Congratulations to Contact Dance member Michael for gaining a place at Chester University to study Dance in September – absolutely brilliant!
Funding success!
Great news – We are absolutely delighted to announce that SiD has received funding to continue to deliver fantastic projects in Shropshire and beyond.
Thank you……
Shropshire Council for supporting the development of our organisation and on-going practical dance workshops.
Basil Houghton Trust for supporting the creation of new dance duets with Contact Dance, spring/summer 2017
Creative Black Country Open Access Fund for supporting our ‘Two to Tango’ project in Wolverhampton, autumn 2017.
Telford and Wrekin Council on our capital funding grant allowing us to refresh and renew out resources and workshop materials for our work with children and young people – new props, books, music and SiD t-shirts are on there way!
Telford and Wrekin Council for our renewed Short Breaks commission – continued delivery of after school dance clubs for children and young people with disabilities in Telford.
New Duets being made by Contact Dance Company
Contact Dance have began devising new dance duets for performance and touring.
Easter kicked off with 4 days of research and development at Belvedere School, Shrewsbury with Ray and Rachel. Members of Contact Dance began exploring choreographic ideas and shaping dance movement content. This year sees the creation of 4 brand new duets, specifically created for smaller spaces, conferences, public events, community venues and for touring. Many thanks to Creative Black Country, Basil Houghton Trust and Shropshire Council for supporting this new dance adventure. Pictured above are dancers Anna Belyavin and Delphine Wise devising a new duet.
‘Unspoken’ performed at Jigsaw Pieces, Hereford.
Rachel and Mervyn headed off to Hereford to perform their duet ‘Unspoken’ at the end of March. It was a wonderful evening hosted by Worcester based dance organisation Dancefest. The evening ended with a good ‘knees up’ led by rapper and DJ Lofty and Yam Jams and our piece ‘Unspoken’ moved the mayor to tears! Thank you Jigsaw Performance Group for inviting us.
All Aboard – inclusive dance workshop at the Hive, Shrewsbury
All Aboard – inclusive dance workshop at the Hive, Shrewsbury
We delivered a fantastic inclusive creative dance workshop at The Hive over Easter for 7-11 years, it was so much fun exploring all things superhero! We will be back by popular demand in August. This is the start of a new partnership with The Hive in Shrewsbury we will keep you posted as new dance opportunities at The Hive develop.
Contact Dance Company duet ‘Unspoken’ shown at Moscow’s Breaking Down Barriers Film Festival (November 2016)
‘Unspoken’ a beautiful duet performed by Contact dancers Mervyn Bradley and Rachel Liggitt was filmed at The Elmhurst Theatre in Birmingham. The film was shown at this prestigious Russian film festival. You can watch the duet by clicking on this link
Kites – Dance and film making with Kreative Kidz
SiD and JTV production were commissioned by Telford and Wrekin Council to work with their wonderful and energetic short breaks group Kreative Kidz. We were asked to facilitate a fun and creative week exploring dance & flying kites. Our aim also was to create a film at the end of it to be shown at Telford Kite Festival.
We had a very creative and thankfully sunny week. It was great to spend the time dancing with the children and young people from Kreative Kidz followed by time simply flying kites.
The film created was really appreciated by all who watched it and we hope to share it with you on this website very soon.
A New Light
SiD have led a powerful and inspiring project with members of Cerebral Palsy Midlands culminating in a performance at Elmhurst School of Dance in Birmingham
The Sid team worked with the group weekly over three months, exploring ways of each dancer expressing themselves with power, grace and their own unique dance. Having dancers from SiD’s Contact Dance Company to act as role models and skilled animators was really important to the success of the project.
In the photo above we see Contact company members Mervyn and Erika (rhs of duets) performing with Jane and Peter from Cerebral Palsy Midlands.
After many weeks of exploring dance within quite a small studio at Cerebral Palsy Midlands the entire cast had a week rehearsing at Elmhurst School Theatre. The performers worked really hard with an incredible amount of focus to produce a great show. Heres is the view form one of the dancers parents from CPM
As I walked into the theatre, I honestly did not know what I was expecting from this performance, but as soon as the curtains went up I was hooked and so were the audience around me, by the end there was not a dry eye in the house.
It was amazing, emotional and educational!
As a mother I was in awe of my two daughters, for all the effort they have put in to the performance, Vicky has come of age, it was one of the first times I have looked at her as a grown woman and Sarah for supporting the people from Cerebral Palsy Midlands and even joining in the performance.
As Anthony Lunney said “I bet you wasn’t expecting that, was you?”I said “You all continue to totally amaze me”
I have never seen Vicky and the other performers so focussed, Gary Clifton so expressive or Peter Dunn being so cool.
Gary Clifton who is usually such a quiet man cried after and said “Did you really like it?”
“Yes Gary”,was the answer, “You were all totally amazing.”
A big giant Thankyou to all the people involved, I am in awe of how you all achieved to bring the performance together.
Everybody wants to know when they can do another project again.
As a trustee at CPMids, I felt proud as punch and would be willing in the future to look into what we need to do to continue to allow the people who come to our centre to express themselves with movement, music and dance.
(Images – Chris Nottingham)
Dancing together at last (Part Two)
A lovely group of adults, children, family, and friends came together to explore and enjoy dancing together. The movement themes we worked with facilitated by Rachel plus the beautiful music from Noel and Michael meant we could express our dancing selves to the full. It was great to dance with dancers from inclusive dance company Frontline who came down all the way from Stoke. We focused on dancing in contact and it being safe and creative for us all, finding a democratic dance language of touch that we all felt held and released by .
The final ‘Dancing together at Last’ is on Sunday 29th March from 1.15pm – 4pm at The Trinity Centre, Meole Brace, Shrewsbury and costs £7.50
To book your place please contact
Rachel Liggitt – r_liggitt@yahoo.co.uk
Ray Jacobs – jacobsray@hotmail.com
Inclusive dance training weekend
SiD co-director Rachel Liggitt led a wonderful weekend of training in inclusive dance practice on Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd February. Practitioners from across the country travelled to Shrewsbury to explore what inclusive practice means in their work.
12 participants took part in the weekend held at the lovely Trinity Centre in Meole Brace. The dancers chatted and danced and shared their experiences and questions.
Rachel took the dancers through lots of tasks and ideas to take away and adapt to their groups. Participants also got a handbook that discussed an inclusive approach further.
After the success of the first training weekend we hope to run another for freelance practitioners, support workers and teachers soon.
Shropshire inclusive Dance 