Dance, Young People, and Creative Agency
I believe it is vital that artists and scholars share their creative processes with young people, as well as recognising their elders. My research and artistic work in this area focus on agency and Place-making for children and their families, particularly those aged 0–6, in public art experiences. I approach theatre arts making as a conduit for community participation and cultural inclusion, where young people co-curate and co-create performances and installations. Through this, I ask:
How can young people, especially those from international diasporas, reclaim public spaces such as theatres, museums, and galleries to shape the cultural life of their city or town? In part, this is about how art contributes to young people’s sense of belonging.
How might we support and empower young people to recognise narratives of Self in the artworks they encounter that authentically reflect their twenty-first-century circumstances? This includes how we cultivate future audiences that engage with the arts with a sense of vitality, wonder, agency, and belonging.
For Reflection and Impact visit links to:
- Art for Young Audiences DancingStrong Report (2021)
- Video Report: London Hospital School film interview with Anne Patrick, team leader at London Hospital School (2020)
- Video Report: Bristol Museums and Galleriesfilm interview with Sue Giles, former Senior Curator at Bristol Museums and Galleries (2020)
- Museums and Early Childhood Report (2018)
- Hopper Report (2018)
SPLASH!
SPLASH! is a 40-minute immersive interactive performance for young audiences and their families. It incorporates live dance and music with original artwork pieces, both hung and projected as part of the immersive nature of the show. The audience follows the course of a small stream to a river running through a city, to the wide ocean. The work has been performed in schools, community centres, swimming pools, art galleries, and traditional theatres. Learn more about SPLASH!
Light Steps
Light Steps is a 45-minute music & dance performance aimed at children aged 2-5 years and their families. In making Light Steps, I initially partnered with The Turner Contemporary Museum, Margate, and three Reception/Kindergarten classes of Bromstone Primary School. I worked with the children to facilitate them responding to the Turner’s summer 2014 ‘ exhibit of fine artist, Spencer Finches’ work: ‘The skies can’t keep their secret‘. In the co-creation with the Reception/Kindergarten classes, this resulted in the professional dance-performance work, Light Steps. The piece was originally made for three professional dancers and one professional musician. It is an interactive performance work in which young audiences participate at different points across the whole performance. This was then performed to other reception/kindergarten age children (outside the area) across the South Eas tof England 2014- 2015. This phase was supported through funding from Middlesex University, University of Michigan: Flint, and Arts Council England.
Light Steps tells the story of Alex, an endearing gender-neutral rag doll, woken by the morning light to explore a day punctuated by points of light as the sun travels across the sky. Alex’s journey is overseen by three friends (two dancers and a musician) whose movement, music and dance mirror Alex’s feelings and curiosity as they experience the journey of the sun across the sky. Beginning with first light, the dance and music (a profoundly beautiful live soundtrack by Jake Alexander) trace the sun’s morning light, followed by ‘something flying by‘ in the midmorning, then a cloud over head in the mid-day sky, the light on the tide coming in in the afternoon, and finally a beautiful sunset, Alex’s day is an adventure in colour, music , and dance which children can enjoy and participate in.. Link to Light Steps archive document
Found
Found was created out of the R&D project, The Ila Project. The Ila Project developed the creative processes and methods I used in the creation of Light Steps by co-creating with children as they respond to exhibits in their local cultural organisations (museums and galleries). Workshops with young people aged 5 – 10 years were carried out in three geographic locations – London: The London Hospital School with V&A Museum of Childhood, Bristol: Hannah Moore School with Bristol Museums and Galleries, and Flint, USA, Daley Elementary School with Flint Institute of Arts. This project (Ila) led to the making of the performance work Found. Found is an interactive performance-work performed by two professional dancers and a professional musician. This phase was supported through funding from Middlesex University, Pavilion Dance South West, Arts Council England.
Found is an engaging and lively 40-minute music & dance performance aimed at young people aged 4-7 years and their families in theatre and educational settings. With live music and an invitation to audiences to play and participate, Found looks at what connects us to each other and our surroundings drawing on stories of discovery, exploration, and travel. A drift on their own islands, the performers bring audiences into a magical world where connections become visible as soundwaves ripple through bodies and lines and angles converge in new journeys and forms.
