Making Moves National Platform

This Wednesday, 15th of July, 15 of our Company Cohort dancers have the privilege of performing at Sadler's Wells East in Stratford, London, as part of the Making Moves National Platform. The evening consists of 8 youth dance companies from across the nation coming together to showcase their pieces that were created using a 'toolkit' from a specific practitioner - ours was Ivan Blackstock. Our piece 'How to Hold a Beetle', choreographed by Jess Yeo and Brooke Sorensen, is inspired by the theme of light and dark, and we are proud to be representing the South East with this work. Making Moves has been an enriching journey that we have embarked on this year. Created by the YFX at Sadler's Wells, the programme was launched back at

the start of the season, and has allowed our dancers to grow and learn so much from the process. In September, Jess and Brooke attended the toolkit workshops at Sadler's Wells, working directly with Ivan to understand his choreographic practices that we had to use in our creative process. They learnt new ways to devise work, which has not only been valuable in the Making Moves process, but also in the choreography of other MKDT pieces. We began rehearsing each Sunday, alongside preparing for our full length productions and galas. It was important for us that th dancers understood Ivan's choreographic tools, and could speak about the themes and purpose of the piece they were presenting. By December we had a first draft filmed, which was sent to Ivan to check on how much progress we had made, and then by February it was time to perform at the Regional Platform at Sadler's Wells Lilian Baylis.

The Regional Platform allowed our dancers to meet and engage with many other young artists from the South East, taking workshops in the day, and performing in the evening. It was amazing to see how other groups had interpreted the theme, and we were all inspired by the plethora of young talent.

We were beyond proud of our dancers for what they had already achieved at this stage, but we waited with nervous excitement to hear whether we had progressed to the next stage. We continued to rehearse our piece, and showcased it at our Ascent Gala in March, and The Place Youth Dance Platform in May, and we then found out the news that we were 1 of 8 out of 52 groups to be selected for the National Platform, and the only group to be representing the South East!

On Tuesday, 14th July, we will be heading out to Sadler's Wells East to stage our piece and take workshops with Ivan Blackstock himself, then on the 15th of July we will be performing at this prestigious venue. We are beyond grateful for this opportunity, and our dancers are super excited to take the stage and support the other fantastic groups. Tune into our social media pages @mkdancetheatre as we will be making sure to share what we get up to throughout the trip.

Photography: Henry Curtis at The Place Youth Dance Platform

Once the event has been concluded, we will be uploading photos & video of 'How to Hold a Bettle' on the Repertoire section of our website, so make sure to head over there to check it out!