An initiative of Factory International, Manchester, Here & Now - Performance Created in England and Under the Radar. Supported by Arts Council England.
A group of Here & Now (formerly Horizon) artists and two producers will be supported to attend UNDER THE RADAR festival in New York in January 2025. Artists BULLYACHE, Luca Rutherford, Ziza Patrick and Wet Mess, along with producers Nancy May Roberts and Hattie Gregory, will attend the festival as an opportunity to develop their international profile and contacts, connecting with key members of the live performance industry. UNDER THE RADAR is New York City’s premier annual festival of experimental theatre, featuring cutting-edge performances from around the world. Since 2024 the Festival has taken place in venues across Brooklyn and Manhattan, led by Festival Founder & Director Mark Russell in collaboration with NYC production company ArKtype. Prior to this, the festival was produced by The Public Theatre 2006 - 2023. "I am absolutely hyped to be going to New York to further conversations with some of the programmers that began at Here & Now 2024, and to meet lots of New York venues and presenters. The chance to attend Under the Radar is a real dream come true, and not something I would be able to do without this support." - Luca Rutherford About the Artists & Producers
BULLYACHE is artist duo Courtney Deyn and Jacob Samuel, they choreograph, direct, and compose original works. Their work is a choreographic exploration of the emotional and visual overload of contemporary life. Think “live music videos crossed with avant-garde dance theatre – and utterly steeped in young queer British culture” (Guardian).
BULLYACHE have been supported by and worked with Barbican, Wayne McGregor, Britten Pears, Bold Tendencies, FABRIC, Les Urbaines and Grand Theatre Luxembourg.
Luca Rutherford is an interdisciplinary, Newcastle based artist, making new socially engaged contemporary performance that sparks conversations inside and outside of theatre spaces. Their work has ranged across forms including theatre, dance theatre, social art, public art, short film and sound art. Luca is an associate artist of ARC Stockton, Cambridge Junction and a movement practitioner with Frantic Assembly.
Luca is a writer, performer and dramaturg that asks big questions with playfulness. Collaboration is at the heart of Luca’s practice. Their artistic vision is to create work that is softly fierce and fiercely soft. Their work is rooted in intersectional feminism. It is for the adventurous, and also the shy. In process and final design, Luca’s practice revolves around the creation of community, holding space for conversation with humour and play. They make work that experiments with form and in content explores, plays with, and questions the messy. Luca’s processes are rooted in spaces of listening where collaborators, participants and audiences are willing to be changed by what they hear.
Her current show You Heard Me, a loud show about quiet power, was showcased at Here & Now 2024.
Wet Mess is a drag and dance artist who works across cabaret, film, performance & theatre.
In 2023 they performed as part of Sound of the Underground at the Royal Court by Travis Alabanza and Debbie Hannan and Galatea by Emma Frankland as part of Brighton Fringe. In November 2021 they won Not Another Drag Competition at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern and since have been booked at queer venues in the UK and Internationally.
In 2024 they choreographed a music video for Tove Lo, and have worked on movement direction for artists such as Will Young, London Grammar and Wolf Alice.
Ziza Patrick is a multidisciplinary performing artist and a dance theatre maker of Rwandan heritage. He creates a variety of work exploring themes of African traditions and cultural norms, investigating the effect they have on people from the global south who were born or have lived in western communities most of their lives.
His work aims to engage with unconventional performance settings and platforms to promote visibility and accessibility, creating engaging and inclusive pieces that challenge the preconceived ideologies about issues such as masculinity and identity.
Nancy May Roberts is the founder and director of Metal & Water, a new, London-based production company for dance. Metal & Water work closely with 10 exceptional artists and with UK and international partners to co-create the optimal conditions for making and sharing dance and choreography.
Nancy holds more than 10 years of production experience across independent, commercial and community dance contexts. Driven by the imperative of addressing the ethics of production, their practice is underpinned by dance’s potential to unfix known and binary hierarchies of knowledge and power.
Hattie Gregory is a Creative Producer and Arts Consultant based in the South West, working in multidisciplinary live performance. She is currently supporting the work of Unchartered Collective led by artist Raquel Meseguer Zafe, artist Jo Bannon, choreographer and maker Ray Young, performance maker Luca Rutherford and contemporary art practitioner Ziza Patrick.
Previously Hattie has worked as Senior Producer for producing organisation MAYK, Producer for award-winning dance theatre company Lost Dog and and has supported the work of arts organisations such as Terrestrial, Raucous, COMMON, Ad Infinitum, artists Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas, Racheal Spence and Lisa Hammond of Bunny and dance producer Georgina Harper.
The group will be supported with a bespoke schedule of meetings, tailored to their work and interests, as well as attending key shows and events, including the annual UNDER THE RADAR Symposium, which convenes more than 350 arts presenters, producers, service organizations, funders and artists. Check out the @hn_showcase Instagram from 8-14 January 2025 for updates and insights into what the group are up to. This trip has been made possible by an initiative of Factory International, Manchester, Here & Now - Performance Created in England, and Under the Radar. Supported by Arts Council England.
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