Still in the City

Largely the hearts of our urban centres are dis-inhabited.

Replaced by a combination of tourism, shopping, poverty, over priced housing, banking and dereliction.

How does this effect our own centres, well being and ways of being?

I would say that many of us urban dwellers lack a feeling of freedom, and the possibility of it in our bodies and our lives, we lack an ability for spontaneous creative expression and no-longer know how to move in order to follow out heart’s desire.

Still in the City breathes back freedom and spontaneous hearts to our urban centres, by bringing those best at it into view - dancers and musicians. Not only this, but it opens its own heart to the very youngest among us, to train in its craft, before they have lost it - children between 1 and 4 years old. The artists and children build a show together. Together they become the the joy, expression, heart-felt, loving curiousness and freedom that is our real and ideal nature; the centre we long for, in self and in city.

So we position both children and dancers as knowing, wise, intelligent agents of freedom. And piece by piece we breath back life.

The door is open to every pre-school child who comes to the show, to dance with us on stage, and this is set up in our pre-show talk with the audience (and at times supported by pre-show workshops open to local pre-school children and their parents).

Did you know that we learn to move by watching and sensing others moving around us? We do this with what are called ‘mirror neurons’ - as someone moves and their neurons fire, when we are under 4 years the same neurons fire in us, and we learn to move. So moving with dancers, means….we spontaneously learn their patterns of movement - we become the dancers of tomorrow. The children who are part of Still in the City will surprise you.

Did you know that in our development before language comes eye contact, and before eye contact, comes movement?

Still in the City delights the children who take part, their parents and the adults who come to watch. It teaches us to be intimate and free again and reminds us what we can learn from our youngest members of society, and from dancers.

Hayley

Feedback from Still in the City audiences

 Some comments from our audiences

‘Beautiful. Mesmerising. Intriguing, Moving’

‘Compelling and completely absorbing. It was wonderful to watch the interaction with the children, completely uninhibited’ 

‘Charming funny and beautiful ‘

‘Accessible, challenging, conceptual, engaging, unconventional, exciting, boundary-shifting. The dancers had a great sense of audience and space. Thank you!'

How the dancers train for Still in the City

Our dancers and musicians go through a rigorous training. Hayley combines her skills and experience as dancer, choreographer and Rolfer (posture, coordination and movement specialist). The artists look deeply at their own posture and movement patterns - those that are very often inhabited due to city dwelling - bracing, shutting down, backing away, defending, protecting, not fully breathing, holding our weight up in ourselves instead of putting it on the ground - the patterns we subconsciously hand down to our children. And we re-negotiate different patterns for each artist - patterns where they are able to embrace, have freedom and be the most functional they can be. This creates the intimate space of Still in the City - of creative freedom and wellness that the children come to inhabit with us; where our hearts can freely fill the space and express who we are.

We open to children between 1-4 years because in this moment in our lives we are coming to two feet and learning the posture and expression patterns we will have for a life-time, so we offer this space of wellness, function, beauty and expression at this moment. When children can offer their beauty and their freedom uninhibited and be met by the same. And then we re-inhabit spaces in the centre of the city with it, so others can experience it and learn from it’s gift. Those who watch will also be learning, through their mirror neurons, how to be free, functional, expressive and heart-felt, from children and from dancers.

How Still in the City came to be

Intrigued by our contemporary relationship to urban space, and longing to change it Still in the City first re-integrated its dancers and musicians, through deep research in how they move on their own, with others and with their instruments. It put them back in their centre and honed their skills in the delicate reading of others, in giving space and in taking space, in being intimate, free and brave.

Then a friend came into rehearsals with her baby, and a double edged realisation opened - that we need our children to be able to inhabit spaces where they can be freely, intimate and expressive, where they can grow in grace: and that our youngest children are really the best at doing this and showing us the way. And research continued with pre-school children.

Still in the City has so far inhabited Tanz Fabrik - Berlin; a shop front in West Ealing, in partnership with OPEN Ealing - London; Norwich Puppet Theatre; 5 Norfolk Libraries; Sheringham Little Theatre - Norfolk, UK; Wells Maltings - Wells-next-to-Sea, UK; Kentish Town Community Centre - London; St Lukes Church - London and Brighton Speigeltent - Brighton, UK.

ENSEMBLE Musician Hej Jones on working on 'Still in the City' 2016 tour

Being part of the incredibly well conceived and produced ‘Still in the City’ was somewhat of a revelation for me. I have worked with young people for many years (although this was the youngest target age group I have worked with) and have always been motivated by the ethos I picked up whilst living in Brasil - that Art (and specifically music in my case) is not something that one should always enjoy passively, there is huge scope for involvement, participation and genuine inclusion in its presentation and/or performance.

From minute one of the rehearsals, throughout every performance and even post performance Hayley delved deeper into and expanded upon this ethos more than any other Artist with whom I have worked. The overriding fundamental of the rehearsals was to give us (especially the dancers) the tools with which to create an environment in which the audience members felt comfortable to engage… without the need for any persuasion, cajolement or overt invitation. On the face of it, an almost impossible sounding task, to deconstruct (if only for a moment) the invisible wall between audience and performer that seems to have developed over centuries of theatre... almost impossible, and yet through Hayleys' vision and her powerful, perceptive and intelligent direction we achieved exactly that to varying degrees… in every performance. The benefits of encouraging this participation were written all over the faces of those audience members who broke through the wall in the short term and I strongly suspect will have a long term impact upon their appreciation, enjoyment, understanding of and ultimately, future involvement in Art.

As a resident of Norfolk I have worked here for the past 25 years, during those 25 years this is without doubt one of the most unique and inspirational projects to emerge from the county. I very much hope that it will prove to be a catalyst for renewed and continued development of this and similar projects in the region.

Still in the City also has a touring live music and film exhibition, that projects films from the show onto the fabric of inner cities, accompanied by our live musicians.

In 2016 Still in the City brought 85% of children and 59% to see contemporary dance in Norfolk for the first time.

33% children and 23% of adults to see contemporary dance who had never seen contemporary dance before.  

100% said they would come again and recommend the show

“It’s the best performance I have seen for children”

“Compelling and completely absorbing. It was wonderful to watch the interaction with the children, completely uninhibited”