Magpie Dance Company and Bromley High School GDST come together to celebrate dance.

Along with the other four hundred and fifty-nine people who filled Bromley High School’s Senior Hall on the 24 th of February, I was determined not to be beaten by the dreadful weather conditions for what promised to be another exceptional evening in the company of Magpie Dance. Presented in partnership with the school, A Celebration of Dance marked a new and exciting departure for the inclusive community dance company for adults and young people with and without learning disabilities. The production resulted from the first project the ten-year-old company has undertaken with a main-stream school. For the pupils of Bromley High, a school with a reputation for distinction in dance, it represented the outcome of an unprecedented opportunity to work and perform with such an unusual and indeed pioneering professional company.

The joint presentation was made up of a widely varied selection of new and previously performed work from the company and school repertoires. Notable amongst an altogether impressive line-up, were Magpie’s recently inaugurated youth group’s first ever public performance and the premier showing of the core company’s ground-breaking new duet Peter’s Hands. These will be discussed in more detail later. Importantly for now the evening concluded with another premier, that of the work Magpie Dance and Bromley High School made to perform together. Touchingly referred to in the programme as “a document of the journey we have all made together”, the aptly named Intermingling really stood at the symbolic pinnacle of this commendable venture.

As the school’s Deputy Head Jenny Butler states in a short article the Times Educational Supplement asked her to write about the project which originated in the summer of 2004, Bromley High School is always looking for “exciting initiatives to support [their] work with charities” (TES 18/03.05). A talk delivered to the school by Magpie Dance’s founder and artistic director, Avril Hitman, inspired her to initiate the collaboration.

The school loaned rehearsal space and made contributions to the one hundred and thirty thousand pound fund that, with no regular financial support from any one source, Magpie Dance must secure every year. This is the minimum amount it needs if it is to continue the invaluable work it does with learning disabled people from Bromley, the South-East, and where possible other parts of the country. In return the company work-shopped and rehearsed with pupils to give them an exclusive insight into the singular way it works with movement. During this time the school’s budding young dancers and choreographers gained rare and privileged access to the choreographic techniques Magpie uses to create the unique style of dance for which it has become known and celebrated over the past ten years.

Intermingling is thoughtfully constructed around its eight dancers’ - four from Magpie and four from Bromley High School - very different experiences of dance and life. The rehearsal period began in October 2004 and lasted several months. Taking place during the half-term holiday and then after school, work was facilitated by Magpie Dance key players David Nurse and Suzy Mitchell. A carefully selected mix of what programme notes describe as the “vibrant images, gentle duets and exuberant dance” created over this time made for an attention-grabbing exploration of the positive potential in encounters and connections between diverse groups of people.

The year nine, GCSE dance students’ earnest accounts of their particular involvement in the Magpie project bolster and prove what Butler says in TES about Celebration of Dance making a “positive example of inclusive education” working at its best and catalysing “[immense] learning outcomes for everyone [involved].” They all share Arabella Langley’s honestly expressed anxiety and nervousness at meeting a group of learning disabled people for the first time; but at the same time echo Jessica Bradley’s delight at being chosen to participate in what she recognised as an “amazing opportunity”. While more intelligent words from Laura-Jayne Pinner articulate a now “completely different opinion of how the Magpies are and dance”; Helen Salama sums up perfectly by saying, “It took just a short space of time to realise that the Magpie students, like us, just wanted to have fun.”

Speaking of having fun, that is exactly what the Magpie Youth Group did as it made its debut public appearance. Although the weekly dance and holiday workshop scheme for learning disabled teenagers and young adults from the age of sixteen to twenty-five was only founded (assisted by a substantial grant from The Community Fund) in the spring of 2004, the organisation of its members was good and the standard of their performance high.

Under the directorship of experienced dancer and choreographer David Nurse and his assistant Natasha Mansfield-Osborne, the youth group is being run according to the tried and tested principles of the adult performing company. As another practical application of Magpie’s founding philosophy that “participation in the arts is for all, the emphasis being on ability and not disability”, it seeks also to provide the type of space and support its often marginalised participants need to become fully self-expressed. In such self-expression individuals find the confidence to believe in and thereby be valued for the contribution they can make to society regardless of any disability they may have.

