Director of Dance in Company, Holly Gibbs, describes her Hull Maritime Community Grant Project taking seated dance sessions to groups around Hull.
Dance in company spent the summer spreading maritime joy around Hull and the East Riding thanks to the Hull Maritime Community Grants Fund. Seated dance sessions designed and delivered by myself, director of local community organisation Dance in Company, went on a tour of existing community groups in the city run by a variety of charities and organisations.
Those that took part in the 11 funded sessions included Age UK Hull, Butterflies Dementia Support Group, Dove House Hospice, Sight Support Hull and East Yorkshire and Gipsyville Coffee and Chat run by Absolutely Cultured. At first, anything with the word dance in it is usually met with a resounding no from most adults, however, the sessions always concluded with a group of happy people singing and dancing together in a circle having fun and sharing laughs.
The seated sessions took on a Maritime theme, using local trawlerman songs depicting Hessle Road, tales of Big Lil and the Headscarf Revolutionaries, classic sea shanties and familiar favourites with a seafaring theme. For instance, the group warm up performed to The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, was a great start to the session and a way to disarm the daunting D word with a familiar track filled with nostalgia.
This was always a favourite part of each session for me as the biggest personalities took the lead with the singing and swaying, a sign of what was to come as the session progressed. However, it was also lovely to see the apprehension dissipate from other members of the group as they would dare to reach their arm that little bit further and lift their gaze slightly higher to be met with the other smiles spreading around the room.
The session continues with an array of upper body movements guided by me, with the occasional foot and leg coming into play as we led up to the high kicks section in Bobby Darin’s Beyond the Sea, this is where the real performers in the room came out. A perfect precursor to the handing out of the percussion instruments for the last two tracks that turned us into an all singing, all dancing, all maraca and tambourine shaking orchestra!
Each song we danced to provoked a story or a memory from a participant either shared with the group or a neighbour and we often circled back to these at the end of a session. This sharing of heritage was beautiful to witness, and I think reminded everyone of not just the city’s rich culture and history but also their own. A particularly poignant moment came at the end of the Butterflies Dementia Support Group session when a participant got out a harmonica and began playing a song that had the whole room clapping their hands, tapping their feet, cheering, whistling, and smiling from ear to ear. The speciality of this project is really in the people it reaches, and while every session had a happy ending, some groups were tough cookies when it came to trusting a new person in their space. One group in particular, were working on a play in which the script already included a previous visitor that meets a rather sticky end…It seems though that I did not have the same demise which in my opinion, was one of the biggest wins of the project.
Some other less theatrical feedback was also received such as: "It made me feel on top of the world, I felt young again, The music made the event, We liked the word movement instead of exercise and It made me feel better about myself…"
Being a community dance artist, my focus when designing the session was to create something inclusive and accessible. There are a lot of corners of the city that arts and culture don’t quite reach, and it seems that I may have found some with this project. The sessions reached nearly 200 people and many participants said they had never done anything like it before. Some wished they had provision like it every week, some enjoyed the exercise, some the joy of moving to the music and some just liked doing something different to their usual routine. Many of the organisations have invited Dance in Company back to deliver more sessions to their other weekly groups and the project continues even now with more themes being created and groups interested all the time! The success of the summer has proven there is a need in the city for this type of provision to be taken to minority groups that are less likely or unable to travel for it specifically. I am grateful to Hull Maritime for being a catalyst in making this happen as it would not have been possible without the Community Grant. I am even more grateful that I got to share the last few months with the incredible participants who took part, who watched from the side lines and for the organisations’ employees and volunteers who hosted us and joined in with equal energy and delight.
By Holly Gibbs, Dance In Company
Artistic Director.
