New dance production gets world premiere at Birmingham Weekender

Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Learning, Engagement, Access and Participation Department (LEAP), in partnership with Performers College, Birmingham is set to give Fortis, a new dance production, its world premiere at this year’s Birmingham Weekender.

Set to music by the award-winning composer Zoe Keating Fortis honours the suffragette women who learnt jiu-jitsu as a means of self defence against police brutality and abuse and fuses ballet, neo-classical and contemporary dance forms with jiu-jitsu inspired movement.

Inspired by themes from Louise Palfreyman’s book Once Upon a Time in Birmingham: Women Who Dared To Dream and the world premiere of BRB’s new forthcoming ballet Luna, Fortis explores ideas of community, recovery, and reclamation of identity in women.

The new piece will be performed for the first time by fourteen first, and second year female students currently studying Dance and Musical Theatre at the college.

Working with professional choreographer Patsy Browne-Hope, with artistic support from BRB Soloist Sofia Linares, the partnership, now in its third year, provides students with the opportunity to co-create and choreograph new work alongside BRB’s world class dancers.

Hannah MacGregor, BRB’s engagement coordinator with LEAP said: “We very much look forward to premiering this new work for free in front of audiences at Birmingham Weekender.  This is a great example of BRB’s continued work in the community to support dancers of the future.

“Fortis, the Latin word for ‘strong, brave and powerful’, is an exciting, dynamic piece of dance promoting female empowerment. Patsy was inspired by the work of local domestic abuse charity We: Are in the project’s development.  We are proud that We: Are’s tagline 'rise, reclaim and recover' is embodied in the piece.

Fortis will be performed at 1pm and 3.20pm on the Dance Stage at Bullring and Grand Central - Lower Mall West (inside Bullring near Marks and Spencer) on Saturday 24 August as part of Birmingham Weekender. This is a FREE event. For further information on Birmingham Weekender visit the website.

The world premiere of BRB’s Luna takes place at Birmingham Hippodrome on 3 October 2024. Luna is a two-act (full-length), abstract ballet in six movements, which forms the final part of Carlos Acosta’s Birmingham Trilogy (City of a Thousand Trades, Black Sabbath – The Ballet and Luna). For further information visit HERE.

Pictured: Students from Performers College. Photo credit: Natalie Lee