Blue Eyed Soul Dance Company

 "I enjoyed the experience, it has been different from anything I have done before"

Blue Eyed Soul Dance Company explores a wide range of creative ideas bringing people together in an inclusive context. The Company has danced in water, on wheels, (that’s everybody in chairs, roller blades, trolleys etc) made dance videos in cupboards, beaches and on railway platforms and have created dance paintings, sculptures and soundscape.

TOUCH was a year long programme of dance activity run by Blue Eyed Soul in 2005. Over 1500 people between the ages of 4 and 99, with and without disabilities took part in a range of inclusive dance projects culminating in a large scale performance at the Shrewsbury Music Hall in November 2005.

The Company began ‘flying’ in 2000 and has developed an international reputation for its aerial dance training and performance opportunities for adults. In 2005 the Company felt that the time was right to bring this work to younger people and with support of the Ragdoll Foundation a group of local children, both disabled and non disabled, attended Blue Eyed Soul’s first Children Flying day held in August 2005.

The children were taught the skills needed to dance off the ground using the support of a rope and various forms of harness and fabric loops. Once the basic skills were learnt it enabled participants to explore a whole new world of movement, freeing the body from the constraints of gravity.

Through Children Flying, Blue Eyed Soul has discovered a huge and exciting potential to create new and innovative games, group tasks, and flying methods, responding to environments and props and collaborating with other artists.

The children worked together on a group evaluation using a selection of big coloured pens and a large piece of paper. They were encouraged to draw, write and play with thoughts and feelings from the day, taking their own ideas and scribing those of others.

Touchline, a youth dance group, was established as part of the TOUCH project and involved young people aged 13 – 16 years drawn from local special and mainstream schools. Touchline worked with Blue Eyed Soul to create a new performance piece which premiered as part of TOUCH and has since featured in the National Youth Dance Platform in Birmingham.

An integral part of the dance process was the creation of two enormous paintings with visual artists Maria Hayes, using visual art to express and evaluate their experiences in the project.

Blue Eyed Soul is a pioneer in the development of inclusive dance in the UK. It embraces ‘difference’ and produces exemplary creative partnerships between disabled and non-disabled people of all ages.