I look to nature to find my healing from the life that gets so utterly fragmented, I find peace and a kind of saturation within the forest
Developing Your Creative Practise is an Arts Council pot of funding for artists to work on their own and develop their own practises. Emma Hardman has been successful in the last round and is embarking on some new ideas to form an outdoor visual installation. The work with still have movement as a theme but in flying coloured fabric and light projections, coming to a beautiful space near you. There may even be the odd dancer in there somewhere.
Sessions are in the swing, dancing right through the summer and we managed to avoid very much rain. There is so much to offer within the sessions outside, the children are all thrilled with the amount of space they get to move in and out of, they all leave the session feeling so confident. We also have children’s sessions in Howick village hall on Wednesdays with fires and story telling, crafts and lots of dance and yoga, Thursdays you will find us at the newly refurbished Hindmarsh hall in Alnmouth, we are creating alsorts of new things for 2022 outdoor performances. Image is of our amazing outdoor performance of the Lost Dances, August 2021, we had 100’s of flags handmade by the children and aerial dance on our rig, alongside our new Maypole dance created by children at Swansfield school Alnwick and our New Dance for Northumberland created Joey Olivier and tested out here by some amazing families.
Milli and Betty get to work with Ballet Lorent, Spring 2021.
The Lost Dances is a creative heritage project led by young people from Dance Dynamics youth dance group with the wider community of North Northumberland to explore the rich history of Northumbrian folk dance and music.
The project idea has been inspired by the discovery of a rare manuscript of a piece of folk music dating back to 1733. The piece of music ‘Lads of Alnwick’ is also a hornpipe dance featuring a 3/2 triple time step. (The hornpipe is one of England’s national dances which dates back as far as 1522).
The project will explore the premise that even though the music was notated, traditional dances were often passed down and taught to each other generation to generation using body memory rather than notation.
Over time, many dances changed or disappeared because they were no longer being passed on and taught to others.
The aim of The Lost Dances is to engage participants in a two year programme to explore dance and music heritage which is specific to Northumberland from the 17th Century to the 21st Century, to recreate and learn those lost social folk dances, teach them to others and to create a new folk dance.
Elemental movement and yoga sessions to start 13/9/21
The classes are the basis of many years of study into movement language, drawing from medicine dance, traditional yoga practise and years of dance and physical study and practice, facilitation of movement, providing the body with a strong and safe centre.
The practise is created for each individual participating in the sessions and for all to enjoy moving the body.