I haven't written here for a while Shallal has flourished and grown, we are fine as we are for a while now, we have community dance groups in more locations, a thriving studio, performance groups, developing our outreach, responding to the times, zoom, live stream etc
I started blogging many years ago, 2 websites ago! I was chatting to a nice person at the The Works telling them what we did, while trying to understand from her the landscape of funding - I now say i have a view of the map ( of funding ) but I'm not the best person to drive you there, ie write bids! She said how does anyone know your connections, process etc and so I started writing some of it down.
Now we can live in a sea of accessible information, much of it unnecessary, and we are creating 'warehouses' of unseen pollution through the internet which will come to haunt us i feel like single use plastic has and so I love to share what we do with images, chat and spread our ethos and vision, but we are larger and times change and we need to restrain it.
Why this reflection;
Yesterday we went to Blue Light Day, we started going invited by Sam's auntie Sue and although it can be "an assault to the senses" the noise in one section we are in through the day, it is always a joy to see old friends and make new connections.
So yesterday amidst a great day out I heard that Mary Derrington had died before the pandemic. Mary was a performer in Shallal Dance Theatre at its start. My children told me i have been saying 30 years for a long time so now it's nearer 40 years ago, Oh my, I'm 60 so now I'm in an era of serious reflection. Yesterday we sat opposite wonderful images of women with varying 'disabilities" they were writers, comedians, models with down syndrome or other differences ? language needs to catch up, it usually lags behind, so the world has moved on from Mary's time. Yet i still met yesterday someone I know who was blocked from a potential career as a dance maker, wanted their own dance company which they had the skills to try for and has DS, and at the same time met someone with DS who is younger and wants a dance career and had a tutor advocating for them and introducing her to us.
Thank you to all the wonderful performers with their supporters who came to perform yesterday. I had asked Chris our manager, to come along to support on our stall, we are constantly feeling the benefit of his role, and it was so good to see him meet people and develop our partnerships, connections and potential ways forward.
We still have no core funding so are always in survival mode, ok for a year and then what next? However we are still here and now with a wider more experienced and skilled team. So apart from Mary Derrington the other aspect causing me to turn to blog, apart from the myriad of places and events Passmore Edwards puppets have taken us to Holifield Big Tent and Blue Light day recently, is that Anna and i plan to go to.....tonight.
Last week i sat in car on my phone listening to Mydd and Emma of Wild Works, to their new project across Cornwall they are birthing and to their continuation and honouring of the Cornish tradition of outdoor spectacle theatre held by Kneehigh and Wild Works and in my adolesence, the wonderful anarchic hilarious and glorious Footsbarn https://www.footsbarn.com/about-us/.
Images never to be forgotten; hilarious gravediggers all called Derek in Hamlet by Footsbarn as well as a bunch of comedy crows, alongside Mary Derrington dancing to Holding Back the Years, a Simply Red tune chosen by Anna Murphy, at Barbican Theatre, Plymouth ( our first Shallal - then called Sea Saw - show) and it being beautifully lit by Wilf, and seeing how framing delicate sensitive work could amplify and honour it ( he lit them Mary and George Jacklin in a full moon style shadow) ever since then i have said we have the images, the dances, what we often haven't had is how to ' frame' it to it's best advantage, which comes down to funding for creative technicians, which is sadly the last box in trying to get funding to survive.
So at 50 i chatted with Dot Peyer as she kindly battled through to write us an Arts Council matching bid for Doorways 2 and during the process we chatted about were i might be at 60 and succession in Shallal so life has needed me to 'back myself up' and Sapphire and Colin have kindly and skillfully done that recently and to bring on younger people and Anna is one of them, she graduates next week with a first in Fine Art from Camberwell UAL London and we hope she will be available to head up Back Lane West Residency and our project with the Tate St Ives this autumn, the project was inspired by her approach explored last year at BLW by Colin Toby and Kerry T and Kerry J. So this wiggly blogs looks back to roots of Cornish theatre and Mary Derrington's wonderful contribution and presence she was unque anda wonderful character small and strong and spoke only in a whisper and a small dismissive hand gesture, yet could shout when absaliing down a cliff! I can hear one of our cats are exploring the inside of Passmore puppets head/body structures slightly worrying! they are currently behind our sofa
