Photo credit: Alice Underwood Films
We have been catching up with Susie Tate as she starts her project with Priory School in Hexham. Bringing dance to areas with limited arts provisions. Filming starts early June and we can't to see the finished production.
About the project.
Breathing Space is an ambitious, participatory dance project for disabled children and young people at Hexham Priory Special School, in partnership with local dance artist, Susie Tate.
It has been inspired by the delivery of their previous film project, Swimming Upstream, with Susie’s Carlisle based stroke survivor dance group, About Being.
The project at Priory School enables participation in the arts in a rural area with limited arts provision. Their specialist, well-evidenced, inclusive dance approach will foster children’s creative learning and support physical and emotional health and wellbeing. Staff training will diversify skills, enhancing their work with children and expanding the project reach.
A culminating dance film, shared with families, friends and local communities, will celebrate children’s ideas, stories and achievements.
How this will look will develop over the time they are working together but will highlight the range of work that the children and young people have experienced. The filmmaker, Alice Underwood, trained as a dancer and highlights the beauty of all movement however small or big it may be.
The film will be shown in the Autumn term 2024, but local press are invited to capture the filming week beginning 10th June 2024.
As well as Priory school and its wider community, Breathing Space will take the film wider to local events and venues in September and October 2024. The venues will include:
· Priory School Academy partner schools
· The RVI (Royal Victoria Infirmary) children’s ward and at the hospital cinema as a header for longer films
· Further venues TBC
Meet the artist.
Susie Tate is a dance artist working in health, wellbeing and education.
Her training was in classical ballet. Susie gained a degree at the Royal Academy of Dance and later, an MA in choreography at Middlesex University.
Injury left Susie unable to perform but drew her into the field of dance education – a happy twist of fate.
She has worked with a variety of dance companies including English National Ballet, London Contemporary, Birmingham Royal Ballet, The Royal Ballet School, Anjali and Corali, developing, leading and managing dance projects in schools, the community and health care settings.
In each setting Susie has been guided by highly experienced and generous dance practitioners.
Susie lives in the North Pennines, an area of outstanding natural beauty known as ‘the last wilderness in England’. This is her base as a freelance dance artist working in healthcare, education, and community settings.
Susie Tate Projects website: www.susietate.co.uk
Follow Susie Tate Projects on social media to support the artist.
About Dance Art Foundation – Breathing Space projects
Dance Art Foundation is an artist-powered, artist-led independent arts charity working at the intersections of dance, visual art, social engagement and artist advocacy across the UK. Founded in 2000 and led by Artistic Director Joe Moran (artist and choreographer) in collaboration with a national and international network of independent artists and partner organisations, Dance Art Foundation incubates new ideas and new developments in dance that it takes out into the world in fresh and imaginative ways.
Dance Art Foundation website: www.danceartfoundation.com
We will follow up in the Autumn once the film has been released and preview dates are confirmed.
