Dudendance Theatre

Articulation will be sharing regular updates from our members to shine a spotlight on the amazing work emerging from our sector. Today, we’re featuring Dudendance Theatre, who first started working outdoors in 2010. The company is passionate about making performance in the Scottish landscape, bringing awareness of natural places to local, national and international audiences.

About Dudendance Theatre

Dudendance has a unique approach to outdoor art, combining immersive, highly visual performances with the natural environments in which they take place. Some of the work is cinematic in scale creating dreamscapes that unfold around the audience.

Dudendance’s holistic approach melds high quality output with community engagement, youth training, international and national partnerships and environmental awareness. With a deep- rooted commitment to rural Scotland, Dudendance work primarily in the North East (Aberdeenshire and Moray) as well as the Scottish Borders.

Alien Aquatic

Dudendance are very happy to now be in receipt of Multi-Year Funding which will allow us to develop an exciting program of performances for wind and water with costumes specially designed to interact with the elements. The pretext of our vision assumes that we, as humans, have become aliens within our own environment, and by acknowledging the challenges we face, initiate positive action both creative and environmental. Our latest work Alien Species toured Scottish coastlines imagining what kind of creatures would emerge if plastic mutated into living beings.

Current plans include adapting a new work in development Alien Aquatic for the newly renovated Tarlair Pool in MacDuff. The Art-Deco Pavillion has been restored to its former glory and Dudendance plan to work with a live soundscape featuring local
choirs and harps with performers submerged in water. We are also collaborating with Connecting Threads- River Tweed in the Scottish Borders to perform in three distinct stretches of the river highlighting river pollution. Other planned performances include
Stonehaven and Gourock outdoor pools and a three -year training course for young people in outdoor performance.

To get a taster for the Alien Aquatic, Dudendance will appear at SURGE as a walkabout performance on July 19th and 20th, featuring new costume designs and hopefully, how they interact with the wind!

The proposed Alien Aquatic programme is an organic development of Dudendance’s current work as a successful project funded company. Three strands of activity will be interwoven according to season with outdoor performance touring in summer, young people’s workshops and participation in spring/autumn and new work development in winter. The innovative Slow Tour model (summer) will run over three years in remote rural areas of the Scottish Coast fostering deep connections to people and landscape. International working will build exciting cultural exchange on a community grass roots level.

For updates please see our website and email us to get onto our mailing list: www.dudendancetheatre.com / E: cleawallis@yahoo.co.uk