A £50,000 GRANT has been given to an artist and choreographer to create a performance based around ice sculptures.

The work, called THAW, will be a key feature of next year's Brighton Festival.

The final form of the work is still to be decided, but it will include sculpted blocks of ice with dancers housed in ice containers.

The regional arts board, South East Arts, is footing the bill for the project.

Bishopstone-based sculptor Walter Bailey, who created the Dunblane memorial, will work on THAW with choreographer Charlie Morrissey.

Mr Bailey has worked with ice before, creating 25 7ft-high figures to illustrate global warming at the New York Earth Summit in June last year.

He said: "Nothing much is going to happen until about January, but I am looking forward to it.

"We have research time to try out different ideas as we are going to be starting from scratch."

There will be about five performances of the work at the Corn Exchange during the festival.

Viola von Harrach, of South East Arts, said: "It may seem a lot of money, but it is to cover the whole process. This is a major piece and a lot of research will go into it. It should be very exciting."

Brighton Festival general manager John Lucas said it was not known if steps would be taken to prevent the sculptures melting.

He said: "It may be that the ice melting will be part of the piece."

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