Rendez-Vous Dance, the recipient of Dance City’s first Made in the North East £25,000 commission, has announced that it has been successful in receiving additional funding from Arts Council England for the making and touring of its new production, The Monocle. 

The Made in the North East commission was awarded by a consortium of nine North East venues who are working together on a three-year strategic dance audience development project led by Dance City and made possible with funding from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. The commission aims for the partners to develop a better understanding and commitment to programming dance performances in the region.  

Rendez-Vous Dance is led by award-winning choreographer Mathieu Geffré who established the company following a fifteen-year career as a performer, collaborating with some of the most celebrated artists in the world including Itzik Galili, Christopher Bruce, Didy Veldman, Angelin Preljocaj and Johann Inger.  Rendez-Vous Dance creates projects to tell past and present stories of LGBTQ+ communities. 

The Monocle, a brand-new piece by Rendez-Vous Dance is inspired by the secretly notorious 1930’s Parisian lesbian club Le Monocle and will be performed by six dancers who identify as cis/trans female or non-binary.
Mathieu Geffré, Rendez-Vous Dance said:  

“I would like to thank Arts Council England for their generous support towards the development of our Made In The North East project: The Monocle. Being awarded with this National Lottery grant represents a significant career change for me. I am very honoured and excited to be offered the resources to create and develop a project which aims to find, attract, develop and showcase talent in the North East. I would like to extend my thanks to the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and all the partner-venues for trusting me and Rendez-Vous Dance in championing their idea for the development of dance in the region. This project aims to bring people together and involve them whilst we’ll constantly try to challenge perceptions of engagement with dance, who it is for and who it is made by. “ 

The commission opportunity was offered exclusively to dance and physical theatre artists and companies based in the North East, who were able to demonstrate a commitment to building the long term dance ecology of the region.  

Rendez-Vous Dance’s The Monocle will begin creation Autumn 2021 – January 2022, with a tour taking place in Spring 2022.  

Mathieu Geffre – photo credit ROUGEDMILK