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Lift Festival
June 2018 and beyond. David Binder recently announced as Artistic Director of Brooklyn Academy of Music curates a festival which spans disciplines and fearlessly plays with form. Through exploring London’s local, national and international identity, LIFT opens doors to cultures from across the globe, celebrates shared humanity and challenges preconceptions.
In a city whose beating heart is diversity and at a time that our plural society is under threat, LIFT 2018 will celebrate community in all its forms. Those who are increasingly at risk of marginalisation will be placed at the forefront; stories of displacement from the Congo; revelations of a lost generation in the school-to-prison pipeline in the USA and migrant workers in Qatar. Audiences will confront Dries Verhoeven’s societal fears in Phobiarama, dance under the stars to effervescent afrobeats in SESSION and experience a collision of theatre, contemporary music, opera and Korean pansori in contemporary musical Trojan Women.
LIFT last burst across the city in June 2016, the month that saw the Brexit vote passed in the UK and the beginnings of a startling shift in the social-political climate of our world. In the two years that have followed, LIFT has commissioned and programmed works that speak to these changes in a festival of contemporary, international art; a global offering of radically open work to celebrate a multitude of diverse communities and all that unites us rather than divides.
David Binder, Guest Artistic Director, said: “As a New Yorker I’ve always felt an affinity with London but never more so than in the last two years. Both of these great cities have had their identities challenged by their own countries and are fighting to remain, in all ways, open. It seemed irrefutable that LIFT 2018 would be more urgent and necessary than ever before in its 37-year history.
“We want to offer an antidote to the recent times, giving chances to celebrate our diverse communities, dispel seeded fears and confront preconceptions. From the iconic buildings, renowned stages and unusual, hidden spaces in which our festival takes place, we welcome global citizens to create work as a signifier to everyone; whether you were born here, have made it your home or are just passing through, you belong here.”
Halfway through its six-year LIFT Tottenham programme, the LIFT 2018 festival features three Tottenham Original commissions: SESSION, Nightwalks with Teenagers and Small Wonders - works made in collaboration with local artists and communities that demonstrate the diverse and creative power of this area of London. The Tottenham UpLIFTers - a group of 30 teenagers from Duke’s Aldridge Academy and The Vale School based on the Northumberland Park Estate, return to the festival following 2016’s The Children’s Choice Awards, this time with an evening walking tour of the City.
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