Welcome

It’s a real pleasure to introduce this special edition of Animated, to mark the 30th Anniversary of the organisation now known as People Dancing, and the pioneering work of some of the incredible people that helped shape our experience of dance as we know it today.

Community and participatory dance practices have been, and continue to be, a significant force for change. So much has been achieved in dance, through community dance, in the last 30+ years: it’s changed attitudes and perceptions, and challenged some deepseated notions of who can dance, and the validity of their dancing. This collection of articles tracks people’s diverse journeys through dance and in dance, past and present. Many of the people working in the field now started out participating in community dance. A virtuous circle, to be celebrated.

To situate this edition of Animated in time, it went to print on the day that the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election became known. A pretty big day, globally speaking. We’re post-EU referendum, witnessing both seismic geopolitical changes and human displacement on a scale almost unimaginable. The revolution in digital technology and information exchange is fundamentally changing the way we live and learn, and reshaping our experience and appreciation of ‘community’ in all kinds of ways. What extraordinary and uncertain times we find ourselves in.

At one of our Summer Schools I remember being asked to make a presentation about why I was still ‘feeling optimistic’ about community dance in society. This was in the wake of the financial crash of 2008, when optimism was feeling fairly thin on the ground. And yet, since then and in fact more than ever, I do feel optimistic about community dance, participatory dance, people dancing, or whatever you want to call it. I can feel this optimism from our friends and extended community dance family too.

Basically, for me, it boils down to this: no matter what, excepting some extreme circumstances, people will still dance, will still want to dance, and will still be able to dance. How can people dancing, in all their glorious diversity, be part of a solution – or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say part of the antidote – to some of the poison that exists in the world?

To quote Deborah Bull CBE, in her introduction to the 2001 dance documentary film Dancing Nation by Rosemary Lee and Peter Anderson:

“Dance gives us all – professional and non-professional alike – the opportunity to share an experience that is intensely human and, at the same time, out of this world. Dance is our common denominator. We’re all part of the dancing nation.”

I think that still stands, now and in thefuture. It’s important to record the history of community dance – ours and yours – before it’s rewritten in ‘lite’ form with some of the inconvenient truths (by which I also mean people) written out of the screenplay. It’s messy and magnificent. Let’s have it standing in plain sight, for all to see.

Chris Stenton
Executive Director, People Dancing

My sincere thanks to Scilla Dyke MBE for her expert guidance and curatorship, without which this special anniversary edition would not have been possible.

Cover credit: Mark Shreeve, 2016