DX Voices – Katie Holtom
Katie Holtom is part of our DX Voices series, where we share the amazing journeys of our staff, artist and young people who work with us.
DX Voices
DanceXchange is committed to encouraging and supporting inclusivity within the creative arts sector. We want to use our platform to ensure a variety of voices and experiences within the industry are heard. Meet some of our staff and the amazing people we work with across a variety of our projects and discover their story and experience of working with us.
Introducing Katie Holtom
Katie has worked as an Aspiring Young Leader with DanceXchange on our youth participation projects, Dance Connect and Beyond Borders.
Hear what Katie has to say about her experience as an Aspiring Young Leader working with DX.
What is Dance Connect?
#DanceConnect was a Dance Development Leaders Group (DDLG) West Midlands initiative that explored a creative dance and digital experiment between March – August 2020. It was a participatory project that explored how we can effectively collaborate remotely across borders and boundaries, using movement, creative exchange and mobile devices.
Over 100 individuals came together over zoom to participate in a creative enquiry experience to explore “what kind of collaboration is possible when we can’t be together in the same space? What new forms of dance are possible and what new dance languages can be developed? How can working digitally enhance and expand practice, including effective ways to be fully accessible?”
What is Beyond Borders?
Beyond Borders is an ambitious, large-scale region-wide participation project that was developed from #DanceConnect research and development. It is a DDLG project and DanceXchange are the Executive Producers, bringing together 13 dance artists, 13 aspiring young leaders, over 130 young people, digital artists and a variety of specialists to collaborate and produce an original work in response to #OnewithNature.
3 original digital works were presented at Birmingham International Dance Festival in June 2021, with a live site-specific edition being presented at Birmingham International Dance Festival in September 2021.
I can’t recommend doing a project like this enough. It was just absolutely life changing.
Katie Holtom
Join us for your own life changing experience
Take part in our creative, ambitious dance and movement project Critical Mass, where you will learn new dance styles, meet other young people and work with professional dancers to create and participate in an exciting range of performances including the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
