About the program – Trinity Laban BA2, Repertory Project-Dance Legends

Like the rest of the art and culture community in the UK, our best-placed plans were disrupted by the pandemic. We saw the damage and wanted to respond in our own humble way as best as we could. That was when we thought about a programme that would create opportunities through the arts. The Cross Arts Engagement and Regeneration project was born! In this programme we combine diverse art forms, specifically: fine art, storytelling through films, interviews and dance, all while engaging young adults and the entire creative community.

This page is dedicated to the fine art, design, and enterprise segment of the project. In this, we tap into the creativity and enthusiasm of young students. We have engaged young students from the WKC through internship placements to create their own designs based on socially relevant themes with merchandising potential. We aim to connect art and business, with a focus on young adults preparing to start their careers.

This, we hope, will help renew confidence and sense of purpose, which has been battered by the travails of this pandemic, and prepare them for their careers ahead and beyond. From the perspective of businesses, this is an ideal way to engage and give back to the community through internship placements, increasing arts-based employability, skill and work experience, creative outputs on the topics of nature and sustainability, Black Lives Matter, the need to socialise, live theatre and connecting art and entrepreneurship.

Thank you Westminster Kingsway College for joining us:

Westminster Kingsway College partnered with Abundant Art in September 2020. The partnership was formed to allow students from Westminster Kingsway College (WKC) to gain invaluable employability skills and prepare them for the world of work through two-week placements. The partnership formed during the height of a pandemic, adding extra challenges as all
placements had to be adapted to take place in a virtual setting, which was a new way of working for both Abundant Art and the college.

In nine months, Abundant Art have hosted 35 young people from WKC and have played a fundamental part in preparing students for their futures. The 35 students were across different curriculum areas including, Art and Design, Business and Creative Media – and all were given a variety of responsibilities to work on, directly relating to their chosen study programme.
The students were part of Abundant Art’s Cross Arts Regeneration Project which was established during the Pandemic to encourage awareness within the Creative Industry, which was unfortunately, one of the Industries to take the biggest hit due to the Coronavirus. The project’s aim was to generate a positive social and environmental impact through different forms of art created by young people.

The Art and Design/ Creative Media students were given the task of creating logo’s and designs based on current social issues. Different groups worked on various themes including Black Lives Matter, Saving Nature and The Importance of Gatherings and Human Interaction (which had great relevance after the national lockdown).

During the two weeks the students were able to understand what it would be like working for a company and the importance of structure, attendance and fulfilling commitments of an employee. The students had to join in on group sessions which consisted of introductions, task allocations, expectations, and presentations. Presenting to a group is often a daunting task for young people, so to have the opportunity to practice these skills is invaluable.

We are now delighted to launch our first exhibition. Working on this projects has been challenging, but together we have managed to successfully provide meaningful opportunities to a host of young people, while navigating our way through a pandemic. The growth of the project has opened doors for many students, and we look forward to continue to do so.

Thank you Arts Council England for the support

Art Works and Merchandise

Students’ Feedback

MOVING FORWARD, LOOKING BACK #2020

Stories of Bravery and Resilience, Artists During lockdown –  A short documentary film

Moving Forward, Looking Back #2020 is a new documentary charting the effects of the pandemic on the performing arts.

The film follows three dancers, as they navigate the succession of lockdowns and the sudden shutdown of their working lives – each one at a different stage of their professional development, each one experiencing that development grind to a halt.

So many times, during the pandemic we heard art being labelled as non-essential.

It may be too early to really assess the effects of such misplaced messaging on our society as a whole; as damaging the perception of art puts our own ability to project ourselves in the future at considerable risk, weakening the social fabric and alienating us from our true identity.

In a context where the functional took centre stage, this beautifully understated film performs a task that only art can deliver upon. It provides a fitting allegory to what our collective experience has felt like over the past year.

The footage was taken by the dancers themselves and has the authentic feel that only undoctored films can convey, with no attempt to dress up the scene as something it is not.

The challenges the protagonists are faced with are somewhat different for each of them as the dancers open up to us, giving a personal perspective on their life, that is strongly contrasted by their in-character performances, that punctuate the film.

Despite the innate technical limitations of such format, the film slowly induces the viewers to tune in to the rhythm of the modern dance performances, allowing the twists, breaks and turns of a modern dance routine to provide structure where there had appeared to be none.

