Having learned that Redbridge were running a community dance project to be featured in Lumiere London 2018, I was excited to find out more so myself and a couple of colleagues decided to book ourselves onto the workshop and get involved!
On Sunday 14 January, we arrived at Redbridge Drama Centre in South Woodford clueless of what awaited us. People had booked on from all over the borough; there were groups of friends, mothers and daughters, couples and a few people that had braved it on their own. But it didn’t matter as we were soon all to get to know each other.
We met our workshop leaders, Caldi, Grace, Tom & Skippy from Cirque Bijou and they got us all on our feet to go through some warm up exercises before playing a game that would help us to remember each other’s names. They explained that the Umbrella project was very much about working together and the games made us do exactly that. By the end of it, I could recall 90% of the names and there were a lot of people there, amazing!
Then we were given our practice umbrellas and began to learn the names of the moves that we would be doing followed by a demo from our four leaders. It was a lot of fun and pretty easy to pick up and looked really effective. After learning all of the moves, we were split into two groups and went off to practice in separate spaces. All we needed to do was follow our group leader and the ripple effect it produced was impressive.
At the end of the session, we were shown the light up umbrellas that we would be using and given a brief demo on how they worked. Because of all the electronics, these umbrellas were heavier than our practice versions, but seeing them alight really excited me as I could visualise how spectacular it will look when we all work together!
Our performance date is Friday 19 January, just one day away and I can’t wait! However, there are still spaces to fill, so if anyone is inspired after reading this blog and would like to perform with us in the Lumiere London light festival please contact Geet Sayal by emailing production@artichoke.uk.com and she will send you more information.
You will need to be able to come to the rehearsal tomorrow (Friday) at 3.30pm, which will be at our Piccadilly base. The rehearsal workshop will be led by Cirque Bijou artists and will involve simple actions and movements which the workshop leaders take you through in order to build the performance. I promise you this will be enough time to learn the moves, so what are you waiting for? Come and be part of this amazing experience!
If you don’t want to be part of the performance, please come and support us and enjoy the amazing spectacle that is Lumiere London.
More details can be found by visiting the Lumiere London website.
Post Author: Cathy Pace
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Umbrella Project is back and we want you to be a part of it! The performance using brightly lit umbrellas is on Thursday 15 March 6pm in Ilford.
You will need to be available from 2pm on the day. Contact culture@visionrcl.org.uk for information, no previous dance experience necessary!
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