From Page to Stage – Turning stories that shaped the world into performing art

As it was our 10th show, I wanted to reflect on the past decade and the stories that shaped the world during those ten years. However, turning news into performing art was quite the project, and one of the biggest challenges I faced was keeping the news light! 

Finding any light news in today’s media can seem like a pretty impossible task, but it is essential to recognise that we cannot have light without the dark. Even in the darkest of stories, you can sometimes find a glimmer of light, and I was determined to find these in the stories I chose. 

I began by exploring the biggest stories in current affairs, politics, entertainment, sport and science, and one story I was particularly drawn to was the 2021 American inauguration. I had watched the inauguration with fascination, notably it was the young inauguration poet Amanda Gorman who had caught my eye. At just 22 year’s old, she made history when she read “The Hill We Climb” at Joe Biden’s swearing-in ceremony. Amanda’s words, youth, delivery and confidence was just so inspiring, I knew I wanted to have a piece of her poem in our show. This particular inauguration came following Donald Trump’s four year tenure in the White House, a highly controversial and turbulent term of a presidency. I passed this story over to Miss Liz, who’s job it was as choreographer to interpret this into dance. She chose to give it to our Senior students as a contemporary modern, and using the audio of Amanda Gorman’s poem, she chose to blend it with Beyonce’s track “Freedom.” 

Using Amanda Gorman’s poem Liz used a kind of physical theatre to move the dancers alongside her words. Dancers were divided into small groups, and we used a moving spot to highlight them as they moved to a particular part of the poem. The dancers slowly gravitated towards centre stage where they fastened a belt around Natasha. The belt had multiple ribbons attached, one for each dancer to hold. This is where the track cut from Amanda Gorman’s poem to the Beyonce track. The dancer appears trapped, until she finally is able to take the belt off and move freely into dynamic choreography for the remainder of the number to symbolise freedom.

Connor’s beginning piece was danced to a classical piece of music that has been composed with a lockdown theme. His choreography aimed to reflect frustration and unease of lockdown. There was no precision here, and dancers were thrown into a circle and restrained. Dancers created a barrier to signify the lack of freedom, and as the music changed Indi ran along the back of the dancers as if travelling up towards the light and hope. Connor used Dermot Kennedy’s track “Better Days” that Dermot explained himself as being a song about patience, and believing in something brighter. During this track Connor used partnering and contact contemporary to symbolise the physical contact that restored as the pandemic eased. He incorporated jumps and lifts as the track built, and ended with the dancers all holding hands with their heads lifted. This was a beautiful moment in the show that brought the audience to tears. It also demonstrated how powerful dance is, and how it can tell a story like no other performing art. 

Something we enjoy more than anything as dance teachers is passing this joy of story-telling and expression to our students in their dance classes. Understanding the story that is being told, and being able to communicate that emotion and feeling with your body is such a wonderful release. We hope to pass on the joy of dance to our students by offering them these opportunities to dance with purpose, meaning and artistry.