This community dance project marked the planned installation of Jyll Bradley’s The Hop in Chrisp Street Market, Poplar, London. The Hop had moved from its extended stay at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank. One of the very places ‘hoppers’, people who immigrated to Kent each summer would have started their journey from. As a precursor to the Poplar installation a collaboration between myself, youth groups in Poplar, and the Hop installed in the Freeze Festival, Regent’s Park London, took place in October 2023. 

“The Hop sculpture will be re-homed in Poplar, East London in 2024. This new and very special dance performance by young people from Spotlight, Langdon Park is devised with leading choreographer Adesola Akinleye. This performance marks the close of The Hop Square at Frieze and a ceremonial handover of the spirit of The Hop sculpture to members of the Poplar community.”

The Hop sculpture had experienced a problem being installed at Freeze; instead, Jyll created a space where events happened across the Freeze Festival period (The Hop Square).

I reimagined the choreographic plan for the performance within the sculpture as a remembering/ re-membering of The Hop, as the young dances became the physical shapes and patterns created by moving through the actual sculpture. For the young dancers, this was also about becoming art through performance rather than just observing it. So on a rainy day in October, wearing raincoats the colours of The Hop, we re-membered The Hop (and remembered the hopping history of Poplar).