"Ways to Inspire and Connect Across Continents through Lockdown"
Written by Sarah Archdeacon, Artistic Director of Corali
In July 2019, Corali jointly led a dance residency in Jakarta with UK based dance company, Impermanence. Alongside Josh and Rosie from Impermanence, the sessions were delivered by two Corali associates, DJ one of the our Associate Artistic Directors, and Carly, one of our regular facilitators. The workshops were attended by dancers from Jakarta based Gigi Art of Dance (GAOD), with whom DJ and Carly formed important creative bonds.
Since that first meeting, Corali and GAOD have kept in touch and when the British Council announced a new grant round, Connections Through Culture (CTC), the two companies came together to plan a project and apply for the funding. We were successful with the bid! This blog shares some of the highlights from that project, a digital exchange between dancers from Corali who have a learning disability, and a group from GAOD, G-Star, whose dancers have Down’s Syndrome.
How was your project overall?
Because the project was created during lockdown in both London and Jakarta, we wanted to do something that would both inspire and connect our dancers at this difficult time. We hit upon the idea of creating a Digital Dance Toolkit – the toolkit would be a resource to demonstrate Corali’s methods of creating dance to share with the dancers from G-Star. G-Star would then respond to the toolkit and create their own dance material to share back with Corali.
We really wanted Corali dancers to be at the forefront of the toolkit, showcasing their expertise for the younger dancers of G-Star. DJ’s role as Corali dancer and Associate Artistic Director, and his excellent work connecting with GAOD in 2019, made him the perfect candidate to lead our digital exchange.
Designing the toolkit involved exploring and deconstructing how Corali make dance performances. For this reason the initial planning stages of the resource also involved other key players in our work: Corali dancer Bethan Kendrick, our two other Associate Artistic Directors, Jacobus Flynn and Bridget Chew, and myself, Artistic Director. This created a rewarding moment of company connection during lockdown.
We knew the digital toolkit needed to be accessible so that it could communicate across different continents, and empower G-Star dancers. The Corali team met up on Zoom to drill down exactly what is involved in our creative processes - we tested out ideas and made different draft versions of our toolkit.
Finally we were ready! DJ and Bethan took three sections of the toolkit each and performed these to camera (filmed by artist Jon Archdeacon) as a step by step guide.
Gigi also suggested sharing the toolkit with one of their other regular groups, Dance Lab. Dance Lab is made up of dancers who do not identify as disabled. It was such a smart idea to extend the original project brief, which immediately enabled a more inclusive approach to the toolkit, enriching the learning of all dancers involved.
How did the partnership went?
It was always exciting meeting up with Gigi, Founder and Director of GAOD, and Reba, their Digital Manager. It was so inspiring to hear how they would use the toolkit, and their ideas to share the project outcomes. The meetings were fast paced and exhilarating! Ideas flew around.
Gigi also suggested sharing the toolkit with one of their other regular groups, Dance Lab. Dance Lab is made up of dancers who do not identify as disabled. It was such a smart idea to extend the original project brief, which immediately enabled a more inclusive approach to the toolkit, enriching the learning of all dancers involved.
Gigi, Reba and team, were gaining lots of experience putting on weekly live virtual events via Instagram, YouTube and Zoom. They were keen to use their experience of these platforms to engage a wide audience for our project. Very quickly we came up with a plan to connect and showcase our project in a series of virtual live events.
Having this clear line of action in place, GOAD then began to engage with the toolkit. It was so exciting to see glimpses on social media of their explorations! Suddenly it was really happening, it was so great to see that Corali’s toolkit was working as a resource, and even more wonderful to see what GAOD were creating. At this stage we also met GAOD facilitators, Karina Syahna and Cedric Louise Tanamas, who were delivering toolkit sessions for the dancers on Zoom. It was great to gain insight into the practicalities of working with the resource, and hear first-hand some anecdotes.
