On Friday 24th September, Contact Dance Company performed a new duet as part of the FEAST Festival in Malvern. ‘Skirting Around The Edge’ performed by dancers Beth Gardiner and Anna Belyavin, is a lyrical exploration of connection and boundaries. The two dancers navigate the space, exchange glances and like so many of us during this time, experience being together after a long time apart.
The packed FEAST festival audience who were enjoying a sublime selection of poetry, music, performance art and physical comedy were entranced by the dance piece and the dancers. The audience were there with the dancers for every swing, turn, leap, touch and thanked them with rapturous applause at the end of the piece.
Skirting around the Edge, directed by SiD’s co-artistic director Rachel Liggitt was accompanied by the beguiling music track ‘Vardeldu’r by Signor Ros. Contact Dance Company continue to make dances which share the power and importance of human connection at a time when everyone needs it.
Shropshire Inclusive Dance are accepting bookings for this new work please contact directorsidance@gmail.com with enquiries.
In the summer of 2019 eight dancers with and without disabilities from Contact Dance Company worked with director and choreographer Jo Fong to create a new dance work for touring titled ‘Being Seen’.
The dancers were Becky Keir, Anna Belyavin, Chloe Shepherd, Rachel Liggitt,
Andrew Kelly, Mervyn Bradley, Amal Neffi and Kevin Shepherd
Creating the work with Jo Fong was an intensive, joyful and rewarding experience for the company. We are very proud of the piece that was created and performed.
‘Being Seen’ was exactly that, a call for performers to be seen as their selves, powerful, vulnerable, poetic, playful, graceful and human
Below is a 9 minute edited version of ‘Being Seen’ filmed live by JTV Production at Theatre Severn in Shrewsbury, July 2019.
Contact Dance Company received very positive feedback from it’s premier at Theatre Severn in Shrewsbury
‘I enjoyed the close proximity of the dancers and the sounds of the wheels. I liked seeing the dancers, the objects and the interactions between them. I enjoyed the connection between people and the real closeness that was conveyed’
‘It felt so personal, so raw, as if we were all part of it’.
‘Intricate, graceful, joyful and absolute pleasure to watch’.
Jo Fong’s work reflects the need in these times for people to come together. Her practice has been informed by notions of inclusivity, participation and is about being present, this moment, communication, listening, face to face encounters and the idea of forming community. This work will be more important then ever as part of the healing process after the collective trauma of the Covid-19 crisis.
Being Seen is available for touring throughout 2020, please contact the company for more details.
What a fantastic week for SiD! Today we are shining a light on Anna Belyavin. Anna has been a SiD dance artist since the very beginning, way back in 2012. Anna leads our inclusive youth dance work, teachers Thursday nights, works on many aspects of our projects and is a fantastic performer – her many skills blow us away!
She also takes care of all our well-being. You are our rock and anchor Anna and we love having you in the company. Thank you.
Shropshire inclusive Dance were invited by the Hive to be part of this exciting and rewarding music and movement project.
During the Easter holidays, the verse-atility team of dance and music leaders, including the SiD outreach team, once again welcomed a group of young carers to the Hive to learn, connect, create and explore together. This was the second intensive project following the launch of the programme in 2018.
A group of seven young people aged between 8 and 14 from across Shropshire came together for five days to use music and dance in response to the question ‘What will our planet be like in 20 years time?’. The group came up with a range of responses that explored caring for each other and the environment, climate change, young voices and protest.
The group, guided by the professional team choreographed movement, made music and wrote a song that was all performed for an audience at the end of the week. Some of the young people also took their arts award, gaining a qualification for their participation.
The aims of verse-atility are to create a safe, creative space for young carers to build their confidence, express themselves, collaborate with like minded people and to develop their skills. All of the young people had a brilliant time, making new friends and working together.
We feel the footage in the film below speaks much louder then words. Sit back and enjoy.
VERSE-atility Documentary 2019 from Hiveshrewsbury on Vimeo.
‘A Bridge Between Us’ created by filmmaker Jonathan Tritton, documents a performance of duets by Contact Dance Company. The film explores what it means for performers to dance together and the skills needed to find a strong connection when making and performing dance. In the film, dancers with and without disabilities share the connection they feel with each other through physical touch and through an invisible connection across the dance floor.
While you broke through
Assam Vivemos is one of the most traditional disability film festivals worldwide, Brazil’s International Disability Film Festival (Assim Vivemos) is a biennial event that takes place in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Brasília, with two full weeks of screenings in each city, always providing all accessibilities: audio-description, sign language in the panels, and subtitles in the films. Known as the pioneer event in Brazil offering audio-description in all sessions, our festival strongly mobilizes the community of people with disability as well as schools and college students, and professionals related to accessibility, inclusion and other issues of people with disability.
