Mercurial Dance

Creating outdoor adventure games with a digital dance twist

Mercurial Dance is founded and led by Artistic Director Oliver Scott. We create distinctive performance and produce in-depth participatory experiences in the heart of communities which reaches thousands of people every year. Combining dance with a range of other artforms, the organisations’ work is articulated through three strands: large scale site-specific works, education and small scale touring pieces. 

Mercurial Dance and sister Charity Mercurial Arts, work across the Midlands bringing participants of all ages & backgrounds into active engagement with the arts. The organisations’ work reaches c.4,500 people a year & unites dance with other artforms to offer ambitious participatory projects & public performances. Our work has included a series of past participatory performances, installations and interactive projections, both outdoors and in unusual spaces. Mercurial have also produced several indoor works including touring work to libraries, and a major commission from Coventry Great Places to create Retold (a site-specific event in the Foyer of Coventry Evening Telegraph building in partnership with the Belgrade Theatre), outdoor work with The City Breathes, as well as creating short dance animation film Uplift premiering at Dance Anime international festival of animated dance in France. Mercurial Arts have most recently been focused on producing digital projects alongside dance, including being recently commissioned by Coventry City of Culture with new digital dance project Digi Dance exploring health and wellbeing of communities as an arts-activism project, and also producing our latest project supported by Arts Council England Fame Game a new immersive gaming experience.

Oliver is an active advocate for dance/the arts, and is on the committee group for Dance Hub Birmingham.  

Current Outdoor Touring Work Includes:

Fame Game is a new immersive outdoor adventure game. Solve the mystery and be the real star of this escape hunt.

The story so far…There’s something amiss behind the scenes of a new TV talent show, ‘Fame Game’. Unlock the clues, solve the puzzles and uncover the mystery behind this site-specific escape hunt across the city centre. A fantastic day out with friends or family!

Have you got what it takes to be the true star of the show?

The City Breathes is a poetic and engaging trio that features two dancers and a spoken word artist. It is a response to the health challenges that we face in our cities, and speaks to how mindfulness and connectedness are important pathways on our journeys towards healing and wellbeing. The spoken word is weaved into, and around, the movement, almost becoming a community prayer; a call to action for healing and connectedness across our communities.

First presented at Coventry Cathedral, this 20 minute work can be performed anywhere.