Working on – current projects

StreamDANCE (Tandem Works)

StreamDANCE is the first national project to commission made for broadcast digital dance pieces for young audiences. Three commissions of £15,000 will be awarded to create new digital dance works, due to premiere in early 2022.  

The project is a rapid response directly addressing the lack of digital dance cultural offerings for the youngest in society.  

A programme of Think Tanks will develop more conversations and, in the longer term,  collaborations between dance artists, technologists, film makers, commissioners and broadcasters.  

For more information, see this page.

StreamDANCE is led by Tandem Works, produced in association with The Place and commissioned by DanceEast, South East Dance and PDSW, supported by Lighthouse and using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. 

Nominating partners: Tandem Works, The Place, DanceEast, South East Dance, Pavilion Dance South West, Akademi, Sampad, Spark Arts chaired by Hassan Mahamdallie 


Cupid’s Revenge National Tour (New Art Club)

In today’s disposable world where love is used to sell us everything from plug-in cars to yoghurt… where did real love go?          

The latest dance theatre comedy show by ground breaking performance company, New Art Club, is a joyful, physical and verbal outburst against the forces that masquerade as love. 

With New Art Club’s dexterous physicality this impossibly big topic is broken open and brought vividly to life.    

Cupid’s Revenge is an attempt to bring audiences together in a defiant act of unity and love.  

TOUR DATES 2021 

9 September  The Junction, Cambridge 

6 & 7 October Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry 

9 October  NSCD Riley Theatre, Leeds 

14-16 October The Place, London 

20 October Midland Arts Centre, Birmingham 

26 October Lancaster Arts, Lancaster 

9 November Lakeside Arts, Nottingham 

10 November Cast, Doncaster 

12 November The Lowry, Salford Quays 

13 November Story House, Chester 

Click here for the Cupid’s Revenge trailer


Getting Dressed Films  (Second Hand Dance)

Commissioned by StreamDANCE Second Hand Dance is creating 5 short (2-3mins each), bold and colourful screen dance films. Audiences will travel through a wardrobe into a digital world of swirling skirts, sashaying socks, and glitter ball dresses. The films will subtly challenge the peer pressures and popular culture influences children often encounter in relation to what they wear and how they wear it.  Made for ages 3-8.  

Getting Dressed (the show, 2017) has been seen by nearly 6000 people in 26 venues across the UK,  Europe and the US. Its 2020/21 US tour was cancelled due to Covid19. A bold and colourful show for ages 4+, the performance explores clothes and identity with a soundtrack of 80s inspired music.  

The Getting Dressed films each explore a different item of clothing in a vibrant, simple aesthetic that frames the textural nature of clothes and fabric, with a bit of sparkle. The films will use the possibilities of green screen to create multiples of dancers, kaleidoscopes, layering and effects to create a playful aesthetic of 80’s pop art smashed with millennial pastels. Premiering Early 2022 

Touch national and international touring  (Second Hand Dance)

Touch connects, contains and stimulates. Touch is how we build relationships. 

‘Touch’ is an improvised and interactive dance-show performed by four dancers and a DJ. Adults and children are offered the chance to watch, play and dance as the performers move delightfully and deftly to a live mixed music score. 

A beautifully crafted, gentle and playful experience for adults and children that reaffirms the power of touch and dance in a digital age. Touring Spring 2022, available for international touring from June 2022 

Second Hand Dance, supported by the British Council and Canadian High Commission New Conversations: Canada programme, is currently exploring sustainable and digital approaches to touring using Touch as a cast study. 

Click here for the Touch trailer


Grass films double bill  (Second Hand Dance)

For ages 4 – 7 

Explore the world beneath your feet.  

Look down. What are you standing on?  

Explore the ground and all its wriggling inhabitants in this double bill of quirky dance films. 

Shot in the great outdoors, both films celebrate the magic of the natural world – rolling in long grass, finding spiders in the park and the warm feeling of the sun on your face. Sunny Days and Insect Hands will inspire you to look a little more closely at the world around you, get moving, get outside and play. 

The double bill is accompanied with interactive activities and are available with or without audio description. A series of sensory films offering an additional way to explore the films are available for children who explore the world in a sensory way. 

The films are available for bookings (including streaming, indoor and outdoor screenings and for schools). 

2021: Southbank Centre’s Unlimited Festival, The Spark Festival, Belfast Children’s Festival, Dublin Dance Festival, Wee Festival (Toronto), Nutriene International Children’s Festival (Saskatechewan), Polka Theatre and DanceEast 

Flitting butterflies, slithering snails and leaping grasshoppers take centre stage alongside the fabulously talented performer Takeshi Matsumoto in this stunning short dance film produced by Second Hand Dance.  – Disability Arts Online 

 Emilia was spellbound and demanded to watch it 3 more times! – Audience member 

Thank you for a glorious dose of nature and joy, just what we all need in January 2021! We love Insect Hands, it was been on repeat this morning and has made us all smile. – Audience member 

Click here for the Grass trailer


Night Tree (Second Hand Dance)

For Ages: 3-7  

Every year, in the middle of winter, we go into the forest to find our tree. Our special tree. We bundle up so we’re warm, with hats, gloves, shoes and coats. We travel through the trees. Among the leaves and muddy puddles. Listening to the birds sing. And watching for animals. 