Inspired by objects selected from local museums, Found was created through residencies with three Primary schools. The show provides an adventure in colour, line, music, and dance which young people can enjoy and participate in. Link to ILA Project: the making of Found archive web-site
Light Steps and Found
Light Steps (made during 2014 and toured until 2016) and Found (made and toured during 2016-2017) toured individually and later toured together as part of the Hopper Project. For the Hopper Project (2018) Light Steps was adapted for younger audiences 0-3 years. This included changing the performance to include only two dancers and one musician. Found and the newer pre-school version of Light Steps were toured across rural settings and communities in England. This brought the works (and voices of the young people who had co-created them) to young audiences outside of the areas the works were created. Audience feedback sessions were conducted to better understand if these young audiences absorbed the ideas that incited the works. Thus after the performances young people who had not been involved in their creation responded to the work with conversation, drawing and impromptu dancing. This phase was funded by Middlesex University, Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Hopper project (Take Art & China Plate).
The journal article ‘…wind in my hair I feel a part of everywhere…’: creating dance for young audiences narrates emplacement’ published in Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices (2019) was written as a reflection in the 2018 tour of Light Steps and Found.
The impact of the tours have extended cultural participation and overcome barriers to engagement with dance. This includes increasing the confidence of arts organisations to engage with very young people as co-creators of public art experiences. Also encouraging programming of dance in non-traditional settings, nurturing collaboration, and catalysing new ways of thinking about dance and young children within schools and early years settings. This included 30 interactive-performances, 20 workshops, in an additional 8 organisations and 10 schools involved in the first two phases of the project. Over 1600 children attended performances and workshops and 554 adult-carers/parents, as well as art centres, museums and galleries.
Artists involved with the making of Light Steps and Found projects:
Choreographer, concept, direction: Adesola Akinleye
Composer and live musician: Jake Alexander
Dancers: Anna-Kay Gayle, Alice Cade, Irisz Galuska, Natalie Lee, Maga Judd, Harry Fulleylove, Adesola Akinleye
Scenography: Shelby Newport, Andy Hammer, Kat Leung, Kate McStraw
Rose’s Jingle Dress
Rose’s Jingle Dress (2012) is an interactive dance performance for young children (ages 2–6) and their families. The show is performed by three professional dancer-musicians. At its heart is the story of Rose, a little girl who receives an unfinished Jingle Dress from her grandmother’s suitcase. As she journeys through the performance, Rose discovers and collects the jingles for her dress, each one a step toward finding her own voice. Rose is helped by two non-human friends/relations (played by two dancer-musicians) who go on the journey to help complete her dress with her.
Blending contemporary dance with storytelling, the work creates a vibrant, welcoming space for Indigenous young people and their families to encounter theatre on their own terms. Set in the round and designed to tour with minimal props, it was shared in schools, community centres, and non-traditional venues as easily as in formal theatre stages. Playful, joyful, and accessible, Rose’s Jingle Dress invites children and families to see themselves reflected on stage, while engaging the world of contemporary performance as a space of belonging, imagination, and celebration.
I reflected on the making and touring of this work in the publication: For Kaydence and her cousins: Health & Happiness in cultural legacies and contemporary contexts.
Rose’s Jingle Dress was commissioned by State of Emergency and was toured across England from September to November 2010. The work was created for Young Audiences and their families. Performed in the round the work is interactive.
The dance performance piece tells the story of a young girl, Rose, who has been left a jingle dress by her Grandmother. But it does not have jingles any more. With the help of two friends she finds the jingles she needs to complete the dress. The work encourages young people to work with their environment to find their own voice just as Rose finds the jingles to give her dress a voice.
With music by Omaha Whitetail, Northern Style Side Step, and other original music by Angeline Conaghan. Set designed by Illugi Eysteinsson, lighting Anthony Osborne, Dramaturge Chris Fogg, Choreographer’s assistant Katherine Leung, performers Amy Butler, Alice Cade, Lauren Okadigbo. Development for the piece took place with Pembury House Children’s Centre, UK, Trottiscliffe Primary School, UK, and Maniboba Theatre for Young People (MTYP) CA summer workshop.
Review of Rose’s Jingle Dress at the Place Theatre, London: