Aims
I followed
my dream to Canada with three aims.
1. Learning about current practice in
the field of dance and older people
2. Exploring my own ‘late style’
3. Meeting mature South Asian dancers
to understand views on aging and dance
1. Learning
about current practice in the field of dance and older people
With the
kind support from people I contacted before my journey and the new
opportunities that opened door I could put together a very busy schedule in
order to make the most of the trip and ensure I experienced and met as many
people as I could.
It was very
fortunate that within a limited period I managed to see so much. My time in
Toronto coincided with the large annual Bengali Cultural convention NABC. I
attended the weekend festival. Delegates travel from all over USA and Canada.
Lead artists come from India. It is a place mainly of nostalgia and
reminiscence but a wonderful example of an intergenerational event.
I visited
large and small health settings, from modern care homes with two to three
hundred residents to small basement rooms in community centres where art is
being used to promote the health and wellbeing of the senior citizens of the
country.
I was struck
by the high standard of the residential centres I visited and noticed that
alongside recreational activities the residents were actively encouraged to
undertake tasks such as peeling potatoes or gardening, in the hope of maintaining
a family atmosphere.
Different neighbourhoods
within the home often keep different pets. There are rooms where residents can
have private meals with their families and boxes of toys in common social areas
to encourage the family to bring children. All the care homes that I visited
had well resourced art rooms and offered interesting arts projects. In one such
place I joined in their regular music session. However I discovered that there was
not much dance activity.
Every time I
presented a dance workshop it was received with great interest. There was a
clear appetite for more dance activities and what surprised residents most was
the fact that I was using Indian dance techniques with them rather than dance
forms they are more used to.
“What I
learned and what I continue to reflect upon is that it is easy to
create movements that fill one with joy. And from that joy comes a
feeling of self satisfaction. In the workshop we were shown how to share
our movements with others and weave these movements into a dance that
both binds us and expresses our own individuality. Beautiful”
Louanna
Cocchiarella, co editor, Journal of Alzheimer society, Canada
From my experience,
it appeared that though Canada is a multi cultural country, culturally diverse
dance and other arts are not being used in health settings. Often after our
workshops there were discussions of new collaborations and exploring the
possibility of using music and dance from other minority cultures
My discussions with local Indian dance practitioners also supported this
observation. I found that most dance artists are focussed on excellence and
teaching dance for performance. They expressed interest in what I was doing and
had many ideas of how they can deliver work but no one I met had any experience
of doing work with the health and art sector or had any connections with any
health settings.
My respect for the richness of community dance practice in the UK
increased. In England it is a reasonably common practice for South Asian dance
artists to engage in different community dance initiatives.
Comparing notes with other Churchill Fellows it seems that I was presenting more
practical sessions than usual, even the round table discussions ended with
everyone on their feet dancing. There was a genuine curiosity to know how a
highly stylised form like Indian dance can be used in an informal way with
their seniors. Sometimes, though I was prepared to give a verbal or power point
presentation, it seemed more effective to take the people attending through a
practical experience. It created an informal joyful atmosphere, as always it
dissolves any professional hierarchy in the room and allowed a flow of
conversation and openness.
“You
began with a quote, “Dance gives me an enhanced sense of well being” and your
work demonstrated how you bring that to life. As you said more than once, you
cannot cure illness but you can use dance and the arts to draw people away from
their suffering, give them a sense of connectedness rather than isolation and a
feeling of mastery in situations where they are vulnerable and feel that they
have lost control. You showed us how you raise awareness of dementia and make
those with dementia participators in rather than observers of the arts.
Particularly meaningful was your discussion of creating performances that are
“dementia friendly” and welcome all who want to attend and take part.
Equally enjoyable was the opportunity
to become part of an in vivo demonstration of your work. It was wonderful to
see our whole team up on their feet dancing around the room with so little
inhibition”
Virginia Wesson, MD, MSc, FRCPC, Staff
Psychiatrist, Mount Sinai Hospital
2. Exploring my own ‘late style’
After
reading The Baring Foundations publication ‘Winter Fire’ by Francois Matarasso
I was made aware of the fact that visual artists in particular can chart their
careers in different periods as they acquire more skill, hone their style,
become more or less risk taking and find their signature. This idea or
appreciation of different stages and in particular a ‘late period’ is not
translated to the performing arts in particular dance as it is such a physical
form. However my one dream was to find new choreography for what can be called a
'late style' of dance for myself. I had a short yet enriching experience of
working with a young choreographer Jacci Collin's. We created a dance combining
Jacci's method of using the idea of landscapes of life and my interest in a
poem by a Canadian poet Robert Bringhurst. I performed it for and with a group
of senior dance students of Toronto's Roundhouse community centre.
It was interesting to see how Jacci found different incentives to inspire me to
find movements and transitions from within myself. She then watched and
arranged them to create a complete piece.
From this collaboration I have learnt a new tool of choreography and have
successfully used this and sections of the dance in my recent workshops on my
return from Canada.
3. Meeting with other mature South
Asian dancers to understand views on ageing and dance
Finally I
was curious to know how other mature South Asian dancer artists are adjusting
to ageing. Due to some health concern and travelling schedules it was not
possible to meet many of them face to face but I got an interesting picture of
a variety of methods that other dancers are adopting.
The most common approach to aging for dancers was a move to teaching and
producing. Another reasonably new development is to progress to dance movement
therapy, particularly dance for people with Parkinson diseases. Since the Mark
Morris dance group has developed high quality work and a syllabus in this field,
dancers I met are going to the company to train to develop a different branch
of employment beyond performing. There are other mature dance artists who are
collectively creating new dances for performance or are inviting choreographers
to specially create appropriate solos for themselves. One such artist that I
met was Claudia Moore who discussed her own solo show and her hugely successful
Old and Reckless series of festivals. Recently I have joined a group of mature
dancers and some arts organisations with interest in dance and older people to
discuss a national festival of older people and dance. It will be interesting
to develop a festival like Old and Reckless in the UK and learn from Claudia’s
model.
During my fellowship I came across two completely opposing viewpoints
"You must give up dance before it gives up you.” and "I
will go on dancing till I am eighty and until the public hoots me off the stage"
Both comments touched me deeply. Swaying between the two I continue my search
for my "late style”
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