Roll up, roll up, for free Bradford Festival outdoor spectacular
- Alan Hulme
- 3 minutes ago
- 2 min read
More than 100 artists from around the world will take part in the Bradford Festival on July 18-19, a free weekend combining world-class circus, street theatre, dance and family entertainment, all aiming to build on last year's success during Bradford's UK City of Culture year.
Bradford’s Mirror Pool - the UK’s largest urban water feature - will be the stage for a large-scale, aerial show from Gorilla Circus. Featuring high wire-walking, dance trapeze and hair hanging and using a series of cables spread over a 60m area, audiences can be close to and in amongst the action, as the artists perform overhead.
Hip-hop choreography piece Closer to My Dreams will take place in new city-centre park Norfolk Gardens, alongside roaming performances from Art Doctors, seeking to cure artistic slumps, and living card tables creating magical and surprising encounters.
At the award-winning Darley Street Market there’ll be juggling and a huge hopscotch board, as well as a dance piece inspired by the pub, featuring vats of physicality, barrels of humour and a pounding soundtrack.
Spanish street arts company Sound De Seca bring a fusion of percussion, dance and theatre; French actors offer a promenade piece looking at our perceptions of old age, and Indonesia’s Gigi Art of Dance display a performance of connections, cultures and conversations on human response.
Seeta Patel Dance will present an adaptation of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring through powerful Indian movement style Bharatanatyam, while WAVE: All Around the World makes the audience a part of the show with body percussion, claps
and rhythm.
Printing workshops, a bus full of books and pop-up performances from dragons on bikes, foxes on scooters and posties delivering dreams, will entertain children and adults and a music stage will spotlight emerging musical talent from across the district, turning Centenary Square into a dance floor.
Councillor Andrew Judson, who leads the council's regeneration and growth work, said “With our partners at Bradford Culture Company, we are starting to build the legacy of our year as UK City of Culture; demonstrating pride in this place for residents, attracting visitors, and showing our commitment to culture-led regeneration across the District."
Full programme here