Big Dance

A couple of interesting events took place for my company this month. As part of Big Dance Festival we performed an extract of TRAFFIC at the Yogahome on 19th May. This was a very intimate and rewarding performance experience, being able to show the piece to an audience that consisted mainly of families. About half of the audience were children, and they seemed to enjoy the piece. Yogahome is a very cosy place in the middle of Hackney and the piece looked and sounded great in the studio with a low ceiling and wooden bars running across. The following Saturday Ollie and Catherine, two students on the BA Dance in the Community course in Ipswich, where I teach, performed a short duet from the piece In Circles that we had created last term. This was part of the Big Dance Bus Tour which stopped in my local neighborhood in Walthamstow, so of course I wanted to be represented. The atmosphere on this occasion was far more aggressive and I guess there is a difference between inviting people into a space and making an attempt to perform in a space that is already used by people who might not be in the mood to watch some dance. Also performing a silent dance must have come as a surprise to some audience members and a few seconds into the performance some shouted: "Can we switch the music back on!?" I was impressed and relieved when I saw that Ollie and Catherine just kept performing in their calm and charming kind of way. And the audience seemed to stay with us too.