Performance company Fevered Sleep will bring its joyful and thought-provoking project, Men & Girls Dance, to the University of Sussex's Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts this October.

Co-programmed by Brighton-based dance development charity South East Dance and the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Men & Girls Dance brings together professional male dancers and local girls, recruited through an open call out.

The work is a celebration of the rights of adults and children to be together, to play together and to dance together. It also responds to media discourse focussed solely on negative relationships between men and girls and instead explores positive interaction with the possibility for play, tenderness, empathy, and love.

The inter-generational cast features nine Brighton-based girls aged eight to 11 years: Alonna Flexer-Sandiland, Amira Ali, Camille Ash, Daisy Clarke, Edie Seymour-Williams, Ella Letton, Gwen Moylett, Romi Warde-Robinson and Sorrel Barnes. The nine young dancers will perform with five professional male dancers.

Jamie Watton, CEO/Artistic Director at South East Dance said: “We truly feel there’s an appetite to get involved with the kind of art that isn’t afraid to challenge, explore and respond to controversial issues. This is why Men & Girls Dance is an important project, it really matters to us and it matters even more that we can make the production happen here in our home city.”

Laura McDermott, Creative Director, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts added: “It’s wonderful to be working in partnership with South East Dance and Fevered Sleep on this special project – it feels like a fitting celebration of the fact our beautifully refurbished building is open again as a resource for the local community.”

Full details can be found on the South East Dance website. Performances will take place at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts from 27 to 29 October.