We are thrilled that the film we be shown to audiences in Rio De Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Brasilia.We hope that those attending the festival and viewing the film enjoy it.
We are thrilled to launch our new inclusive youth dance project ‘All-In’
All-In is a series of taster dance workshops in 2019 to build towards the exciting launch of our inclusive youth dance company in 2020. If you are a young person with or without disabilities in Shropshire aged 12-19 who is passionate about dance, come along to our workshops in Shrewsbury.
The sessions will include moving, creating, choreographing and sharing together. They will be led by experienced practitioners who are skilled in leading enjoyable and accessible dance sessions.
When: Wednesday 17th April, Tuesday 13th August, Monday 28th October 2019.
Time: 1:30-3:30pm
Where: The Gateway Education and Arts Centre, Shrewsbury
Cost: £3.50 per person
Each of these sessions will be unique so feel free to join us at one or all of them. Booking is required and places are limited.
SiD’s short documentary film ‘A Bridge Between Us’ was shown at The Breaking Down Barriers Film Festival in Moscow.
‘A Bridge Between Us’ created by filmmaker Jonathan Tritton, documents a performance of duets by Contact Dance Company. The film explores what it means for performers to dance together and the skills needed to find a strong connection when making and performing dance. In the film, dancers with and without disabilities share the connection they feel with each other through physical touch and through an invisible connection across the dance floor.
SiD Co – director Ray Jacobs presented the film in two venues in Moscow as part of this ground breaking Russian film festival. The film was very popular and received great feedback. Russian and international attendees were interested in how SiD worked as a company and many international invites were received !
Ray also ran a master class inclusive workshop, sharing some of Contact Dance Company’s practical and creative approaches towards building connection between dancers.
The Breaking Down Barriers film festival, is an important international event. The festival shared over 80 films that explore, reveal and celebrate disabled peoples lives through fiction and documentary films. The festival was very well organised including a brilliant team of volunteers and translators for international visitors. SiD would like to thank the British Arts Council in Russia for supporting us. The festival was a great networking event and new contacts, opportunities and partnerships were forged.sIS
‘Unknown Places’ a newly commissioned ensemble piece choreographed by dance artist Joanna Young was performed by Contact Dance Company, last week at The Hive in Shrewsbury.
13 dancers from Contact Dance Company wove intricate layers of simple evocative movements throughout this 20 minute piece, often collecting, moving, replacing and shifting natural objects such as bamboo, rocks, sticks and plants.
A dancer moves slowly within a circle while delicate strands of lavender are precariously balanced on her. A male dancer moves and slides a large boulder through his arms, a ripple of bamboo poles balanced on dancers bodies provides a gentle rhythmic accompaniment.
The dance was accompanied by a subtle and dynamic soundscape of field recordings including birdsong, tides, river sounds, composed by Jamie McCarthy
The cast of 13 very individual dancers moved through shifts in mood and dynamics from subtle swaying and careful placing, to the creation of wild eddies of movement across a crowded dance floor. The piece demanded discipline and connection from the dancers, which was there for all to see.
Members of the audience shared the following thoughts about the piece.
‘The new work was a wonderful piece of ensemble movement: focused, reflective, contemplative, infused with the presence not only of each dancer, but also the presence and energies of the natural world’
‘At times it felt like the piece was showing to me the ever moving qualities of the whole of humanity’
Described by The Dancing Times as ‘an adventurous choreographic voice’, Joanna Young’s work is delicate, intricately crafted and absorbing to watch.
She writes ‘As a child I had an obsession with arranging spaces; moving paraphernalia and domestic furnishings around to create different atmospheres and situations. I feel like I am still playing the same game’
Before coming to Shropshire to make this new piece Joanna Young was in residency in West Wales, this ever-shifting landscape of rivers and tides had a big influence on the piece. During the making process the dancers were invited to spend a while witnessing the swirling currents of the river Severn and for these currents to be internalised and expressed by the dancers.
Many members of the audience commented on the absorbing, mesmerising and soothing qualities of the piece.
In the first half of the show Contact Dance Company shared two powerful duets
‘Unspoken’ and ‘While you broke through’ and screened a film about their making process entitled ‘A bridge between us’ These works get to the heart of what contact Dance company is about. Connection, relationship, presence, and a joy in the moving body.
Unknown places will be performed in the autumn, that and other repertory work will be available for bookings.
