Shropshire inclusive Dance

January 14, 2015January 18, 2015 rayjsid

2 day Inclusive training with Rachel Liggitt

Shropshire Inclusive Dance co-director Rachel Liggitt is running a two day course on inclusive dance practice in February.

The 2-day weekend intensive for practitioners who want to gain skills, knowledge and experience in inclusive dance practice and who would relish a weekend of dancing in a beautiful space with others.

Workshop content

Inspiring and informative workshop, an ‘absolute must’ for all movement and dance practitioners interested in inclusive arts. The session will include lots of practical creative exploration. Attendees will be invited to be active agents in the workshop, participating in small and large group discussions and dancing, practical tasks and explorations.

The workshop will be inspiring, motivational in nature and highly reflective for all who attend. The aim will be to create a safe, supportive and challenging environment allowing for enquiry and open dialogue. Delivery of the session will be carefully structured and facilitated reaching all attendees by utilizing a range of approaches.

The workshop will include:

Insight into Rachel’s unique inclusive practice approach.

Introduction to the language of inclusion.
Presenting practical ways to create an environment where individual learning can prosper.
Insight into working with sensory, physical and learning disabled participants.
Lots of dancing and moving and trying out dance ideas
A shopping trolley of improvisational ideas and starting points. Tasks and games to explore and take away.
A break down of good inclusive dance practice, exploration of processes and techniques.
Considerations when creating work for performance.
How to structure a class.
Gathering resources.
Strategies to support individualised learning.
Setting and monitoring goals.
A useful handbook to take away.
Reflecting upon our practice and moving forward….

If you are interested in this course and would like more information, please contact course administrator Anna Belyavin via email – sidance@outlook.com with ‘inclusive dance intensive’ as the subject or by phone on 07738425742

January 14, 2015January 14, 2015 rayjsid

Happy new year!

A happy new year to you all. We are really looking forward to 2015 here at Shropshire Inclusive Dance.

We finished off the Autumn term with lots of Christmas celebrations with our short breaks groups and our contact dance company. It was great fun.

Our weekly short breaks sessions have begun this week and we are working in three schools in the Telford area. Our team offer one hour creative dance sessions at Southall, Haughton and The Bridge. Our group from Southall are going to be performing a dance piece at Telford Dance Showcase on Wednesday 4th February. The showcase is taking place at Oakengates Theatre and will involve lots of groups from across Shropshire. Tickets are available from the theatre box office.

Our contact dance sessions start on Thursday 15th January. We offer two classes at The Gateway in Shrewsbury for disabled and non disabled dancers aged 16 and over. If you are interested in joining us then please get in touch. Information is on our contact page.

September 19, 2014September 19, 2014 rayjsid

Sightseers 2014

Contact! Dance company took part in Sightseers for Big Dance 2014. The company performed two shows at Telford Town Park on Saturday 12th July 2014 alongside Arcadian Youth Dance and Pulse street dance group.

The theme of Sightseers was developed by Dave McKenna and performances took place all across the West Midlands to celebrate Big Dance 2014. The piece was choreographed by Rachel Liggitt and the performers had a wonderful time dancing in the sunshine! The performance was supported by Telford Culture Zone and Dancefest, Worcester.

September 19, 2014 rayjsid

2014

Short breaks commission

We are really pleased to be working with DASH Arts and Telford & Wrekin Council to be delivering Short Breaks activity for children and young people in Telford. We are running weekly creative dance sessions in partnership with Southall School, Haughton School and The Bridge School during term time and during the holidays.

Contact! at The Gateway Shrewsbury

We are excited to be back with our weekly sessions for adults at The Gateway adult education centre in Shrewsbury. Term will commence on Thursday 25th September 2014. We have two sessions. Improvers 5-7pm and beginners 7.30-9pm. Anyone is welcome. It is a fun environment to meet new people and move. See our Contact! page for more details.

Performance at Shropshire Disability Network AGM

On Thursday 18th September 2014 Anna and Delphine performed Collisions, a duet originally made for Telford Dance Showcase. Rachel and Ray also talked about the work that SiD do in the county and shared a film of a recent performance with Arty Party called ‘A Woodside Home’.

A Woodside Home

Contact! dance company were invited to perform a new work ‘The House That Jack Built’ choreographed by Rachel Liggitt at this wonderful event organised by Arty Party. Ray had created two pieces for Arty Party and there was storytelling from Peter Chand. The event was celebrating the idea of Home with poetry and performance. The event took place in the lovely theatre at Phoenix School in Dawley and then again at Park Lane Centre, Woodside. The event was made possible by funding from BBC Performing Arts fund.

May 10, 2013May 10, 2013 rayjsid

Contact Dance perform at the Lowry Saturday May 3rd 2013

It was quite a day for Contact Dance, performing our first piece away from Shropshire, in the beautiful Quay Theatre at The Lowry, Salford.
Our new piece ‘Reach for the Sky’ involves twelve dancers, and we had all been invited by So Many Words Theatre Company to perform the piece as part of a showcase called ‘The Clouds Show Riches’.

Ten of us set off from Shropshire on Wednesday morning, on the Mencap Minibus (many thanks to Mencap), while dancers Rachel and Anna were still busy teaching at the Birmingham Dance Exchange.

We arrived and were impressed by all the beautiful architecture and water at Salford Quay; an exploratory stroll around the building eventually led us to the Quay Theatre.
After a fair bit of banging on random stage doors trying to get in, we eventually arrived on stage for our technical run through. But still no Rachel and Anna, who were driving as fast as they legally could, up the M6.
We marked through the piece, trying out lighting with the skilful and friendly technical crew. Everyone was excited to be on stage; it was challenging performing the piece, which involved much legging it through a dark tunnel back stage to find our proper entrance points in the wings, and getting used to unexpected clouds of smoke as we tried out different lighting effects.

Another problem was that the stage was much larger then we were used to, so the whole piece was taking much longer and we were running out of music. But no panic….

The dancers dealt with these challenges brilliantly. Rachel and Anna arrived, hooray! One group was late so we had another chance to run the piece with the whole company, hooray again! And in the meantime we had re-edited the music to take into account the wider stage. In the way that things do, everything turned out fine.

After the technical rehearsal, we had an hour to mess about in Salford quay, most certainly not mess around on the escalators and find something to eat and get back to the venue.

Contact dancers watched the first half of the show, which included a brilliant performance by Dance Syndrome. There was much frantic changing during the interval, nervous warming up, the occasional emotional crisis and Rachel’s impromptu and comical Bollywood dances to put everyone at ease….

Eventually we took to the stage, everyone seemed to really enjoy performing. The dance went really well and the dancers found their focus, presence and energy. The crowd gave us huge applause, we bowed and left the stage.

After much chatter and hugs and no beer (sad face), we headed home back down the M6 or we would of it it hadn’t of been closed for repairs. I think it was about 2am before the last of us arrived back home. A long, exciting and truly worthwhile adventure. Many thanks to So Many Words Theatre Company, Mencap, and Disability Arts Shropshire for providing the funding that made it all possible.

April 5, 2013April 5, 2013 rayjsid

Contact ! start creating work for ‘The Clouds Show Riches’

Contact ! will be starting work on a new dance piece next week, to be shown at The Clouds Show Riches showcase at The Lowry Theatre in Manchester. For the next four weeks we will be dancing our socks off to create a new exciting dance piece. Its looking like there will be at least eight dancers making and performing the work. Watch this space for regular updates and photos of the work in progress. The Clouds Show Riches showcase is on Wednesday 1st May , full details of the event can be found on www.thelowry.com/event/the-clouds-show-riches