The Dancing in Caves project

Aim

Support the creation and sharing of a new promenade dance piece designed for caves and underground spaces.

Who we are

Made By Katie Green specialises in making dance work for museums and heritage sites.

We create work that is vibrant, that moves around the sites in which we work, tells stories about our shared past in a new and unexpected way and encourages people to think differently about the world around them.

Most recently, we have shared The Imagination Museum with 28 museums and heritage sites across the UK since 2013, created new work Choreographing The Collection for Dulwich Picture Gallery, as well as working on the Exploring Objects Sharing Cultures project with the British Museum and The Freedom Game (commemorating the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta) with Surrey Arts. We have reached 10,500 people through our work in these locations.

The Dancing in Caves project

"An emotional and evocative journey"

"I felt like I was entering another world"

Audience feedback from early sharings of work in progress for Beneath Our Feet

As part of our wider Dancing in Caves project, we are now developing a new promenade performance called Beneath Our Feet,  which will be designed to take the audience on a journey around our partner caves and underground spaces.

Research for Beneath Our Feet; Dancers Kirsty Arnold, Kate Cox, KJ Lawson Mortimer and Lucy Starkey; Photograph Pari Naderi

In Beneath Our Feet, a group of intrepid explorers will gather for an expedition underground. Their guide/narrator, live musician Lou Vilstrup, will draw them into an unknown world, where the memories and secrets of that space will dance before them.

We spent 3 days on-site at Kents Cavern in Torquay in January this year, working with an expert team of collaborators to research what this piece could look, feel and sound like. Take a look at our teaser video below or on our website here: http://madebykatiegreen.co.uk/performances/beneath-our-feet to see some of our initial ideas.

We hope you’ll get a sense from the film of the potential to create something enchanting, mysterious and moving; something which integrates movement, live music, text and light to tell the story of the underground.

Research for Beneath Our Feet; Dancer Kirsty Arnold; Photograph Pari Naderi

Where will we be taking the project?

We will begin by creating and premiering Beneath Our Feet in partnership with Kents Cavern, Torquay, leading up to first performances at the end of September 2017.

We will then collaborate with 6 further underground sites to share Beneath Our Feet in 2018, including Cheddar Gorge (Somerset), Stump Cross Caverns (North Yorkshire) and Carnglaze Cavern (Cornwall).

Our estimate is that,  through these initial performances, 1500 people will see the work live and another 1200 will engage in workshops, open rehearsals and discussion events as part of the wider Dancing in Caves project surrounding Beneath Our Feet.

Research for Beneath Our Feet; Dancer Lucy Starkey; Photograph Pari Naderi

How your donation will help

We are thrilled to have been successful in receiving a grant from Arts Council England to support development of the Dancing in Caves project. However, this grant is conditional on us raising an additional contribution of £2,000 through Crowdfunding, and that’s where you can help us. 

Any contribution you can make to help us reach our £2,000 Crowdfunding total will enable us to unlock just under £50,000 of support, and will therefore have a massive impact on the project. We will use your contribution specifically to help us to cover the costs of all the things happening alongside our performances that will enable us to reach out to the local communities around our sites. Through free preview performances and workshops we will be able to provide access to what we’re doing where it might not otherwise be possible.

For example, your donation will help us:

• to bring at least one group of children and young people to see our performance for free at each of our underground sites
• cover the costs of workshops so that we can keep them free for the 1200 participants we hope to engage throughout the course of the project
• to work with access organisation Attitude is Everything, who will support us in making sure that our unique performances can be accessed by as broad an audience as possible

Why is this work important?

“My children (and I) were mesmerised! An amazing opportunity to introduce children to dance, architecture, artefacts and history in an engaging way.”

“Fantastic, changed the way I thought museums could be made exciting, playful, vibrant and inclusive."

Audience feedback for The Imagination Museum

Our main aim for the Dancing in Caves project is to provide audiences of all ages with a unique opportunity to engage with our extraordinary partner sites in a new way.

We know from our experience working collaboratively with heritage sites over the past 4 years that this work is reaching new audiences, largely because it is happening outside of theatres and is either free or low cost to attend.

• Nearly half of the people we spoke to over our last year of performances of The Imagination Museum hadn’t visited the museum where we were performing before
• a third hadn’t seen dance performance before
• and 13% were new to both the museum and to dance.

99% of our audiences told us that what we were doing made them want to come back for more, and told us that they were moved, inspired and surprised by the way they had encountered their local museum or heritage site through our promenade performance.

We want the Dancing in Caves project to have the same impact that The Imagination Museum has had on the nearly 8600 people who have encountered the work at 28 museums and heritage sites across the UK over the past 4 years, through performances and workshops.

Your donation, whatever the size, will be invaluable in enabling us to achieve this goal. Thank you for taking the time to read about our work, and for your support.

The Imagination Museum; Dancer Robert Guy; Photograph Pari Naderi

Credits for the Dancing in Caves project

Filming/edit: Joshua Thompson, Wigglyline Productions; Photography by Pari Naderi
R&D footage performed by Kirsty Arnold, Kate Cox, KJ Lawson-Mortimer and Lucy Starkey
Music composed and performed by Max Perryment and Lou Vilstrup
Writing by Anna Selby
Designed and produced by Kate McStraw
Dramaturgy by Tom Cornford
Company Producer Claire Morton

Our initial research and development for the Dancing in Caves project was supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, South East Dance in partnership with Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Pavilion Dance South West.

This project successfully funded on 11th September 2017