January 15th, 2018
The first Monday gathering of 2018 and we are joined by Hannah and Paul from Festival Theatre. We watched a video that had been sent to me before Christmas by dancers from Skånes Dance Theatre in Malmö, Sweden (I had been invited to work with them in December to mentor three of their dancers, and other professionals from the community, in developing work in collaboration with people living with dementia. As part of that I asked the Audience With… Troupe for ‘top tips’ for working with older people in dance, to film themselves and to send them to me to present and share on the training. Mood Indigo, Doreen’s solo dance, was one of things that Doreen shared. The three Skånes dancers were inspired to re-create Mood Indigo as a trio for three men. They filmed it and sent it back to us in Edinburgh) So here we were on 15th January 2018 in the Empire Rooms of the Festival Theatre watching a choreography (Doreen’s only solo dance) originally performed in Leith Theatre in 1953, 65 years later, watching a version of that work created in Malmö Sweden in 2018 Shivers down the spine! To say Doreen was moved is an understatement!
We also spent time thinking about what we would like to do this season, why we exist, and what we are here to do. We are NOT a social club and must never morph into one! We talked about the need for visibility and a public face to our work .
Doreen brought photo’s of the Moxon Girls and poster of the Calder Girls in 1951 – sent to her by Colin Campbell a collector from Glasgow. What was significant about them was that all the ‘girls’, the dancers, were named individually, one of the first times this happened.
And we started a diary as a way to note and record what happens each week and to collect new possibilities, potentials, thoughts and ideas. Doreen asks the question, a good question – what do we do with everything we are collecting? One to think about. – Janice Parker
An Audience With... 