An interview with Chloe from the Yellow Group

What motivated you to take part as a dancer in Home Turf?

I found Home Turf by searching for dance projects to do over the summer holidays. I was really pleased when I came across Home Turf as the concept of it really appealed to me, lots of people coming together to create an exciting and unique piece of dance. It also appealed to me because of my love and passion for dance and being able to give myself a new challenge by collaborating it with football. I found this aspect of it really interesting.

What has been your favourite part of the Home Turf experience thus far?

I have enjoyed working with such a large variety of people and feel that the diverseness of everyone involved as well as the aspect of dance and football together is what makes Home Turf unique.

What is your relationship with dance and football? How have your past experiences with dance and football shaped your time at Sadler's Wells for Home Turf?
I have been dancing from a very young age and it has always been a hugely important part of my life. Over the years I have had lots of fantastic dance experiences and I hope to continue to do so as part of my career. Having these experiences and training has definitely prepared me well for Home Turf such as the hard work, intense rehearsals and working with new people. I've always used elements of my life experiences to help portray emotions in my dance whether it be happy, sad, fast or slow etc, so after looking at football I was able to see how you could also use these elements in the same way. 

I haven't had much experience in football other than knowing that it involves teamwork and energy. From being at Home Turf I have learnt that you see this in dance as well as exhilaration, excitement, emotion and lots of movement. Because I am used to using my life experiences to help with my dance, since being at Salder's Wells I have been able to use this in a new way by taking the movement and emotions from football and incorporating that into dance, which I really enjoyed. This is something that I would not have normally thought of about football and has been so inspiring. 

What are 3 words that would describe your feelings around the Home Turf rehearsals or the project as a whole?
Exciting, Motivated, Unified

Chloe at a press photocall in the new home of West Ham, the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Stadium

Rehearsal photos by Gigi Gianella

Sadler's Soundbites - Home Turf

Shakira, in the Purple Group, talks about the Home Turf rehearsals

Home Turf rehearsal photo by Gigi Giannella

The reason I chose to take part in this project was because of the opportunity to perform once again on Sadler's Wells main stage, but this time with an entirely different group of people dancing about a topic I knew nothing about -football! 

We have done so much in a such a short space of time but one of my favourite parts of this project has been working under a new choreographer Pascal with my fellow dancers from NYDC (alumni) 

In high school I was part of the girls football team. I would usually play defender or goal keeper as our team was very strong so the ball rarely came in my direction! I was never fully into it and spent the majority of the game prancing about like the dancer I am! I guess you could say football and dance were related and it has definitely played a small role in shaping my knowledge for Home Turf!

3 words to describe Home Turf...

Hardcore 

Community

Inclusive 

Shakira is currently training at Northern School of Contemporary Dance and is an alumni of the National Youth Dance Company

    An interview with Ruby, NYDC Alumna and Purple Group Home Turf Dancer;

     What motivated you to take part as a dancer in Home Turf?

     Home Turf sounded like a really exciting project to me – getting together groups of so many different types of people and putting aside our differences to unite in one big show via the excitement of dance and football. I don’t know much about football at all, so I thought it would be an intriguing process to combine something I am quite experienced in with something in which I have very little experience.

    ..Also, a chance to perform on Sadler’s Wells main stage is an offer you can’t turn down!

     What has been your favourite part of the Home Turf experience thus far?

      It was great to work briefly with the Company of Elders. Their enthusiasm for the project was infectious and we all loved their spirit in rehearsals. It is an invaluable opportunity to work with very different groups of people, learning endless amounts from each other.

What is your relationship with dance and football? How have your past experiences with dance and football shaped your time at Sadler’s Wells for Home Turf?   

      Dance has been important in my life from a very young age; from being taken to various performances as child, to taking it up as a hobby, and then going on to vocational dance training for my degree at London Contemporary Dance School. My relationship with football has been quite different. It was still a part of my childhood – getting family and friends together to watch the World Cup etc – but wasn’t something I invested much interest or time in. Having said that I’ve always loved the energy and community spirit of football.

     My experience in dance has prepared me well for the intensity of the rehearsals, but my lack of experience in football has definitely made the rehearsals much more challenging! The choreography is unusual in that it has lots of football related movement in it, so not only are we dancing but we are also having to learn about how football works and let that inform our physicality within and performance of the choreography.

      What are 3 words that would describe your feelings around the Home Turf rehearsals or project as a whole?

Intrigued, excited, inspired.

                               

                                  Rehearsal photos by Gigi Giannella

     

     

Home Turf Trailer

Rehearsals for Home Turf with Lee Griffiths from The Company

Rehearsal photos by Gigi Giannella

Transcript of an interview with Red Group dancer Jackie

Kevin: So what’s the first thing you think about when you head the word ‘football’?

Jackie: Football is…when you play football

Kevin: And what do you think about when you hear the word ‘goal’?

Jackie: Goal is when you score a goal.

Kevin: And what about when you hear the word ‘dance’?

Jackie: Dance means, when you’re dancing, when you’re happy

Rehearsal photo by Gigi Giannella

Kevin: So dancing makes you feel happy? What’s your connection to football? What’s your opinion on it?

Jackie: It’s interesting for people who don’t play football and it’s good to learn to put football into dance, and it’s really good.

Kevin: Do you think there are some similarities between football and dance?

Jackie: Yeah

Kevin: So what are those similarities?

Jackie: Similarities are body language, and the way they express their selves, and the way you put your body into a dance, and the way you express your face expression, and the way that you are in slow motion or not in slow motion.

Kevin: Lovely, and what skills do you think a footballer has?

Jackie: Skills is where they do a lot of training and a lot of hard work, they have to do commitments, if you want to be a footballer, you have to be a commitment to do that

Rehearsal photo by Gigi Giannella

Kevin: Have you ever been to a football match?

Jackie: No

Kevin: If you had been, how do you imagine the atmosphere to be? What do you think it might feel like?

Jackie: Imagine if you’re in a football pitch, or you’re in a different world or a different bubble. And you ain’t got no one and you don’t know anyone, and you wanna shout and you don’t care how people feel how you are feeling, you don’t care about what they think, just let it all out.

Kevin: So you think you might get lost in the match?

Jackie: Yeah

Kevin: Do you think that might happen on stage when you were dancing as well?

Jackie: No, because you know where you’re gonna be

Photos from Home Turf Research and Development Session, 2nd June 2016