Stronger Together rehearsals

Stronger Together looks at current human relationships with our home Gaia and attempts to draw attention to the destruction of our planet and the urgent issue that faces our society.

Looking at ignorance, complacency and turning a blind eye, the dancers interact through touch, intensity, and frustration. Love, gratitude, respect, and celebration of our home helps to show society’s emotional connection to the earth as well as the disconnections. The dancers emotively respond through sensitivity, dynamic energy, and communal interactions.

Stronger Together uses notions of pollution such as deforestation, plastic waste in the ocean and carbon footprint to raise awareness of our actions. It looks at the current chaos of nature as well as society, our desires, and frantic attempts as humans to make a difference and the obstacles we endure in trying to do this.

The piece models the idea that if everyone attempts to make positive changes to their lifestyles then more progressive results will be seen. We need to educate the younger generation now to protect and sustain Mother Earth. Yes, we can make a difference in small cohorts, but we will only have a positive global impact by being united, connected and Stronger Together.

Stronger Together is a collaboration of professional dancer performers, undergraduate dance students from Salford University and a cohort of talented community dancers from throughout Warrington who together will perform underneath Gaia by Luke Jerram.

The cohorts have been working separately with pockets of rehearsal as one company under the direction of Stacey Atkinson.

Creating this piece of work has been extremely eye-opening, moving and touching at times. I feel privileged to have been involved in this connection of dance, art, and music. I hope from this performance you will consider your approach to ‘Gaia’ and how you can adapt and further change your ways of living, to support the environmental sustainability of our home, planet Earth, for our future generations to come!

– Stacey Atkinson – Artistic Director

Creative Team

Artistic Director: Stacey Atkinson
Composer: Gary Lloyd
Rehearsal Director: Bettina Carpi
Costume Designer: Enya Koster
Community Dance Facilitators: Maria Mortimer & Dina Robinson
Salford University Dance Facilitators: Elisa Macauley with support from Debbie Millner& Sarah Lockwood
Community Project Coordinator: Zoe Murphy
Produced by: Culture Warrington

Professional performers

Sarah Bateman, Hannah Lucas, April Martin, Annabelle Peach, Erin Pollitt & Lauren Tucker

Salford University performers

Max Ashbrook, Holly Anderson, Mollie Aspinall, Georgia Brown, Tia Butterfield, Louisa Craggs, Lucy Fish, Emma Hawthorne, Lydia Heaton, Lucy Hillier, Amelia Humphreys, Aleemah Khan, Mia Luconi, Kathryn Rudge, Annabel Saunders, Chloe Smith, Alice Taylor, Jasmine Thornhill, Olivia Walker, Lucy Wiswould-Green

Community performers

Emily Ashall, Elle Burgoyne, Mia Carney-Washington, Olivia Clarke, Jessica Geraghty, Emma Hampson, Ruby Leicester, Daisy Martin, Bella Meredith, Libby Naylor, Natasha Spencer, Freya Thomas, Emilia Vernon, Livie Willott

Funded by: Arts Council England & Culture Warrington
Supported by: Warrington Borough Council & Warrington BID

When Stacey and I started to discuss music for Stronger Together it was clear that Stacey would need material to work with pronto, so we had the idea of drawing from my back catalogue – several decades of recordings – to get us moving. We needed pieces that had senses of celebration, of unity and strength, and also senses of doubt, fear and chaos. Once found, these compositions were fitted together as the backbone of the complete piece, by editing, augmentation, rearrangement, recomposition and sometimes by just plain remixing, and added to these were brand new compositions. We followed the plot of Stacey’s carefully choreographed narrative, and constantly reacted to the to-and-fro of the choreography as it came together in rehearsals. The story was being told.

In part Stronger Together should help us focus on longer-term thinking about our habitat, our home, our beautiful planet. In inhabiting and reimagining older works (and the oldest we used is from 1987) alongside new compositions (from last week!) I’ve embraced long-term thinking and embodied this in the work truthfully. I kept this in mind at all times working on this suite of music, and I sincerely hope this has been effective and that the audience feel this sense of time and timelessness too.

Gary Lloyd; Composer

 

I believe in the power of the people coming together to make great change, making the seemingly impossible, possible. Bringing a touch of magic and creation into a world that is going through great healing and shifts in consciousness. I feel this performance will have an immense impact on the current energies and will show just how limitless we are as beings. Therefore, I wanted the costume to depict through the red chord and symbols of soul, how connected we are to each other, the great earth mama and the universe as a whole. As within, so without.

Enya Koster; Costume Designer