Dance becomes the key to unlocking what first may appear as chaos. Elegance of movement, energy and a sense of ever-threatened balance, provide a welcomed framework not just for their performances, but also for the way they approach their respective personal lives, during the pandemic.

Despite the fear that surrounds them, they find the warmth to cultivate their emotions, to find better connections with their families and their communities.

They prove themselves to be essential workers in their own way – as art; the very thing that society seems to have turned away from gives them the means to forge meaning from the chaos.

END

An Abundant Art project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund

• Focusing on the iconic collaboration between dance pioneer Uday Shankar and Prima Ballerina Anna Pavlova and its impact on dance heritage.
• Researching, recording, informing, creating and sharing key elements of this heritage.
• Producing oral histories, workshops, exhibitions and documentary film involving universities, schools, community groups, libraries and public venues.

About Uday Shankar and Anna Pavlova

Uday Shankar (1900-1977) was a legendary Indian dancer, choreographer and film maker who pioneered a new technique of Indian contemporary dance. Anna Pavlova (1881-1931) was a prima Ballerina famous for her performance as and in” The Dying Swan” and for being the first ballerina (with her own company) to do a world tour of ballet. Their path breaking partnership gave us a heritage that opened a whole new world of creative collaboration across cultures- For the first time in modern history two dancers from completely diverse cultural civilizational backgrounds understood the value of each other’s heritage and co- created while always respecting the other’s culture without compromising the authenticity of their own styles.

Uday Shankar is the Indian dance pioneer who created a dance style that is invaluable in its intercultural philosophy of capturing the essence of Indian dance movements in a contemporary framework. His dance technique is a creative process which is all embracing- movements, music, costumes and stage craft to present an Indian dance experience for audiences in the west starting in the early 19^th century. One of the first Indian cultural ambassadors of multi-cultural and artistic synthesis to connect with artists and audiences in the UK and worldwide. He created a new genre of Indian dance outside the classical sensibilities and was the forerunner of an ideology that was far ahead of his times-globalisation and multiculturalism through art. Shankar took the essence from various forms of Indian classical and folk dance, statues and paintings and merged them in a movement format that evolved into a contemporary dance form maintaining the Indian aesthetics.

Pavlova performed many ‘ethnic’ dances, some of which she learned from local teachers during her travels. In addition to the dances of her native Russia, she performed Mexican, Japanese, and East Indian dances. It was from here that her collaboration with Uday Shankar started. Supported by her interest, Uday Shankar, her partner in Krishna Radha (1923), went on to revive the long-neglected art of dance in his native India.

Had there been no Anna Pavlova, there would perhaps not be an Uday Shankar, the dance pioneer. And with no Uday Shankar Indian Dance would not have had an early exposure in the World stage or

seen a new genre of contemporary Indian dance format that captures the essence of western cultural sensibilities of stagecraft, light, costume design which was an integral part of the newly formed Uday Shankar technique that made it hugely popular across nations and set Indian dance on the world stage permanently. Or we would not have had dance introduced in Indian cinema in the 1930s which has popularly evolved and taken a more modern and contemporary form today.

The first Indian contemporary movement format that Uday shankar created will be studied, reimagined and recreated across the community through workshops and activities in schools and universities. The activities will include understanding and learning new movements in dance practice and how an idea can be developed to creatively evolve in a dance movement, individually or in a group. The project will involve valuable new learning about cultural collaboration through the lens of Uday Shankar-Anna Pavlova partnership. The outcome of these activities will be shared across public venues along with the oral history narratives where the community at large can be informed about the first cultural exchange and artistic collaboration between the East and the West, the legacy of Uday Shankar and its relevance in Indian dance today and the history of Indian contemporary dance dating back to 1920s.

The Uday Shankar dance style creatively connects cultures, communities and inspires innovation. His dance partnership with Anna Pavlova, the Prima Ballerina from the west continues to be a shining model of practice where artists from distinct and diverse cultural backgrounds came together in a creative synergy.

This collaborative process is part of a research and heritage project by Abundant Art UK led by Protima Chatterjee, supported by The Heritage Lottery Fund. Our participating partners are Sampad-South Asian Arts and Heritage, Tinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and Roehampton University.