With Christmas fast approaching, our Christmas tree is up, our mince pies are out and we’re feeling both festive and thankful here at Motionhouse. 2017 has been a wonderful year for us and we couldn’t have done it without you.

So in the true spirit of Christmas, let’s celebrate! Pour yourself a cup of tea or a glass of mulled wine, sit back and enjoy some of our highlights with us.

This year we performed to 66,354 people. Back by popular demand, we began the year with a spring tour of our long-running show, Scattered, which again proved a huge hit with audiences.

In February we started rehearsals for our new touring theatre production, Charge. An exploration of the role of electricity in the human body, Charge was inspired by University of Oxford scientist Frances Ashcroft’s book The Spark of Life – a unique fusion of arts and science.

We also toured our outdoor work over the summer, reaching 32,290 people.  In August the whole company went to Denmark to create Watermusic, a huge outdoor spectacle we were commissioned to make for the Aarhus 2017 European Capital of Culture celebrations in Randers, Denmark. 17,400 people saw the show over 2 days and more than 100,000 people watched the livestream.

In October we premiered Charge at Warwick Arts Centre and since then the show has been on tour to 10 venues and has been seen by 5,752 people. The Spring tour from January to June will visit 17 venues for 29 performances, including Birmingham Hippodrome and The Peacock in London. We hope to see you there!

In December, we took over the gardens of Shakespeare’s New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon, and brought them to life with our brand new outdoor show inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Midwinter Magic. Despite the cold weather, audiences came out in their droves and were blown away by the performances. Thanks to everyone who came out to see us for these sell-out shows – it was a truly wonderful way to round off a fantastic year!

In June, we found out that we had received a 38% increase in our funding from Arts Council England as a National Portfolio Organisation for the period 2018-22. This support will enable us to continue creating exciting dance-circus to entertain our audiences and to inspire the next generation of children and young people, so we’d like to give a huge thank you to Arts Council England.

Whether you’ve seen us on tour this year, shared one of our posts on social media, or liked reading these newsletters, the support of our audiences is really important to us. We hope that you have enjoyed a fantastic year with us here at Motionhouse and we look forward to seeing you in 2018 with even more exciting dance-circus!

Until then, have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!