Come into the woods and dance as we go on a gentle, sensory journey through the beautiful wintery forest to find a very special tree… Squidge through mud, sip hot chocolate, and play amongst the pines! 

Night Tree is a magical two-part film based on Eve Bunting’s book of the same name. The films can be accompanied by downloadable print-at-home interactive sensory activities for all the family to enjoy together. 

The films are available for bookings (including streaming, indoor and outdoors) 

There is a sense of magic in the air across these short films as they meet first a curious, graceful deer, then a haughty, imperious owl. The wonders of the forest through sound and movement are shown in a delightful way. – Lou Reviews 

The duo are infectiously excited to be among the trees, and clever camerawork highlights aspects of the experience to draw viewers into a world of squelching mud, crunching leaves, warm hot chocolate and glancing torchlight after dark. – The Upcoming 

 A beautiful film exploring the life of a woodland, Night Tree has a captivating musical score, which sets the scene perfectly with brilliant audio description and captions. It will be filling everyone with wonder. – The Shouting Mute 

Click here for the Night Tree trailer


FORGE (Rachel Mars)

In 2014 the 100kg iron ‘welcome’ gate was stolen from Dachau concentration camp. A local blacksmith made a replica. It was exactly like the original. 

FORGE is the first of a new set of work about memorials, replicas, and human behaviour at spaces with difficult histories. It will ask what and who memorials are for, what should happen to places where traumatic events have taken place and who decides. It will ask about decay, hallowing, closure and our responsibility to the present. 

Rachel is working with female welders and metal workers, trauma tourism academics, memorial architects and custodians of memory. 

R&D supported using public funding from the National Lottery through  Arts Council England, Open Lab Barbican, Cambridge Junction, Metal Culture- Peterborough, MGC Futures, with additional time at Royal Exchange, Manchester. 

First piloted at The Yard Theatre, Live Drafts, 2017, development continued at The Museum of Human Achievement, Austin May 2018. 


Doodle Chalk Dance film  (Anatomical)

The Doodle Dance Show fuses drawing, dancing and storytelling in an interactive, family, artistic experience. 

Commissioned by StreamDANCE, the Doodle Chalk Dance film moves the action into the playground with a cast of children.  Using chalk, with the playground as a canvas, the cast lead us through a series of impossible adventures. With the perspective switched from the horizontal to the vertical plane, wild leaps of imaginative storytelling are possible. Drawing on elements from the original show, the children can ‘stand’ on each other’s shoulders to reach a hot air balloon, balance on the tip of an elephant’s trunk and dance a jig on a pirate ship.  

Audiences are led along a path like a rollercoaster ride, the performers appearing and disappearing in a seamless flow of creativity, invention and movement. Images are drawn live as we approach them, others already exist. The architectural aspects of the playground are incorporated into the drawings. A bench becomes part of a collapsing tower, a puddle the eye of a monster.  Themes of togetherness, acceptance and collective triumph. 

The visual style, influenced by American pavement drawing culture, is colourful, fun and DIY.  

The film will be 7-10 minutes. Aimed at 3-8 year olds and their families.  


Snowy Showy (Anatomical)

A seasonal celebration of togetherness using the rich magic of collective imagination 

Co-commissioned by The Place and Theatr Clwyd, Snowy Showy will premiere at The Place, London in December 2021.  

The third in a trilogy of distinctive, interactive dance performances for family audiences, Snowy Showy sees the return of central characters Lars and Ingvild. Set in a magical hotel high in the snowy mountains audiences embark on a series of adventures including being caught inside a giant laundry (imaginary) bubble, exploring a spooky ‘unopened’ room, & partying hard in a magnificent ballroom. The show promotes togetherness through dance & creativity. It gets families moving & laughing. And of course, there will be snow. Lots of it. 

A future two week run of shows at Theatr Clwyd in December 2022 is confirmed, and we are currently developing a rural touring adaptation in partnership with The Rural Touring Dance Initiative. 


Elevate (Second Hand Dance)

Elevate is a strategic funding programme developed by Arts Council England to strengthen the resilience of diverse arts organisations, museums and libraries not in receipt of National Portfolio funding.   

Second Hand Dance is a proud recipient of this award which is providing a sustained infrastructure for the disabled led organisation 

Over three years the development programme will strengthen SHD’s resilience by : 

– developing a sustainable staffing structure 

– increasing the capacity of the Artistic Director & Executive Producer  

– appointing an Assistant Producer 

– leadership training 

– offering company dancers career development opportunities and mentoring 

– support a new, accessible organisational structure that reflects the Creative Case for Diversity 

– Imagine our definition an effective board & how SHD might apply this learning to its governance 

– deepen existing & create new partnerships  

– create a financially resilience business model  

– Business plan 

– develop a digital communication strategy