Bridgwater Dance Challenge
Niki McCretton Presents:
Bridgwater Dance Challenge
The following article written by Niki McCretton in 2001 was copied from the website of Dance Services, the dance development agency for South West England. Niki was one of six dance artists from the South West invited to submit an article for Dance Services' second Focus Sheet entitled "Year Of The Artist: Dance Breaking The Barriers".
According to Nick Capaldi, Chairman of Arts2000: Year Of The Artist and Chief Executive of South West Arts: "The Year Of The Artist set out to celebrate the value of (artists’) individual creativity, to raise the profile of the many artists who work away from the limelight and to demonstrate the huge diversity of public settings in which artists work. Conceived as the culmination of a decade of celebratory 'Years' which had featured particular art-forms in a single city or region, Year Of The Artist would - for the first time - be a nationwide event that encompassed all of the arts. The goal was an ambitious target of 1,000 artists in 1,000 places across England.”
The Year Of The Artist from June 2000 to May 2001 was a nationwide initiative co-ordinated by the English Regional Arts Boards with support from a series of artist advisory groups and in partnership with Arts Council England and the Millennium Festival. In Dance Services’ second Focus Sheet, they invited six dance artists from the South West who received support from the Year Of The Artist scheme to share their experiences.
Bridgwater Dance Challenge
By Niki McCretton
BACKGROUND & FORMULATION --- Bridgwater, a small working class town in Sedgemoor, Somerset, is the home to Britain's largest illuminated carnival (Bridgwater Guy Fawkes Carnival). Every November, a procession of floats dominates the town for over two and a half hours, drawing crowds of thousands to the town to view the costumed dancers on their themed platforms.
Not only does the Carnival dominate on this climatic occasion as throughout the year, a large percentage of the local population - including those from outlying villages - spend their free time fundraising, building, costuming and rehearsing for the Carnival. It is a serious business with some Carnival "clubs" spending up to £10,000 on their floats. It has been said that Bridgwater folk have glitter in their blood.
However, there is a fissure that separates the Carnival from the contemporary arts in the locale that is deep and wide. Carnival is self-sufficient and does not need the same support structures. It is older and more established, and therefore often has a sense of superiority. Amongst the art community, it is sometimes perceived as kitsch and is slightly ridiculed. However, it is a very strong and successful form of self-sustaining community art, done by the people for the people.
I grew up in the town and was not a "carnivalite". I was interested in drama and theatre, and somehow the Carnival wasn't the type of performance that I was interested in. My first experience of any common ground with the Carnival was a conversation I struck up with a welder who built structures for his Carnival "cart". We spoke about dance, as he was also a performer for his club. Our discussion on choreography enabled me to realise that here was someone who understood the possibilities of using multiple dancers in a space to create shape, mood and emotion, yet he was limited by a space that was constricted where the performer must be strapped on (for health and safety reasons) and will perform a routine for two and a half hours atop a moving vehicle, perhaps without being able to see his colleagues. His eyes were wide at the idea of a theatre space with width and depth, and at the possibilities this could offer - this man is a welder.
Charlie Dearden, Director at Bridgwater Arts Centre, recognised the need and possibility of breaching this fissure. The Dance Challenge idea came from her. She knew that people in the town enjoyed dancing in the Carnival context, yet audiences for contemporary dance were small. Men dance in Bridgwater and it is socially accepted, but they do not access dance programmes. With the Dance Challenge, the aim was to enable people to experience contemporary dance and to encourage an understanding of the form, and to raise its profile in a community context.
The idea of a "challenge" fitted the philosophy of the town. Carnival people are avid fundraisers, willing to do the most bizarre feats in order to achieve their goal. The final idea was formulated to target local businesses to then challenge their staff to learn to dance in four weeks and to perform in their workplace, a site-specific piece created by the participants themselves, to their friends and colleagues. The process would be recorded on video and a documentary film made of all the groups during rehearsal of each final performance. This would culminate in a screening of the film at Bridgwater Arts Centre where all the participating groups could meet each other and share their experiences.
