Untitled: Cèilidh (working title) is a gathering or a visitation of people to a community hall. Ten young people aged between 5 and 16 hold the space as performers and work through a cycle of attempts to conjure connection in mysterious ways with visiting people and with other live and dead species in the space and beyond.
Over several years, intertwined with creative practice, I've been working at home in Badenoch and Strathspey on ecological land restoration projects, which means involving people and, in particular, developing creative and playful approaches to bringing younger folk closer to landscapes, habitats and species. Over the past year or so, I've also been thinking specifically about developing a performance through Imaginate's Accelerator programme.
I've been keen to create something born out of the feelings that persist for me, at least where I live and with my interests, and possibly for you too. It's the exclusion of people and other species that comes as a result of imbalances of power. The unfairness of it all. In Scotland, part of our national consciousness sits in the landscapes and people traumatised by centuries of land use and its legacy. We have to question if and how we’re coming to terms with our history, how much that history is learned and where young people come into that. And then our opportunities. It's a bit rosier to focus on positive futures, isn’t it?
But still, the past. There's inspiration to be found in looking to older times, perhaps when our survival was more immediately entangled with the natural environment, difficult times but not with the layered complexity of economic and technological forces and consequences outwith our sight and comprehension now. I dwell on ancient belief systems that guided positive and respectful choices when it came to protecting ourselves, each other and other species. Long before the accelerated development of agriculture and industry and our understanding of ecological science, we found ways to live in good or 'right relations' with others. Our survival depended on it and it seemed to keep us in check with the rest of nature.
And back to now, that ongoing feeling. I'm not the person to try and lead on making performance 'about' any of this big stuff. I expect it’s more about atmospheres and feelings and letting meaning be found by different people of all ages. We’re playing with effort and connection. In a community hall, through movement and dance, song, sound and light, ten young people of different ages and creative experiences take control of a performance and take care of us.
It is an effort to playfully but sincerely make visible the unseen and make heard the unheard. We are thinking grandly about life across landscapes and the ages, and more immediately across different ages in the room, in this moment.
We revel in interconnection. Dance and natural materials generate sound. Gaelic song and traditional instrumentation morph into unfamiliar forms. Natural animal and plant materials hold us together. High effort dances conjure non-humans. We aim to transform this community space and make big atmospheres out of small things.
People, place and representation have been a motivation in this project. Developing spaces for young people to express themselves in supported projects is important but opportunities for a massive demographic slice seems scarce.
So, Untitled: Cèilidh (working title) has been working with ten young collaborators, most of whom have a creative practice in dance or traditional music. They are talented people, training hard to take their passions into their working lives, or simply just passionate. It’s a process that's ambitious in how young peoples' practices and voices are valued and supported. They have been invited or brought in through call-out and we have been working over months in weekly sessions or occasional rehearsals and among different groups of dancers, singers, musicians and in different spaces. And on two occasions, we gather over a couple of days with the wider adult collaborative team to bring it all together.
The rural community hall is important as an easily accessible, non-hierarchical and highly democratic working space. A booking is made, keys are accessed, the space is respected. It is very straightforward. But this practicality is also dramaturgically aligned as a site of familiar community gathering and connection. Subwoofers, vocal transformation, visiting invertebrates and haze are less familiar. It's a space we're keen to transform.
Please sign up if you’d like to come along to our sharings on 9 July.