As you all know Von Einhorn and I are big supporters of the arts. Anyway you can imagine how delighted we were to find out that on the 8th June there was another community show on at Sadler’s Wells by creative producer Jane Hackett and her team. The National Youth Dance Company performed ‘In Between’ first. It was a very energetic, creative piece, and you have to marvel at the amazing skills of the young dancers, incredible. I just hope there are enough opportunities for them all to continue their amazing craft. (Arts Council are you listening?)
Next came Riot Offspring using one of my particular favourite pieces of music Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring with a REAL orchestra, (South Bank Sinfonia) wonderful, especially for all the people taking part and for us the music was spectacular, very exciting.
These community shows are always amazing because they allow people who normally wouldn’t be included in something as grand as a performance at Sadler’s Wells to take part in something creative with loads of different age groups that they may not necessarily mix with socially. They all work together and at the same time get a great sense of belonging and being part of something big. It’s hard for us to evaluate just how important this is to participants but I suspect that the main product of all these projects is a growth of confidence, in oneself and in others.
There were representatives from all age groups including one participant of 92. Also a great opportunity for some young mothers and their babies to be included in something, it can be very isolating to have a small child and your identity as a person can feel as if it has got a bit subsumed.
Here they were doing something very out of the ordinary, and interacting with a very creative bunch of people from totally different worlds. You get the feeling watching all the different groups working together that the performance is really only a small part of this project and they must have all had a great time during the long months of workshops, working with the 5 very different choreographers.
These sorts of projects should be available in every community for every age group to be able to take part in. We loved seeing the tiny babies being carried on to the stage (I love babies but Von Einhorn finds them disruptive, I don’t think he has a soul).
The performance as always was exciting and inspiring. The staging was wonderful, we particularly liked all the newspaper, very imaginative. This was a proper production with professional production values, there was nothing condescending about it in any way. Von Einhorn kept muttering about recycling of newspaper, sometimes I think his attention span leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe we will encourage him to take part in the next production, it may stop him fidgeting so much.