IN PRACTICE --- The first step was to recruit interested groups. For the businesses, there were two "hooks" that gave the challenge its appeal: a good promotional opportunity and an inexpensive yet innovative way of providing team-building training for staff. The participating groups were Sedgemoor District Council employees, Bridgwater Library staff, Stansell (a building and construction firm), Pardoes Solicitors and a community group at Bridgwater Arts Centre. The sites for performance were a library, the town hall, a solicitor's waiting room, a building site and Bridgwater Arts Centre's bar, stairway and gallery.
An initial one-hour taster session gave anyone who was interested an opportunity to have a go with the proviso that they could drop out if they felt uncomfortable about the idea. The taster sessions incorporated an overview of the project and then a short session aimed at breaking down physical barriers, enjoying the sensation of movement and creating movement material. The following four two-hour sessions introduced some technique, movement games and stimuli to produce sequences. The participants used their ideas to then select a suitable sound accompaniment and worked towards a final piece.
The participants were of varying ages, the youngest being twenty and the oldest sixty. Their physical ability was also varied, as was the level of confidence. Many of them had worked together for long periods, up to twenty years, and had a fixed perception of each other and each other's ability.
As the dance artist, the project was highly challenging. There were many potential variables which made planning difficult. The time scale was short - a source of anxiety with such a high profile project and there were, or course, internal politics to take into account. Getting the tone of the taster sessions right for each group was essential to the project's success and was the biggest hurdle. Many participants had come out of a sense of duty to their employer, some had been told they had to take part and others had chosen freely. The employers had differing standpoints. Some had included the session as part of the working day, others took place during lunchtime and some were directly after work or during the evening. All the participants were anxious about making fools of themselves and the majority had not danced before. The prospect of performing in front of other colleagues was challenging, as was the idea of being filmed.
I did feel that there was often a preconception of what or who a dancer was and there was some work to do here in terms of trust and leadership. Although for every preconception I met, I had one in return. I felt daunted to meet the lawyers and nervous of working with builders. My preconceptions were far off the mark. The solicitors' practice staff were friendly, extroverted and worked with a caring and nurturing philosophy, whereas the building firm were the most creative choreographically. With hindsight, the reasoning behind this is obvious. Solicitors are constantly dealing with emotional situations and have a strong moral sense, while those in the construction industry are able to transform two-dimensional ideas into 3-D structures with ease and clarity.
During the taster session, each group created a movement sequence and felt successful in their achievement and from here, the project went from strength to strength. Other colleagues who weren't participating became interested in what was happening and a support network grew. Barriers between different departments broke down and there was a genuine excitement and sense of event.
What interested me most was how creative the groups were once they felt comfortable. One establishment was about to undergo a major restructure, which would inevitably lead to some redundancies, and that group chose a theme of not appreciating what you have had until it is gone, using Joni Mitchell's classic track, Big Yellow Taxi, as their accompaniment. This followed a section where the performers improvised from an internal feeling of loss and created a highly emotive piece of very personal dance. They performed with great alacrity and with an honesty that is rare to see, and at the same time made a strong political statement amidst their working environment shown to their superiors. It was brave and astonishing, and the Big Yellow Taxi sequence flipped the audience into a joyous celebration of friendship and togetherness, leaving us with sense of loyalty to human feeling.
The entire project culiminated several weeks after the final performance with the screening of The Dance Challenge Film. This took place at the Arts Centre, a place that many of those involved had not visited before. The film contained extracts of interviews that had been filmed without me being present, and I was pleased to hear confirmation of the enormity of what the dancing had done to people and their relationships with each other. There was a tremendous sense of occasion and after the film, out-takes were shown on various monitors around the Arts Centre. This enabled groups to view each other's working process, and to exchange their ideas and views about dance. Some very interesting discussions took place.
For me, the project afforded a privileged position of seeing dance transform not just people and their relationships, but changing their daily work environment into something that is about people. Usually, people don't touch each other and for the Dance Challenge, they had to. This essential human contact does not have to be confined to the home; it can happen at work and it makes such a difference when people can be physically comfortable with each other. Creatively, a great deal was achieved and one comment from a participant was that he had realised that dance enables people to create something tangible and meaningful out of nothing - no materials, no expense - and only exists in the moment of being carried out, which makes it incredibly special.
With the Dance Challenge, we felt that we had somehow rekindled a sense of creativity and community, and of what lies at its hub. The model that Charlie Dearden and myself have tested works well - for the participants, the organisations and for the artist.
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Webpage Last Updated 13 May 2007
