Earlier in the year, the company carried out a pilot for our new project,Thingamajigs.
The project was carried out with support from Creative Leap, a new professional development scheme which aims to give emerging artists the chance to kick start their careers and turn their creative ideas into reality.
Thingamajigs was created with an audience of young children (aged 3+) and their parents in mind. The dance performance sees two performers explore how a variety of everyday, very familiar objects can be used in weird and wonderful ways. Think paper telescopes, foil moustaches, human hoopla and much much more!
Research for the project took place at Erdington Hall Nursery and Short Heath Primary School, both in Erdington, Birmingham. The
company led workshops at the schools focussing on encouraging children to explore freely with a range of everyday objects. The company observed how the children interacted with these objects naturally, and on some occasions intervened to assist experimentation. The ideas that children had in these workshops and the ways we observed them interacting with the objects then fed directly into the choreography for the piece.
The performance was presented in March 2011 at both the Children’s Centre and School that the research workshops had taken place and was very successful in terms of engaging a large number of parents and children at each venue.
Feedback for the project was extremely positive. Teachers commented:
The children loved having you both come in and teach them! All of the children were engaged. I saw a different side to lots of the children, for example when the children were becoming ‘monsters’, one little boy who is usually very shy, came out of his shell and got into character ‘roaring’ with his friends. It was great to take a step back and see what the children
would do with the resources.
The appropriateness of the workshop content was spot on for our Year 2 pupils. It really gave them an opportunity to think about how they can move their bodies in different ways and use materials for imaginative purposes.
Whilst audience members said:
‘I thought it was fab and, I mean, look what the kids got out of it.’
‘My favourite bit was wiggling with the hula hoops.’
‘We didn’t know what to expect at all so it was really refreshing to see something completely different. Yeah, good fun.’
‘The show was fantastic!’
‘I think you should do it again.’
More information about Thingamajigs and how it can be presented at your event or school, can be found here.
