About SALVAGE

From August 2020, in the midst of social and professional restrictions, Ale, Becky, Ben, Bun, Julia, and Sophie began to meet in various London parks, to dance and chat, and chat within dancing and dance within chatting.

​

Amongst our various roles and identities, we are all dancers, and the initial thought was what it might mean to salvage our dancing: our skills, practices, hopes, our professional and social relationships – and to develop new practices within the ongoing formal restrictions, as well as each of our personal experiences throughout.

 

Our aim was not necessarily to rescue, preserve, conserve, adapt, reframe… but to pick up the pieces of cancelled, postponed, missed, disrupted, and unavailable dancing, and see what we might do with what remained. To embrace any states or feelings of getting rusty, out of practice, stuck in a rut, at a loss, or whatever else that moment brought, and to dance from that place.

​

We developed a series of scores – sometimes phrases brought to the sessions, but more often words or phrases that emerged while dancing – comments, reflections, reminders, jokes. We practised some, but not others. The necessity and nature of the practice, repetition and improvement were questioned.

Alongside physical and relational explorations, our practices also incorporate photography, videography, drawing and writing.