Youth Group Residency Week

The week of 18 April began with bubbles, dough, corn – flour and balls; a technique class with a difference! Our intensive week with the StopGAP Youth Group started by working with Sophie on discovering the qualities, dynamics and sensations to be found in our dancing; imprinting the floor with wide hands and feet, isolating body parts to pop bubbles, working sensitively rolling a ball between two people, and melting like liquid in floorwork…

The week continued with Youth Group members being paired up with StopGAP members to work on choreographic, technical and teaching skills. Working from origami games, and maintaining the qualities discovered the previous day, sequences of choreography began to grow.

It was refreshing to be able to be an outside eye observing the Youth Group members working, and it was a pleasure to watch as the partnerships allowed each person’s individuality to manifest in movement, which in turn encouraged StopGAP dancers to push and challenge their partners further.

Ollie and David’s floorwork became progressively more daring, Sarah and Chris’s movement partnership discovered more and more layers, Dermot and Sophie found fascinating ways to best compliment each other’s style, Nathan and Joy used their very different physicalities to create engaging solo’s and duets, and Nick and Kat’s sensitivity to each other grew and grew.

Hannah and I had the pleasure of working with Laura. It was great to have real freedom of playing with movement material, and things became particularly interesting with the addition of wheels!

Partway through the week, Hannah and I headed to The Point, Eastleigh, to perform ‘Shadowed Voices’ as part of an arts week that the theatre was hosting. We performed to a small group of disabled artists, who responded with shrewd and insightful questions and observations, about StopGAP, the making of ‘Shadowed Voices’, the wider dance world and everything in between; hopefully some of these are faces we will see again at our residency at The Point this summer.

Back in Farnham, and our week concluded with a sharing of the work created during our few days with the Youth Group. The young dancers ever – supportive parents were there, and the response was great. The week has left me with much food for thought for the newly named ‘StopGAP Youth Performance Company’’s continued development, which I am very much looking forward to being a part of.

My return to Albania

This was to be my second trip to Albania; my first being earlier this year where Sophie and I led workshops sharing our StopGAP practice. The second visit proved to be much more eventful than the first…

I was going in place of Kat, Laura’s access worker, with my role being one of general support, however this was not exactly how the week panned out. After learning that Chris Pavia couldn’t fly due to an ear infection, there were some frantic conversations on the Saturday night before our Sunday morning flight.  It was decided that our other apprentice Hannah would also be coming, and we would be performing our duet, “Shadowed Voices” (choreographed by Chris Pavia) at the Academy of Art in Tirana, alongside the main company, and as part of the British Council in Albania’s “Promoting Inclusion” week. A hugely exciting opportunity though this was, the idea of the Apprentice company’s international debut being just two days away took some getting used to!

My experience of Albania back in January / February of this year had been very positive, and my second visit to the country did not disappoint. Constantly surprised by always being able to see mountains, and feeling very welcomed by the people we met, we got straight down to rehearsals. Excitement and anticipation grew as we learnt that not only was the theatre fully booked for our performance, but that the President of Albania was to be in the audience?!

The magnitude of this special guest barely had time to set in as we spent the performance day getting used to the placement of our duet, previously performed in studio settings, on the huge stage at the Academy.

The piece went brilliantly, and I remember halfway through making sure to consciously remind myself of how much I was enjoying the experience. A standing ovation, and presentation of beautiful bouquets of flowers later, the performance was over.

But our evening was not, as we made our way to the residence of the British Ambassador in Albania for a dinner and drinks reception. As out of the ordinary as this was, I was beginning to get used to such things happening!

The following morning brought with it further extra-ordinary experiences as Hannah and I made our way to Vizion +, a national television station, to perform on the Albanian version of “This Morning”. In a space that could not be more different from the Academy stage (it was tiny, and bright blue!), Hannah and I performed extracts of Chris’s duet whilst a representative from the British Council talked with the presenter about the integrated dance work that is now happening throughout a number of cities in Albania, as a result of StopGAP’s presence there.

And that was that! Our whirlwind few Albanian days were coming to end, and we headed home. But not before being accosted at Tirana airport by someone who had been in the audience at the Academy: “I’m so sorry to bother you, but can I just tell you how much I enjoyed last nights performance, it was wonderful!”. I think I’d have to agree!