Images of Unknown Places – photography by Ewen Macintyre
It was with a real sense of pride and joy that Shropshire Inclusive Dance shared ‘Twofold’ to audiences at the Wolverhampton Arena. The work on show was a culmination of our ‘Two to Tango’ project funded by Creative Black Country. Eloquent and diverse duets by Contact Dance Company were performed alongside performances by groups in Wolverhampton we have worked with including Westcroft School and Mosaic Disability Theatre. The rich experiences and beautiful dancing that were present in our community workshops and company rehearsals all really come to life.
Here is a review from one of our audience members
‘Yesterday I had the joy of watching Contact Dance perform their programme Twofold twice, at the Arena Theatre in Wolverhampton. I can’t begin to communicate the profound beauty of choreographic connection conveyed by this company, thanks to the diverse skill and passion for dance demonstrated by all the artists. There is such a rich landscape of emotion, dynamic, and depth which touches and transports one across the stage and beyond. In this particular programme, through all the pieces weaved the theme of dueting; exploring and expressing the dynamics which come into play when individuals engage and merge with one another on many levels of relationship.
Unspoken – Mervyn Bradley and Rachel Liggitt (Image by Ewen Macintyre)
In ‘Unspoken’ Mervyn Bradley and Rachel Liggitt speak directly to the heart in their sensitive exploration of friendship and its ebbs and flows. Each supporting and protecting, while encouraging the other to take risks. Attachment and autonomy are in flow. Always maintained is the security of unconditional trust and tenderness, whether the dancers are connected or divided. This is about the ‘work’ of friendship, the effort, honesty and compromise necessary to nurture and empower a lasting bond with another person. This is also about love. The love that exists when two people understand and appreciate one another on a level that goes beyond words. Two very different dancers, Mervyn and Rachel take us on a poignant journey through the unity and solace to be found in true friend.
While You Broke Through – dancers, Michael King, Andrew Kelly( Image by Ewen Macintyre)
My brother Michael Wall and Andrew Kelly bring a powerful, energetic intensity to the stage in ‘While you broke through to other worlds’, thought provoking and open to individual interpretation. Is this a parting or a meeting? A reconciliation or a conflict? Perhaps these two people have discovered a division of ways along a previously shared path. There is certainly an insular atmosphere surrounding two separate entities striving to make opposite journeys; but somehow we know that each dancer has a fundamental need for the other. There remains a certainty that each man is facilitating and inspiring the other in his choices of direction. They resemble machines or rockets preparing for take off and landing, the self-contained movements erupting into sudden initiations of contact; launching, throwing, clasping, pushing. Aptly, Andrew’s and Michael’s voices ‘break through’ the music at the start and the end, reminding us that this is not a mechanical process, but very much a human one.
Twosome , dancers Delphine Wise, Anna Belyavin (Image by Ewen Macintyre)
‘Twosome’ is a glorious, playful celebration of twinning; of the delight and harmony to be found in individual expression of the same ideas and motivations. Delphine Wise glides about the stage with grace and precision, as she manouvres the brakes and intricacies of her wheelchair, integral to the spirit of the choreography. Anna Belyavin executes identical movements by foot, running and spinning alongside. There is a sisterly affection, a vibrant closeness between the dancers allowing each to predict and be energised by the other’s interpretation of the choreography, reciprocating the gestures and movements extended and retracted. There are moments when each woman embarks on her own movement motif simultaneously, reminding us that identical motivations have potential for diverse consequences.
Father Daughter – dancers Chloe Shepherd, Ray Jacobs
In the poetic ‘Father Daughter’, Chloe Shepherd and Ray Jacobs (who was standing in last night for Chloe’s real-life father and usual dance partner), tell the story of family love in a secluded rural cottage. Following a rustic morris dance, Chloe’s birth and childhood is represented by the celebration of an invisible baby; shown to the audience by her father, glowing with pride and wonder. Then Chloe, now a beautiful young woman, emerges from the shadows for real, and the two begin to waltz tenderly, spinning and stepping in time, absorbed by their joy in one another. We witness the hard work of winter life at the cottage, the chopping of wood and the fuelling of fires. Throughout the narrative, Chloe’s journey to maturity is conveyed by hints of gentle conflict between father and daughter; her desire for independence confronting his awareness that parental protectiveness must now be accompanied by detachment and an encouragement of freedom. He retreats into the shadows and we are left with Chloe in a spotlight, standing alone, venturing forth as her own self-reliant woman.
Contact Dance elevate me to a place of pure joy; reaffirming my faith in dance as an expression of the soul as much as the body. This company is a gift to the world of theatre and community. It was also a privilege to watch the students of Westcroft School in their piece ‘Connections’, and Mozaic Disability Theatre performing ‘Will You Dance With Me’.
Connections – Westcroft School Students
Mosaic Disability Theatre – Will you dance with me
Shropshire inclusive Dance 