CONTINUOUS gives audiences all over the country access to the best in experimental independent dance and choreography from around the UK. Dance will animate museums, galleries and other spaces – spaces where today’s choreographers want to make and present work and where audiences are curious to encounter the new and unexpected.

CONTINUOUS is a partnership project between BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead) and Siobhan Davies Studios (London). The project seeks to advance the creation, presentation and development of audiences for experimental independent contemporary dance within visual arts contexts. This is the first collaboration of its kind in the UK, and recognises the need enhance the dialogue between contemporary dance and visual arts.

The partnership has expanded to form the CONTINUOUS Network which incorporates institutions around the country. These include galleries Bluecoat (Liverpool), Nottingham Contemporary, The Tetley (Leeds), Tramway (Glasgow) and Turner Contemporary (Margate), and dance organisations Dance4 (Nottingham) and Yorkshire Dance (Leeds).

This ambitious and unprecedented collaboration initiates a step-change in the commissioning, creation and presentation of experimental contemporary dance in galleries to grow audiences for dance across the UK. With a spirit of collaboration and learning, the network will offer financial and practical support for presentations of dance works, initiate co-commissions of new dance works among network partners, broker relationships between dance artists and curators, and facilitate audience development through participatory engagement activities. It also aims to improve the profile of experimental contemporary dance in the UK among national and international audiences.

The network will present a series of new dance works for galleries co-commissioned among network partners and will tour existing dance works by the UK’s most innovative dance makers. It aims to reach over 75,000 people live and online over three years.

This major collaboration has been awarded an Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant and generous support from the John Ellerman Foundation.