Output details

Shoe Nail Dance

Shoe Nail Dance

Devised and performed in Lewes, Sussex, UK, July 2009.

The Shoe Nail Dance, a community dance research project was created to celebrate the bi-centenary of the death of Revolutionary writer and Human rights activist Thomas Paine (Common Sense), performed in Lewes, Sussex, UK. The project involved 200 dancers from local schools and community and was presented on the closed High street of the town.

The choreographic research explored Laban’s Movement Choir work and the application of Laban’s methods to the orchestration of a mass within a unified choreographic system. Key questions included:

• how induce a sense of chaos and disorder in a large-scale participatory performance work

• what elements of the Laban’s mass orchestration allow for difference and individual expression.

• Who can access the choreography, whose choreography is this?

Participants in the work accessed the choreography partly through web-based lessons on Youtube, and the work was assembled in the last days before performance. The performance outcomes also included the legacy of an audio description of the work for blind and visually impaired audience members and an accessibility map. The politicized content of the piece is addressed through the inclusion of written slogans on billboards and the shouting of slogans , e.g “Blah Blah Blah”(in a Dadaist manner ) through newspaper “megaphones”. One section of the piece includes the reconstruction of choreographic structures from the work of Trisha Brown’s “Accumulation” and another employs strategies observed in the work “Nelken” by Pina Bausch.

Produced by Paddock Productions Lewes, UK

Funders and partners

The budget for the project was £36k and this was funded by Arts Council South East, East Sussex County Councils, Lewes District Council, The Thomas Paine Society, and supported by Lewes Town Council, Priory School, Lewes, Laughton Primary School, Lewes, The Westgate Centre, Lewes, and Oyster project, Lewes.