Every Day People

Every Day People is a choreography project directed by Sally Marie (Sweetshop Revolution) and produced by Rachel Palmer from The Dance Movement The project has just been awarded £15k from Arts Council England and will take 6 people, unconnected from the dance world through the process of developing an idea, devising a dance and presenting it to an audience. Sally Marie will facilitate each novice choreographer over a period of seven weeks to translate their ideas onto 4 professional dancers, before assisting them in developing these into six bite-size dances which will be presented at Farnham Maltings on Sunday 21st August, 8pm.

As part of The Dance Movement’s audience development plan the Company strives to find new approaches to connect people with dance.  Audience development reports provide evidence that people attend cultural activities they relate to. If a person wants to paint they can join an art club, sing they can join a choir but there are few ways in which a person can learn how to make a dance.

Through the Every Day People project The Dance Movement introduces people to dance by asking them to step inside the choreographic process, meet and work with dance professionals in order to develop a deep and long lasting relationship with dance.

Participation as a tool for developing a relationship with dance: The Pitmen Painters is a useful example of how participation in art can nurture art supporters. A group of coal miners unconnected from the art world took up an art history class. Their tutor thought the best way for them to develop their appreciation for art was to learn how to paint. Eighty years on their art is permanently exhibited and is described as capturing, ‘every aspect of life from their community, from scenes around the kitchen table to the dangerous world of the coal face’.

The Dance Movement envisages the six Every Day People, like the Pitmen Painters, will nurture their understanding and appreciation of dance as a result of participating in the project and hopefully go on to act as catalysts to ignite other people to experience and engage with dance culture. The project aims to open up a dialogue between those to whom dance is familiar and those to whom it is not. It aims to bring people together to find a common ground by creating something that matters both to the individual who is making it, the people who are dancing it and the people who are watching it.

DFSA Course Leader Rosie Gunn is delighted to have been chosen as one of the six Everyday People to take part in this project. "In my own art practice I am interested in dance for the camera and have worked with dancers on a couple of occasions, but have never had the opportunity to create a piece of dance and would relish this opportunity. I have no idea what I would do, or where to start, but would like to be able to create something that explored an important issue with an element of humour. I would like to make something that would appeal to dancers themselves to interact with the idea but also to draw in an audience through humerous moments and possibly move them to consider something on a deeper level."