Bearing witness to just how well this is working for them, the twelve dancers adjusted quickly to the disorientations of the stage and pressure of being the focus of such a large audience. Reflecting the sparkiness of Jonathon Rabagliti’s animated backdrop of birds and butterflies, flowers and fireworks, they moved to Dave Jenkins’ especially composed score with an ever growing energy and enthusiasm. Knowing that Magpie seeks to select dancers on the basis of ndividual potential, it was encouraging to see these young people beginning to channel their own personalities through the distinctive company style. To the audience’s delight they all appeared reluctant for the performance to end; none more so than Hannah Dempsey who seems to have found the ideal arena in which to develop and share her remarkable aptitude for street-style dance.

On the strength of this performance I don’t think I would have been the only one to have taken the hope that Magpie Dance has a future assured, at least in terms of talent, by those currently being nurtured within the youth group. However the young Magpies have much work ahead if they are ever to meet the standard consistently being raised by the core company’s present members.

Much awaited since a preview in July 2004, the first complete performance of its mighty new duet, Peter’s Hands, was most representative of this fact. Powerfully performed by the exquisitely matched partnership of its creator Peter Taylor and Suzy Mitchell, it is the latest work to come out of Magpie’s choreographic mentoring scheme. Run over the past two years with the aim of providing necessary guidance and backing to learning disabled members who show the desire and potential to make their own work, the scheme has already supported the production of Karen Grandison’s Winds of Change and Linda McCarthy’s Reflections which were also performed tonight.

Like all other Magpie initiatives, its success relies in large part on the contribution of its facilitators. As the names of David Nurse as Taylor’s mentor and Suzy Mitchell as his partner in the dance come up once again, they can no longer be passed over without further comment. Modest when I spoke to him, Nurse proves his worth to the company via results rather than words. His dance expertise and rare sensitivity to the individual needs of learning disabled people combine to miraculous effect. As tough a talker as she is a mover, Mitchell deftly batted off the suggestion that she might be doing anything out of the ordinary or creditable with her considerable talent as a dancer. The respectful but no nonsense approach I’ve witnessed her take to her work is equally effective and only thinly disguises the great amount of patience and affection she possesses for colleagues like Taylor.

Since he joined Magpie Dance two and a half years ago, forty-seven-year-old Taylor has seen his life transformed. Once timid, dependant and, with a limited verbal capacity, struggling to express himself; the bold and decided man that emerged when he discovered his flair for dancing was barely recognisable to those who had known him before. His ambition has grown with his confidence in himself as a strong, solid and creative dancer. So he was keen to take the chance the choreographic mentoring scheme would give him first to further, then to consolidate the improvisational experiments he had been doing with the giving and bearing of weight in a full-length dance-work.

A measure of the finished product’s magic is captured in John Duffy’s poem Light on our hands. Inspired after being led by Taylor in an improvisation circle, his tribute was read prior to the performance. But as is always the case when dealing with the transient medium of movement, words account poorly for what was the mesmerizing reality of the dance in its occurring moment. Taylor and Mitchell were nymph-like in their grace and the woody hues of Elizabeth King’s costumes. They were accompanied live by Paul Jayasinha, Dave Jenkins, and Hans Ferrao playing another of Jenkin’s expressly composed musical arrangements on cello, piano and drums. Whether moving together or apart, a rare chemistry flowed between them. As they cohesively curved in and out of each other’s time and space, they masterfully executed a succession of lifts and balances which would have stretched and tested the most accomplished of dancers to their limits.

Those who attended A Celebration of Dance were rewarded with a superlative evening. For the part of its contributors - Magpie Dance Company and Bromley High School - it was packed full individual and collective achievements of which to be proud.

Over the course of the evening I got a real sense that, after ten years of successful practice, Magpie Dance had raised its game. On the strength of the results it is producing by reaching beyond its original aims with schemes like the choreographic mentoring and youth group, the future is looking bright. Since the obstacle remains within funding, the key to continuation could lie with more associations like the latest with Bromley High School. Describing the project as, “an excellent template, given the right support, that could be applied to different groups of mainstream students” Magpie’s founder Avril Hitman shares the hope that the company, “will be able to work in this way again in the not too distant future”. As she points out, it would be an excellent way to guarantee the company’s important work while sharing its benefits with more than just those directly involved.

Annie Wells, March 2005