The Stage

Go-ahead granted for £12m Leeds dance centre

Published Tuesday 21 October 2008 at 17:40 by Lalayn Baluch

A new £12 million dance centre, which will be home to the Northern Ballet Theatre and Phoenix Dance Theatre, has been granted planning permission by Leeds City Council.

The six-storey building will feature seven dance studios, a 200-seat theatre, office spaces, a health suite and costume workshop. Alongside the two professional companies, the site will eventually house a full-time classical dance school and Leeds Metropolitan University’s dance degree courses.

NBT chief executive Mark Skipper told The Stage that receiving the go-ahead from the local authority marked a “key milestone” for the development scheme and means that building work can start by February 2009.

Skipper commented: “This is a unique facility in the country. Beyond our classical company and Phoenix’s contemporary company, we are going to have a training school, so people don’t have to go down south for their professional training, and we will house Leeds Metropolitan University’s dance degree courses. It really is going to be a building full of dance at every level you can imagine.

“It will offer something for the arts in Leeds, because we won’t have to programme just dance. It does create another small space for drama, for opera and for orchestra concerts, as well as an atrium which can be used as a gallery space.”

The state of the art dance centre has been designed by the Strategic Design Alliance - a partnership between Jacobs Architecture and the city council’s in-house architectural team.

It is scheduled to be completed by summer 2010 and will be based on Quarry Hill, next to the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Yorkshire Dance, the BBC and Leeds College of Music.

Phoenix Dance chairman Robert Robson added: “We are delighted by the granting of planning permission and the new building becoming ever closer to reality.”

Leeds City Council, Yorkshire Forward and Arts Council England have invested a total of £10.5 million into the scheme. Meanwhile, NBT and Phoenix have so far raised £800,000 through trusts, foundations and individual sponsors, but are calling on interested parties to help plug the remaining funding gap.

For more information see www.building-momentum.co.uk