Dance artist Lewys Holt's double-bill Phrases & Footnotes comes to Exeter's Bloom: Online Festival of Mental Health Awareness

Interdisciplinary dance artist Lewys Holt's double-bill show Phrases & Footnotes will be streaming all day on Saturday 15th May with a Q&A with Lewys at 8pm, as part of Exeter Phoenix's Bloom: Online Festival of Mental Health Awareness. The show is touring digitally this spring with several venues across the UK.

Both shows approach miscommunication and confusion in our use of language by instead exploring them through movement; Phrases plays with our interpretations of everyday sayings, whilst Footnotes parodies academic-speak, taking audiences on long, humorous digressions.

Holt’s work explores release and improvisation. He has worked with prominent international artists including Tino Sehgal, Sally Marie, New Art Club, Simone Mousset, Rosemary Lee and Christopher Owen and is co-curator of improvised performance night Roadhouse with his partner Eleanor Sikorski (Nora, Dancing Museums II), whom he also hosts the popular Two Left Feet dance podcast with. 

He has received various major commissions, including performances for the Arts Council Collection's 70th Anniversary Exhibition curated by Ryan Gander and the UK premiere of Laura Swanson’s exhibition Beneath the Mask.

Holt said: “It feels really exciting to be bringing these shows back now (almost) post Covid. I think they speak to the webs that we can all get stuck in, in our heads when we’re deprived of connection with others. There’s a lot that’s tragic about that but there’s also a lot that’s funny about it as well. These shows have always been about forming solidarity with lonely and/or anxious people and I hope that the people who might need some of that get to see them.”

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Tour dates

18th April - Open Source Arts, Leeds (live stream)

1st May  - Old Fire Station, Oxford (live stream)

15th May - Phoenix, Exeter (live stream)

16th May - Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton (live stream)