimate space with a fully sprung Harlequin Liberty™ floor with Harlequin Studio™ dance surface created especially for advanced and professional dancers. “This year there are also practical workshops for dance teachers as part of the Teachers' Convention. The studio is hosting classes taught by some of the UK’s premiere teachers and dance companies”.
The MOVE IT Ballroom has a twist, “featuring exciting and unexpected classes including vintage style moves, sensual flamenco, Latin beats and swinging lindy hop”. Ballroom classes which include Flamenco, Rumba, Quickstep, Cha Cha Cha, Ballroom, Salsa, Lindy Hop, Latin Line Dance and Latin is danced “in comfort and style at the ballroom - now with a fully sprung Harlequin floor”.
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Photo by Eammon McCabe |
Harlequin continued with financial support once again for DanceEast’s Rural Retreat 2012 for Future Directors and Creative Producers for Ballet and Dance. DanceEast’s 6th Rural Retreat this year focused on the role and challenges of ‘artistic direction‘. The 2012 Rural Retreat was hosted at the Ufford Park Hotel near the market town of Woodbridge, Suffolk and featured 26 current, emerging and aspiring artistic directors and creative producers from the worlds of ballet and dance.
DanceEast Director Assis Carreiro said “The role of artistic director is the most highly coveted and yet is the position which has had little or no rigorous review. There is no training or preparation for the biggest job in dance. More often than not, former dancers and choreographers are handed the top job with no qualifications or previous directorial experience. Not even football managers get away with this.”
Grey Harlequin Cascade™ helped transform the Cator Park Sports Centre into ‘A Night at the Movies’ set for My Aerial Home.
Providing trapeze classes to Bromley, Beckenham and North Kent, My Aerial Home. teaches static trapeze, rope, silks, hoop and tightwire forms of aerial dance and the aerial arts to absolute beginners and improvers.
Talking about the event, Amanda Miles said, "My Aerial Home Christmas Show – ‘A Night at the Movies, raised nearly £2,000 for a local children's hospice and we had an audience of 300 people! A few hours before it was just a school sports hall and your floor transformed it. Thank you for helping our show look lovely".
MOVE IT 2012 returns to London’s Olympia 9 – 11 March. Harlequin will once again be providing the flooring for the main stage as well as the ever-popular Harlequin Masterclass Studio. New for 2012 is theMOVE IT Ballroom complete with its own Harlequin floor.
During the UK's biggest dance event - a 3 day festival of dance expected to bring 20,000 dancers to Olympia - British Harlequin will be on stand 130 exhibiting its full range of dance floor products and accessories in the main exhibition area, plus stand T03 in the ‘trade only’ section.
The MOVE IT Main Stage equipped with Harlequin Liberty™ and Harlequin Cascade™ is promised to “host the most spectacular performances from some of the most exciting artists and dance companies from all over the UK”, including Flawless and English National Ballet collaborating on a unique piece that fuses streetdance and ballet.
The Harlequin Masterclass Studio is a dedicated, intimate space with a fully sprung Harlequin Liberty™ floor with Harlequin Studio™ dance surface created especially for advanced and professional dancers. “This year there will also be practical workshops for dance teachers as part of the Teachers' Convention. The studio will host classes taught by some of the UK’s premiere teachers and dance companies”.
The MOVE IT Ballroom has a twist, “featuring exciting and unexpected classes including vintage style moves, sensual flamenco, Latin beats and swinging lindy hop”. Ballroom classes which include Flamenco, Rumba, Quickstep, Cha Cha Cha, Ballroom, Salsa, Lindy Hop, Latin Line Dance and Latin will be danced “in comfort and style at the ballroom - now with a fully sprung Harlequin floor”.
When Lady Gaga arrived on stage via zip line, performing live on Good Morning America it was to touch down on a set fully dressed in gray Harlequin Hi-Shine™.
Kicking off Good Morning America’ssummer concert series and watched by millions in the live coast-to-coast broadcast, Lady Gaga made the spectacular stage arrival during a performance in Central Park of one of her hit songs – “Bad Romance”. A total of 9, 20 metre rolls of Hi-Shine™ were sold by American Harlequin to the ABC television network’s flagship morning show, to give the stage its spectacular glossy look.
Performances at the Royal Academy of Dance annual conference took place on a Harlequin Cascade™ dance floor, supplied by British Harlequin plc for the event at the Mermaid Conference & Events Centre in London, attended by over 500 delegates.
Royal Academy of Dance Chief Executive Luke Rittner opened the proceedings and guest speaker Dame Monica Mason DBE, Director of The Royal Ballet, spoke about the importance of valuing teachers. "Dance teachers play a hugely important role by inspiring, energising and guiding the young people that they teach," she told delegates.
Eighteen students from schools across the UK put words into action by taking to the Harlequin Cascade dance floor on stage to demonstrate a range of exercises from the new syllabi. Paula Hunt, Chair of the Panel of Examiners talked the students through the demonstrations, explaining the creativity and musicality underpinning the choreography and key assessment features for each exercise.
The programme was brought to a close with a live coaching session led by Royal Ballet Principal Dancer, Steven McRae, teaching Lachlan Monaghan, graduate year student at The Royal Ballet School who appeared by kind permission of Gailene Stock AM.
The Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) is an international dance teacher education and training organisation with approximately 13,000 members in 79 countries, promoting the knowledge, practice and understanding of dance internationally through the education and training of teachers.
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| Photo: Courtesy of TDM |
After a six year restoration project, reported to have cost a massive £1/2 billion, Moscow’s iconic Bolshoi Theatre re-opened this autumn with a glittering gala performance attended by president Dmitry Medveded and the Russian elite. Unusually, instead of unobtrusively providing a world class floor for the dancers, the Harlequin dance floor was itself an integral part of the set design for the Bolshoi Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty.
Thanks to innovative techniques developed by Harlequin’s development engineering team, the usually plain vinyl dance surface echoed the sumptious set design with an intricate pattern designed by the Italian Designer Ezio Frigerio.
Using advanced wide format computer controlled printing techniques, the Bolshoi’s design was digitized for printing on rolls of specially formatted white Harlequin Cascade™ vinyl.
Extensive testing and experimentation during the development of the technique ensured the surface characteristics - so important to professional dancers - were maintained while ensuring adequate adhesion of the inks to withstand scuffing from ballet shoes. Harlequin is pleased to announce that this capability is now offered as a custom option for purchasers of their floors.
Harlequin Cascade™ is a reinforced vinyl dance surface manufactured to high standards. It is popular with stage managers as a heavy-duty stage floor withstanding general stage use and tolerant of heavy props and also ideal for dance. A silky smooth emboss gives deceptively good grip conveying a soft feel, giving dancers an unmatched confidence for demanding choreography. The underlying Harlequin Liberty™ sprung floor comprises a series of inter-linked panels designed to provide consistent shock absorption that independent research shows minimize stress injuries for dancers.
