New Horizons: A Dancing Festival premiered in 2021. While we faced the many challenges of Covid-19, an opportunity also emerged in which we could explore new ways to share performances with external audiences.
The greatest benefit of this experience is having talented and passionate people by your side, who you can share your energy and grow together with … regardless of the experience you are part of, by investing yourself and exploring, you can shift immensely the end result – Narina Bira (BA Dance Graduating Student).
Throughout their final year of study, students work in collaboration with industry professionals on a variety of site-specific and digital performances that are live-streamed and publicly attended in a three-day showcase. This provides real life, practical experiences, that set them up for fruitful careers in the dance industry. New Horizons highlights the skills and artistry that our artists acquire throughout their journeys with us, as well as mirroring the practice and process of the professional industry they will enter.
This event is a celebration of our students' achievements, our spaces, and the integrity of the work at Middlesex University. Utilising our specialist facilities and non-traditional performance spaces, new creative pieces, reconstructed work, screendance and interdisciplinary, collaborative student-led work is shared. This year over 300 external guests as well staff and students turn out to support our final year performers who communicated “Great energy, fine precision, beautiful fluency and collective spirit” - Professor Kurt Bailing.
We actively nurture interdisciplinary, collaborative partnerships with students in Music and Theatre arts to strengthen our Arts and Creative industries community. New Horizons also offers a platform to showcase collaboration beyond our university walls, embedding community partnerships with young people from external organisations, developed through the established Raising Aspirations programme.
We look forward to fostering this project as it continues to evolve, exploring the creative potential of our artists, embedding interdisciplinary practice and strengthening our community ethos here at Middlesex University.