Through my company @BeingFrankPT and @BoysDancing I have been running specialised dance projects for young men for over 10 years and the work never fails to amaze me. The reasons being we are always taking risks and plan really ambitious projects. Whether the aim is to get as many boys to perform all together in one huge hour long live show (160+ in Solihul, Coventry and Warwickshire's performance of Artful Dodgers) or creating a suite of six dance films created in six areas across the West Midlands, we try to learn and improve on them year by year. By doing this we challenge both the artists running the projects and the young men involved and it is the boys that I am always really impressed by. Most of them have had very little previous dance experience before they encounter Boys Dancing and the way the boys meet the challenges presented to them, their honest responses in the creative process, their loyalty to each other, the respect they give to the artistic themes explored and their commitment to the project overall is always a pleasure to behold.
When I took over as artistic lead for Worcestershire working in collaboration with @DanceFest I thought that I was ready for anything and everything that the participants from Worcester University, Nunnery Wood, Hagley High, Regency High and W'ireboyz would throw at me...how wrong I was...
Every project in every area is UNIQUE, that is what I really love about Boys Dancing and with it being 100 years since the start of World War 1 it was decided that Worcestershire would present a memorial piece remembering the soldiers that went away to war but specifically the dance would highlight the plight of the 250,000 young men who applied to go to war even though they were under the legal age of consent. Through researching the theme I found myself shocked by the personal accounts, I felt guilt that my life is so easy in comparison and I felt anger, I could not believe that young men one as young as 12 were sent away to fight. It was as if I had in someway started grieving for them.
That posed a question to me....if I was effected so strongly by the theme how were the young men going to take it and if we were going to do justice to the memory of the soldiers could the boys actually be mature enough to empathise and give a respectful performance? Well they answered me on Saturday night on the 5th April and the show that they presented will stay with me for as long as I live.
Performed at College Hall, part of Worcester Cathedral and accompanied by a live pianist it was the most emotional piece I have seen presented by a young cast and I was very proud of each and every one of the boys. They created really fantastic intense physical dance vocabulary that looked amazing in the space but it was the way they raised to the challenge of performing the more focused, intimate, emotive dance material that I was impressed with the most and to be frank it did not come as a surprise because all the way through the rehearsal process they had shown levels of maturity that was way beyond their years. They tackled the difficult subject matter with truth and honesty and the way they empathised with the soldiers and their families by sharing intimate experiences they have had quite literally at times in rehearsal took my breath away.
I would like to say thank you to Rose Beason and the team at DanceFest for building such a memorable project, I would also like to thank all the teachers and support staff from all the schools that made the project run so smoothly and also congratulate all of the young men involved on an incredible, powerful, emotional performance that was one of a kind! I cannot wait for the film to be edited so I can relive the experience again!
Thank you, thank you, thank you one and all!!!
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