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FERTILE GROUND is the North East's first professional graduate dance company. FERTILE GROUND nurtures, inspires and challenges its dancers and audiences and participants. DANCING THE ROAD is a triple bill of three very different ensemble works that push the company into different ways of dancing and performing. Exciting, unusual, accessible Dancing the Road offers something for every-one with each work exploring a different theme. Eight Steps choreographed by Malgorzata Dzierzon explores the public space and how we negotiate it wondering if we are just pawns in a public game of chess. In chess the pieces are constrained by a set of prescribed, pre-determined moves, yet the names of the pieces such as Pawn, Knight, King and Queen suggest the possibility of a human connection and response. Fittingly this work can also be performed outside. Era choreographed by James Wilton delves into the dark side of digital technology. In the 21st century with ever more exciting technological ways of keeping in touch how do we humans connect? Can we connect? With other people? With ourselves? Was it better before when we had connections, friendships, personalities, love? The 21st Century-Where getting "likes" is more important than being likeable. Where you have "favourited" so much that you don't know what you like any more. Where you have thousands of "friends" but never see anyone. Where advertising has infiltrated every aspect of art and culture. Where you can access anything but are interested in nothing! Elephant Dances devised with the company by Dora Frankel is inspired by The Bowes Museum's exhibition From Temple to Home: Celebrating Ganesha and looks at our connection to and love of the great and wise elephant. The work is both a celebration of and a homage to this much endangered mammal and how the god Ganesha evokes its characteristics and its power. An evocative and provocative work created by the Company to an unusual music collage. A work we hope will cross cultural boundaries and also be satisfying for visually impaired audiences.