AMICI, Shallal and upcoming interview with AMICI’s director Wolfgang Stange

Hello Shallal blog readers – it’s Sapphire here. This is just a short piece about our connections to AMICI dance theatre and an exciting announcement!

Most of you know that our own Jo Willis started Shallal after studying under Wolfgang Stange, AMICI dance theatre’s Artistic director.

Photo of Wolfgang Stange. Description: Photograph is in black and white and shows an older man wearing a black T-shirt with an octopus on, he has short white hair and pale skin, and is smiling broadly at a younger man who wears a patterned T-shirt and has short black hair and pale skin and appears to be yawning.

I also found Shallal through working with Wolfgang and AMICI and wanted to let you all know that I will be interviewing Wolfgang about how he started AMICI, how he runs his dance sessions, how he creates shows and much more!

Some of you have met Wolfgang in AMICI’s open house workshops or in the sessions I taught over zoom last year called ‘Sharing AMICI’.

Anyway, I need your help to get together questions to ask him. So, if there is anything you would like to know about Wolfgang or AMICI please email me your questions to sapphire@shallal.org

Here are some questions I will ask him:

*How did you start dancing?

*Could you tell me how AMICI started?

*What inspires you to create work?

*Why do you use ballet in your AMICI classes?

Here is a short BBC radio interview that Wolfgang did last year https://vimeo.com/411004227

Photo of a rehearsal in AMICI when I was dancing with them in 2019 – in this scene I got to dance a Romeo and Juliet style duet with David (centre of the photo).

Description: photo is in black and white. 8 dancers of different ages and appearances huddle round another dancer who is sitting in a wheelchair and is in the centre of the photograph, they all have their arms extended to his chair and have expressions of anguish and urgency.

Next time it’s a rainy day and you don’t know what to watch, have a look at this video of 35 AMICI Drive – a wonderful and uplifting AMICI show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YSy60ETk_Y

Lots of love,

Sapphire