Phoenix Dance Theatre CEO Jennifer Coleman-Peers reflects on 2024, our highlights throughout the year and what we have to look forward to in 2025:

“As I write, Yorkshire is still covered in a thick blanket of snow and ice. The big freeze has forced us to start the year a little more slowly than we otherwise might and has given me time to reflect on everything the company achieved last year as well as all that we have planned for the year ahead.

2024 was Marcus Jarrell Willis’ first full year in post as Artistic Director and under his leadership the team delivered an incredible programme, including the UK tour of BELONGING: Loss. Legacy. Love. and our second local Community Engagement Tour. Alongside this he focused on creating opportunities for emerging talent, from launching our Phoenix Fridays programme, which seeks to support Leeds-based independent dance artists with time, space and exposure, to supporting our two Junior Dancers as they established themselves within the company, and holding our first Freelancer Networking Day in collaboration with Associate Artist, Iolanda Portogallo.

Through the year the Learning & Development team continued to support children and young people across the region, from Healthy Holidays, a free provision that helps to combat school holiday hunger and isolation, to our Phoenix Youth Academies, which provide training for young people with an interest in pursuing dance further. They also achieved the Scope UK Inclusive Activity Award for our Illuminate Dance provision.

The team delivered all of this and much, much more despite facing enormous challenges. When I look back on the year it is their resilience, compassion and determination that really stands out for me.

And so, as I look to the year ahead, I am excited by the plans we have in store and know that our audiences and the children and young people we work with are in for a treat.

Marcus and the studio team are in the final phase of preparations for the UK tour of Inside Giovanni’s Room, which will have its world premiere in Leeds on Thursday 6 March. This will be Marcus’s first full-length narrative work for Phoenix. He has chosen to explore the themes of love, sexuality, guilt, and self-acceptance that James Baldwin considered in his seminal 1956 novel, Giovanni’s Room. Although several decades have passed since the book was first published, decades that have seen great strides forward in social equality, there is rising intolerance that threatens to degrade the hard-won rights of marginalised and minoritised people. Inside Giovanni’s Room therefore promises to be an important work not only for the artistic distinction Marcus brings as choreographer and Director, but also because of the urgency and relevance of the story he is seeking to tell.

Beyond the UK tour, the company will take a programme overseas in spring and will deliver a third Community Engagement Tour in the autumn. Marcus will also continue to support development internally and within the freelance community, finding ways to leverage the resources we have as an established company to deliver the greatest artistic impact we can, not just for the benefit of Phoenix but for the wider sector.

Through our Learning & Development work we will continue to seek to support as many children and young people as we can, focusing particularly on creating pathways for those who might otherwise face barriers to engaging with dance or the arts more broadly. One upcoming highlight is our male-only event NO LIMIT, which will be held on Sunday 9 February. Keeping true to our roots as a company that was initially all-male, this event will celebrate the distinctive energy and dynamism that boys bring to the stage.

Everything we achieve this year will be made possible by the talent and hard work of our people, so we will continue to focus on developing a culture of belonging and collaboration that supports individual development as well as company-wide excellence. We will seek out best practice and share learning when we think it could have value to others. We will persist in asking ourselves challenging questions and will always be open to feedback.

I am excited by everything we have planned for 2025, but as CEO I am also very aware of the difficult headwinds we face. A report from the Campaign for the Arts and The University of Warwick published in December confirmed what we sadly already knew – that the UK’s arts and culture sector is in crisis. Local government funding is plummeting, arts have been pushed out of the curriculum, and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are increasingly unable to financially sustain a career in the sector.

At Phoenix Dance Theatre we start the year in a very challenging financial position, thanks in part to rising costs and reductions in the grants we receive. With many organisations in a similar position, we also face increasing competition for new funds. We are taking a careful and pragmatic approach, but the truth is that we will only be able to continue to deliver on our promise of creating extraordinary dance that is accessible for everyone if we are able to secure additional support.

We will work hard to earn that support because we know that our work changes lives. Dance can not only delight and entertain, it can explore challenging issues in a way that might be confronting via another medium, it can help develop confidence in a young person who is struggling at school, and it can inspire and motivate someone who is feeling exhausted by the state of the world. Dance is transformative.

As the snow slowly melts and everyone finally launches themselves headlong into the new year, I invite you to engage with Phoenix Dance Theatre in 2025. Whether you book a ticket to see Inside Giovanni’s Room, invite the company to deliver a workshop in your child’s school, help spread the word on social media, or make a donation to help make our plans possible, join us and together we can continue to create extraordinary dance.”