Currently we are running a participatory programme working directly with academics, artists and marginalised, disadvantaged children and their communities in East London and Glastonbury, to make a public immersive installation this summer supported by Arts Council England.
Currently we are running a participatory programme working directly with academics, artists and marginalised, disadvantaged children and their communities in East London and Glastonbury, to make a public immersive installation this summer supported by Arts Council England.
Over the course of a series of movement research sessions; live-scored sound experiments; workshops; teacher-training sessions; site-based film shoots; and live installation events, we explore the social connections and affective experiences of dance communicated through/ in collaboration with multimedia technologies.
We are partnering with Salisbury Primary School in Newham, the Redbrick Building, ZigZag Building in Glastonbury, and NYDC. We weave between dance, video, sound, installations, research, and teaching.
Dance/movement
We’ve created the Body Talks Movement (BTM) programme to broaden awareness of the value of conscious movement for a deeper connection to self, others and our surroundings.
Harnessing the healing potential of movement and embracing new hybrid ways of making and sharing, our multimedia dance workshops led by Artistic Director and dancer Hattie Worboys, provide openings, possibilities, invitations, and invoke curiosity, for children to discover and express their own dance ‘voice’ in a safe environment.
Video
Director of Photography, Oliver Schofield has over 20 years of filming documentaries, drama and advertisements around the world and is very experienced in making people feel at ease in front of the camera. He has been working closely with Artistic Director Hattie Worboys since 2020 about how to capture the spontaneous movement and unique qualities of the children in video.
BTM has also partnered with Des Burkinshaw, Director of Young Directors Film School, he is working with Hattie to help the children learn the basic of filmmaking so that they can make their own dance films. The dance film workshop allows the children to have agency to represent themselves through film utilising the camera to represent their movement expression on video.
Sound
Through collective experimentation with Tom Slater from Call & Response Studios we explore bodily responses to deep listening and awareness of sound, toward designing a soundscape for affective multi-sensorial encounters, using an ambisonic system for a live spatial audience experience.
Installation
We are collaborating with Insight Lighting’s projection designers, lighting designers, and digital art technologies, to bring immersive installation events that are framed by the question of non-verbal communication through movement and screens. These interactive displays call for participation as well as allow people to come see our work, facilitating a more active engagement with wider audiences so they may experience the potential of communal dance.
Insight Lighting was founded in 1989 initially emerging from art-school culture and the early rave scene. We create thought provoking and elegant visual experiences. We hold extensive knowledge across analogue and digital technologies, with over twenty years of applied experience. Our interests, expertise and inventory continue to evolve with developing technologies.
Research
A team of academics, specialising in movement and psychotherapy, are developing a curriculum, which evolves from and contributes to the modelling and design of our programme, establishing the core foundations of what we want to do: enable young people to connect through movement, and screens, in a meaningful way and find their dance “voice”.
The curriculum team plays a central role in the creative process, anchoring the project in a space of inquiry, a collective intelligence, focussed on somatic practices, non-verbal communication. Their research identifies elements at play in real-time dance conversation, evaluates the embodied affective qualities of the workshops, and gathers responses and experiences from participants and audiences for the monitoring and evaluation of an evidence-based programme.
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT / TEACHER TRAINING
We are shaping a teaching resource for wider communities, conveying pedagogies and methodologies for creating relational learning experiences, building trust, confidence and freedom through safe explorations in movement.
The educational component will be developed through the practice of doing teacher training sessions with dancers at NYDC. They will then have the opportunity to help facilitate the workshops with children and in this way enable us to evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum for teachers.
The curriculum R&D will go towards the production of a written pamphlet for dance educators, alongside the documentary material, instructional video, and live installation event.
