Dance South West

Dancing through life

Wiltshire Dancing has increased the number of older people enjoying dance with its Dancing Through Life programme. Dancing Through Life aims to develop greater mobility, healthier older people and improved quality of life.  There are now regular sessions for the over 60s in Bradford on Avon and Wilton.  Care home residents in North and West Wiltshire have also experienced taster classes where they warmed up with some chair based moves, learnt a hand jive and used scarves to move to ‘Girl from Ipanema’.

Wiltshire Dancing arranged for Green Candle Dance Company to perform ‘Falling About’ in  Wiltshire in June 2009.  They performed at the Till Valley day centre, in Shrewton. The Till Valley day centre have a regular Dancing Through Life group for older people.  The group, including Emily who is 100, have toured their own dance pieces, travelling as far as Salisbury, Taunton and Weymouth to perform their own dance work.

Emily, who turned 100 in June is a regular at the day centre dance sessions: “I find dancing relaxing and enjoyable – and we have a good laugh when we get it wrong!  I thought the Green Candle performance was marvellous, I could watch it again.”

Wiltshire Dancing would like to thank the Community Foundation for Wiltshire and Swindon, for their funding of this project, and Dance South West for their support.

In July the Till Valley group will travel to Taunton, with Wiltshire Dancing, for Take Art's ‘Time to Move’ conference at the Tacchi Morris arts centre to celebrate older people’s dance. Dancing Through Life aims to develop greater mobility, healthier older people and improved quality of life.

Wiltshire Dancing is Lottery funded through Arts Council England’s Grants for the Arts: “We are delighted to fund Dancing Through Life. This is an excellent example of how dance brings people together to experience and enjoy the arts whatever their age or gender.” - Arts Council England, South West Executive Director, Chris Humphrey

Wiltshire Dancing is a consortium of Wiltshire’s arts venues, local authorities, dance practitioners, schools, arts agencies and arts administrators, whose common aim is to support the strategic development of dance in Wiltshire. In creating a strategic approach to Dance in Wiltshire, we have focused on five overarching aims, and on what we believe to be the eight key priority objectives, around which the development of the dance in Wiltshire can be structured.

Through these themes we can run projects and set in train new actions and new partnerships to develop future work.

Aims:-

• To establish Wiltshire Dancing as a strategic and sustainable organisation for Wiltshire.
• to act as a catalyst for creative collaborations
• to champion the value of dance in Wiltshire
• to develop access to high quality dance for audiences and participants in Wiltshire
• to sustain a dance ecology in which artists and practitioners can work and thrive in Wiltshire

Central Objectives

• To act strategically and sustainably by working alongside key partners and stakeholders.
• To increase resources for dance in Wiltshire
• To be the key point of contact for dance in Wiltshire, providing a signposting and brokerage service.
• To provide opportunities to celebrate dance, dancers and dancing in Wiltshire
• To promote opportunities to see and take part in dance in non traditional settings
• To support and nurture dance artists and practitioners by creating work opportunities and developing a nucleus of dance artists.
• To advise in the promotion, with partners through WAP (Wiltshire Arts Promoters) and the Wiltshire small scale promoters meetings, of a cohesive programme of dance performance for Wiltshire.
• To embrace diversity and be inclusive

Wiltshire Dancing’s steering group are The Arc Theatre, Trowbridge, Salisbury Arts Centre, Swindon Dance, Kennet, Salisbury, West and North Wiltshire District Councils, Wiltshire County Council, Dance Aware, Wiltshire Youth Arts Partnership, Dance South West and an independent dance artist.

Strategic Director – Angela Conlan
Project Co-ordinator – Rebecca Seymour
General Manager – Sally Martin