Chaturangan Dance Company, Liverpool
Presented
‘Fleeting Moments’
The Bluecoat 22nd February 2013
A
performance to welcome people living with dementia and their companions
Photo by Simon Richardson
What
was Fleeting Moments?
This family and dementia friendly,
heart warming joyous dance and music performance evolved in consultation and
collaboration with people living with dementia and their companions. It was an artistic
intervention to enhance the health and wellbeing of people in the early stages
of dementia and their support network, and to improve their quality of life.
There has been series of choreo labs, residencies and consultation and the
artistic team has worked with people to create a multi-art form, culturally
diverse production at The Bluecoat. The Project was a collaboration between
Chaturangan, Bluecoat and Hope University.
www.chaturangan.co.uk
How did it
go?
Some fleeting
and inspiring moments were spent in the company of dancers Bisakha Sarker,
Anusha Subramanyam, Fenfen Huang, Mary Pearson, musician and singer Chris
Davies and Steve Boyland. Visual artist Noelle
Williamson was also present capturing
movement and dance using brief sketches and watercolours, resulting in some
very special paintings which will go towards an exhibition at a later date I
understand. The event began with a welcome by the Chief Executive of the
Bluecoat, placing the event in the context of a body of work already carried
out, and the pleasure of the organisation in working in partnership with
Chaturangan again. This was followed by Bisakha’s welcome (see picture in
photo), introducing us to the three short sections of Indian, Chinese and
Contemporary dance, set to live music and vocal improvisation.
Bisakha spoke of
the importance of a poem ‘Be a person’, gifted by Larry Gardiner, that had
inspired the choreography, of the part John Killick had played in the creation
of that poem, and of the importance of the umbrella as a prop used in the
dancing, especially the piece choreographed for and danced by Fenfen Huang.
This was quite mesmerizing and beautiful in its effortless grace. Bisakha
suggested that in a metaphorical sense we could think about the umbrella as a
form of shelter against whatever ‘weather’ the dementia condition might throw
at us, and how we can, through movement and dance play with that idea, finding
creative and playful alternatives to frame and ‘dance’ the condition
differently.
During the
several breaks for tea and coffee and conversation, that helped audience and
performer relax and enjoy each other’s company in less formal ways, which was
incidentally a great strength of this event, I was asked by an audience member
sitting next to me why I thought this production was ‘cutting edge’. Because I
said, while keeping high-quality professional multi-cultural and multi-art form
performance and practice at the heart of this endeavour, Bisakha is also
wanting to blur the unnecessary distinctions in the West between audience and
performer; and no more so than when the audience is already marginalised by
having a dementia condition and living in a care home. Residents and their
staff were enabled to leave the routines of their care home to enter a public
space, a performance space, to witness and be a part of this ‘dementia
friendly’ event as both audience and participant. As one resident of a care
home said to me afterwards: ‘It’s all so different, it made me hold my
attention to it’. For this older person and for me it has indeed done what it
said on the poster: ‘Fleeting moments to lift our collective spirits…’. Bisakha
and all dancers, musicians, singers, participants and fundraisers are to be
congratulated for enabling this inspiring and ground-breaking project to once
again put the City of Liverpool and the Bluecoat, at the very heart of some of
the most innovative and inspiring movement and dance practices with older
people, currently taking place in the UK. Long may this continue…building on
the unmitigated success of ‘Fleeting Moments’.
Dr Richard
Coaten
Dancer &
Dance Movement Psychotherapist, Churchill Fellow 2010
South West
Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Editorial Board
Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine
Coordinator,
Centre of Excellence in Movement Dance and Dementia
www.dancedementiahub.co.uk
February 25th
2013
the Bluecoat 
Fleeting Moments 
