PLANS ANNOUNCED FOR BIG DANCE 2010 AND 2012 
LONDON’S MAYOR INVITES EVERYONE TO DANCE

Amongst vintage fur jackets, colourful legwarmers, designer one offs and confused market traders, the Old Spitalfields market today played host to the official launch of Big Dance 2010.

In a year when dance has finally taken it’s rightful place as the nation’s favourite art form, plans were launched today for BIG DANCE, the world’s biggest and most influential dance festival to take place from 3-11 July 2010 and again in Summer 2012, just before London’s Olympic and Paralympic Games with hundreds of events already confirmed in London and an open invitation to cities and communities around the country to join in.

Over 200 people packed out the unique market space to hear the exciting Big Dance plans, including;

• A daring takeover bid of London’s streets and public spaces with Big World Dance, a showstopping dance for 10,000 people, culminating in Trafalgar Square.
• East London Dance’s Associate Artists Avant Garde Dance, taking over an underground bunker in Dalston
• 100 dancers and 50 strong orchestra appearing on the roof of Stratford Shopping Centre
• A record breaking attempt of by the Schools Pledge at the 02
• The Big Dance Bus – a London wide converted double decker with a pop out ballroom - live and interactive for dance anywhere.

Both press and guests witnessed 100 dancers braving the cold winter morning to launch the Big Dance Trailer. Directed by the highly acclaimed choreographer Jeanefer Jean Charles, who has been involved with Big Dance since its inception in 2006, the trailer beautifully highlighted the spectrum of dance styles, and innovatively weaved in professional dance presentations from five of the leading dance organisations in London, now formally named the Big Dance Hubs.

East London Dance (Big Dance East) presented a ten strong group piece from Avant Garde Dance, English National Ballet (Big Dance West) presented principle dancers Begona Cao and Arionel Vargas in pas de deux from Swan Lake, Greenwich Dance Agency (Big Dance South East) presented Lindy hopping duo Simon Selmon and Moe Sakan, Sadlers Wells (Big Dance North) presented a duet by Jasmin Vardimon, and Siobhan Davis (Big Dance South) presented a contemporary duet by Charlie Morrissey and Annie Lok.

The Big Dance Trailer warmed the hearts and feet of both the press and the guests and wonderfully displayed the incredible partnerships and commitment from both the community dancers and London’s leading dance organisations in presenting high quality work.

Moira Sinclair, Executive Director of the Arts Council, London summed up the atmosphere and excitement today with,

“This project is exemplary in bringing people together. The quality of organisations, hubs, boroughs, dancers and choreographers committed at the highest level makes a huge difference to the quality of work. Big Dance is all about bringing high quality dance to the people."