[Gentle, upbeat music]

Like just leave your problems outside and then like dance. It just takes over, kind of. So yeah, it’s a really good feeling for me.

A lot of the time when I dance, it’s about telling a story. So I feel like I’m really just kind of communicating in a way that words can’t usually so it’s a lot more expressive.

I think it just kind of motivates you to do more.

[Energetic music]

[Cheering]

Come with us!

[Pensive, upbeat music]

Ivan Michael Blackstock: How’s it going? My name is Ivan Michael Blackstock.

Fin Walker: Hello, I’m Fin Walker. I’m a director and choreographer.

Daniel Hay-Gordon: Hi, I’m Daniel Hay-Gordon and I’m one half of Thick & Tight.

Richard Alston: My name is Richard Alston. And I’ve been a choreographer
for a long time. Almost six decades.

Ivan: I come from the world of hip hop. and there’s a massive philosophy within that, each one teach one. So I think it is in the DNA of what I do making sure I pass down, share my knowledge. And also, you know, I don’t have all of the answers. The answers come with us coming into communion me sharing my experience, sharing kind of how I look at things how I make pieces of choreography and then there’s a feedback loop, you know. So then I’m learning too. I’m sure we’ve all kind of made some sort of
choreography and dance before or we’ve got a certain skillset. Doesn’t mean you just kinda go like, “Nah, Ivan, I’m an empty vessel. Teach me.”

[Laughing]

Yeah? So I think it is also, yeah, holding on to something. It’s holding on what you know, what you love, what you connect to. Yeah?

Nillanthie Morton: I started the toolkit with my youth group and already the change in their creative work… It’s amazing. I just got it on video, and I was looking at them thinking, “This is what
I’ve been waiting for.” Doing this with Ivan is really opening new ways
of creating movement and I can just see the results already after one session.

Fin: My practice and my methodology is only a starting point and their interpretation of what it is that I’m offering is what’s most important. And so that actually then they can make it their own and that it’s about me supporting and facilitating them to open up the cornerstones of their own perception so that their thinking is more fluid and more expansive. Fin: Good, doesn’t matter what it looks like. Just thinking about opening the body.

Kelly McClelland: This weekend has just meant so much to me and working with Fin Walker is just a dream. Her process is so genuine and just really helps you to find the truth in your soul of movement which is something I really want to bring back to my young dancers and get them to question the reason they move and why they want to do this.

[Energetic music]

Daniel: What I hope comes across in the work that’s produced is the mixture of different styles that we use with dance. So we use drag, lip syncing and mime and humour and theatre. So I hope that there’s a real rich blend of styles being used and I hope also that the pieces have a good amount of humour in them.

[Come Rain or Shine, Judy Garland]

Daniel: To really communicate with all the students about the ideas in the toolkit and to keep getting them really involved in all the aspects of creativity whether that’s choreographing or editing or directing or editing the music or thinking about costume. I’d love for all of the students to feel that they’ve had a real say in what is being produced on stage.

[Inspirational, upbeat music]

Richard: And I’d like you to look at these two because they are now doing it with a new Saturday morning energy.[Laughing] Okay. All right. No pressure, you two.

[Laughing]

Richard: The things in the toolkit are things which have inspired and excited me so I hope that I can give that to the group leaders and they can then feel full of resources to deal constructively and positively with the young people who will be dancing the work.

– 1… and 2….
and 3….

Richard: Good. Good. Okay. [Applause] It’s really good so try to keep that quality. Don’t let it get more peaceful. It’s lovely if it’s really quite sharp into the space. Be confident and make sure that you make young people confident. Teaching is enabling and I’ve always found it very exciting to help people do more so they feel that they are empowered to help young people do something really amazing. That’s what we all want.

[Motivational music]

– It feels very profound. Even though we’re dancing as a collective it feels like everyone’s sort of got this own personal journey that they go on throughout the whole piece. Yeah, it’s very connecting.

– Choreographing my piece for Making Moves was great because I got to show my own creative ability. So then you would go back on your left when you pull back instead of the right. And then to perform with my mates at RISE Youth Dance is just great because they were supportive along the way.

It’s just choreo, Helen, so….

Helen: Well, yeah, it is but it’s your piece of choreo, so…

So as an audience member… because I’m doing this for the audience,
you know?

Helen: Excellent.

– What I took away from Making Moves is definitely the way that I transfer emotional and personal feelings thoughts close to me into movement and translating that in a way that evokes emotion from the audience.

[Pensive, upbeat music]
– So, I wasn’t here last week. You create your own little solos to finish it off with. Yes, Ed.

Ed: Maybe we all do like something like we all do like little solos and then we all come together in unison at the end?

– Love it.

– The piece is meant to be a satire on modern views on masculinity and we’re challenging those stereotypes and flipping them on their heads.

– We came up with this idea about kind of male stereotyping and how we could represent that in a stage dance.

Ed: So when we started choreographing it, we all sat in a circle and we wrote ideas down on a notepad. And then we tried to translate those
to a piece of music. And tried to figure out moves that would fit the themes that we thought of and the ideas but would also fit the music in a way that would be fluid and match our ideas.

[Just Ken, Ryan Gosling]

Ed: Performing something that was a product of our own ideas is very exciting, especially on a stage like Sadler’s Wells.

– It’s not even just a dance, it’s our feelings put into dance. We’ve personified our feelings and made them actions and I think it’s really good to do that and know that it’s our dance.

– Yeah, I think this dance has definitely given us an opportunity to try out new ways of dancing. And throughout the process, we’ve seen each other grow. Within the toolkit, a lot of the time we used words like resistance which played a very big part in a lot of the duets that we saw in the earlier part of the dance which really helped us to sort of get our message across.

– So I think it really has pulled us together as a group and kind of makes us be even more proud of it because we can say that we’ve really,
really worked together on it.

– They’ve listened, they’ve wanted to explore, they’ve wanted to grow. Yeah, I’m just so proud. I’m so proud that they just love it as much as I do.

[Inspirational, upbeat music]

– It’s been really great. It feels kind of rewarding to show off what we’ve done because we’ve worked really hard at doing it and I’m really excited to show everybody.

– I’m very, very confident. I think a couple of us are quite nervous but because we’ve been working on it for a long time I think we’ll smash it.

[Motivational music]

– The best thing about Making Moves was doing the choreography ourselves. So listening to what the choreographers wanted and then being able to change it into a way that we can express ourselves.

Can you tell me what you have learned doing this dance?

– Learning new moves.

– We got to use moves from everyone and we got to use everyone’s different styles and stuff.

– It pushes you out of your comfort zone as well like you’re not used to making up stuff yourself and fully doing it yourself without a teacher.

[Music dramatically fades]

[Motivational music returns]

– It was just very enjoyable because obviously getting to keep on your feet learn every single week.

– I’ve genuinely made friends that I’m gonna keep for like the rest of my life. Like I think dance is really a lot about making connections with other people.

[Music fades]