2018 Highlights

With 2019 just around the corner we we have been reflecting on the wonderful year we have had, made extra special for us with our 30th anniversary celebrations. We wanted to share some of our favourite moments with you, so read on to enjoy some of the highlights from the past year.

Our 30^th anniversary year got off to an electrifying start, with the second tour of our 2017 production Charge, playing to packed houses across the UK and Europe. The tour included our first ever performance on the main stage at Birmingham Hippodrome, as well as a run of five performances at The Peacock in London. Following the success of Broken at Quays Culture in 2016, we were delighted to be invited back in June to perform Charge outside for the very first time at Media City. Charge went on to tour in the autumn too, but if you missed the show this year, don’t worry, Charge will be back on tour again next Spring, see our tour dates page to find out where we’ll be off to in 2019. Hopefully we’ll be somewhere near you!

At the beginning of this year we moved to our inspirational new rehearsal space in the new home of furniture manufacturer Vitsœ in Leamington Spa. The co-habitation, conceived by Vitsœ and Motionhouse, makes an extraordinary difference to how we create and rehearse our work. The building is a wonderful inspiring space to work in and we are very excited to be part of this new shared venture, which was supported by a Small Capital Grant from Arts Council England. Check out this fantastic  video from Article 19 filmed this summer.

Spring 2018 saw BLOCK, our collaboration with NoFit State Circus, go back out for its third year of touring, kicking off with its Australian Premiere; wowing audiences at Festival 2018 – the arts and culture programme of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games! This trip marked the start of the 6-month tour, which saw BLOCK visit festivals and outdoor events in the UK and across Europe. During the tour we stopped off in Spain at FiraTàrrega where we performed to a staggering 22,800 people over 3 days, before finishing the tour in South Korea. A huge well done to the amazing BLOCK team – they’ve performed to more than 80,200 people over the year.

Captive also toured throughout the summer, with the addition of 4 very special, bespoke performances at “Women: Work and Power”, where we performed an adaptation of the show with an all-female cast! Well done to Martina, Naomi and Beth who performed the show.

This year also saw the creation of a new thrilling JCB spectacle. EXO features two incredible performers and a JCB Digger and premiered at The Albany in Deptford as part of Circulate 2018, in London.

This October we transformed a disused dock on the Bega River in Timișoara, Romania into the stage for a spectacular large-scale outdoor show, Lumen as part of the cultural programme in the lead-up to the TM2021 European Capital of Culture celebrations taking place there in 2021.

We are incredibly grateful to the fantastic people of Timișoara for making us feel very welcome, all of the amazing community performers who took part within the project and our marvellous team who we are so proud of for working so hard to make Lumen unforgettable. Over the 3 nights, more than 23,500 people watched the show.

Motionhouse started as a duet in 1988, so what better way to celebrate our 30th anniversary than creating a suite of 3 new duets – one duet for each decade!

Happy Hour, a playful and humorous male-female duet explores the theme of meeting a stranger in a crowded place.

Knot features two male dancers using extreme physicality, complex lifts and contact choreography to explore the many facets of human relationships through physical expression.

As we approach 50 years since the first moon landing, Gravity combines hand-to hand acrobatics with our signature contact choreography, breath-taking balances and extraordinary trust.

Lost has also had a busy year of touring, performing in Coventry at both the Fusion Festival of Art celebrating Refugee Week and the Centenary Festival at Coventry Cathedral.

Our youth groups have been hard at work as usual this year. One highlight was the performance by Motionhouse Youth at Coventry’s Shop Front Festival in March – the city’s first key arts event since Coventry was named UK City of Culture 2021.

And on top of all this, we still managed to celebrate our 30^th Anniversary in style! Just some of the activities to celebrate our milestone included: our dancers spending 2 days in Leamington and the surrounding area performing lifts for our #Lift Leamington and #Lift Local campaigns in front of some of the incredible local businesses in the area, and an anniversary fundraising Gala Dinner at Vitsoe. We’re all looking forward to seeing what next year brings and to sharing our work with you throughout 2019.

Your support is really important to us, and we couldn’t have done this without you. We hope that you have enjoyed a fantastic year with us here at Motionhouse and we look forward to seeing you again in 2019.

From all the team at Motionhouse we would like to wish you a very happy festive season.