Festival with world at its feet.

Byline: By Iain Laing

Dancers from around the world have been bringing a touch of magic to the North-East. Iain Laing looks at an international festival and the region's spectacular new home for dance.

Beautiful Bamburgh beach and the stark industrial setting of Stephenson Rail Yard in Newcastle were just two of the contrasting backdrops for Europe's largest dance festival.

More than 500 dancers from 14 countries descended on the North-East for the DanciNG The World festival organised by Newcastle's Dance City and the NewcastleGateshead Initiative.

And the variety of performances from 24 top flight companies was breathtaking.

Taiwanese choreographer Shu-Fen Yao's new work Double Happiness was a direct response to football, "the North-East's mystical religion". Japanese choreographer Saburo Teshigawara's powerful dance for Tokyo's Karas Company was inspired by silent screams and deafening whispers. Belgium's provocative Les Ballet C de la B presented new dance theatre VSPRS, based on the baroque music of Monteverdi.

Dance City director Janet Archer says: "It is a pity that it is not possible to take everyone here on a round-the-world trip to see different dance companies. So what we did was bring the world here.

"The festival mainly featured companies and choreographers which Dance City has long-term relationships with. Saburo Teshigawara was commissioned by Dance City in 1996 and he is now one of the world's leading choreographers.

"DanciNG the World was also a showcase for British talent such as Nicole Watson, who is producing some very interesting site-specific work in Newcastle and Gateshead. It was important that there was a mix of opportunities for regional and international artists. There was a wonderful diversity and range to the work on show.

"We managed to draw together a programme of the very highest standard from the world of contemporary dance. There was a wonderful diversity and depth to the work on show."

Dance companies may have been mostly from far flung climes but much of the talent was from closer to home. Cathy Marston, for example, was on Bamburgh beach for a unique performance among the sand dunes.

And Janet's daughter, Roberta Ferguson, was performing above O'Neill's pub in Newcastle with the Bolly and Mertie Dance Company. Playing Heroes Alone features film of Janet as a child.

She said: "The performance was about memories and she was using old cine film my dad took of me when I was about a year old. It is amazing footage of a journey by ship from Japan to England. This does tie in, as I grew up in Japan and Brazil and had a privileged, if slightly crazy, childhood moving from one country to another. I always felt that opportunity to move around different places was wonderful. How do people in other countries do things? Sometimes better than we do."

The festival was also a fantastic way to draw attention to Dance City ( the pounds 7.6m home of the art form ( which opened in January.

The old Dance City, a converted Victorian building on nearby Peel Lane, was a popular place among many dancers and dance enthusiasts ( but with popularity had come overcrowding. Dance City, the organisation had been running since 1985 as one of 10 national dance agencies, although it had grown to be the largest outside London.

Inside are five studios, a dance library archive, five offices for independent dance companies, two treatment rooms, a Pilates studio and cafA.

The expanded centre, which also includes a 250-seat performance space, is known not only for performances by great ensembles from around the world but also for offering classes in dance ( be it ballet, break-dance, salsa, tango, tap, jazz, Pilates, yoga or street.