Press Release: Danielle Teale's Collective IDentity Project receives major funding for a national programme with dancers with Parkinson's

[Jan McNulty]

Danielle Teale’s Collective IDentity Project receives major funding from Arts Council England for a national programme with dancers with Parkinson’s 

 

Danielle Teale Dance is delighted to announce a significant grant from Arts Council England to expand the reach of its innovative Collective IDentity (CID) Project with dancers with Parkinson’s throughout the UK. 

 

Working with seven national partners to deliver work in London, Hampshire, Essex and Lancashire, this ground-breaking project brings together visual arts, dance, music and research with dancers with Parkinson’s to explore our sense of identity, collectivity and compassion. After a year of isolation and the challenges that we have all faced, this project is steeped in personal attention, and the values of care and collaboration.

 

To allow a safe and sensitive return to in-person activity, the project will begin online with a programme of virtual dance workshops, before exploring a new one-to-one offer with dancers in their own homes and gardens, culminating in a series of live group workshops. 

 

This multidimensional project will also see a new documentary film and the ‘Connection in Isolation’ exhibition created with the dancers and inspired by their dance experience, tour to libraries, hospitals and arts centres across the UK. 

 

Danielle Teale, Artistic Director of Danielle Teale Dance, said: ‘I am grateful to Arts Council England and all of our partners for supporting the Collective IDentity Project. This investment will allow us not only to continue but expand on our work with dancers with Parkinson's to question how care and compassion for ourselves and others supports our sense of identity’ 

 

The seven partners for the CID Project are University College London Hospital: Arts and Heritage (Central London), Arts at St. George’s Hospital (South West London), Poplar Union (East London), LPM Dance and Health (Lancashire), Dance Network Association (Essex), and The Point (Eastleigh). 

 

In addition to these partners Danielle Teale Dance will work with CILIP, the UK’s library and information association, to connect with libraries across the UK for a national events and exhibition tour. 

 

The core team for delivering Danielle Teale’s CID Project is Danielle Teale, Artistic Director, Jaka Skapin, Music and Film Director, Emma Abbey, Producer, and independent Researcher and Evaluator Lizzie Fort  

 

Danielle Teale is an internationally recognised leader in the field of dance and Parkinson’s, having worked with people with Parkinson’s for over 12 years. She has delivered work for many high-profile programmes including English National Ballet, Scottish Ballet, People Dancing and Mark Morris Dance Group among others. It is her belief that by providing people with Parkinson’s ownership over their dance experience they can develop a greater understanding of themselves and their bodies and find more capacity for care for themselves and others.

 

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Notes to Editors 

 

About Danielle Teale

Danielle Teale has been working with people with Parkinson’s for over 12 years and in dancing together with them has evolved a strong interest in how dance can be a vehicle for deepening self-understanding, self-acceptance, and contributing to self-efficacy. Her belief is that providing dancers with Parkinson’s a direct ownership over their dance experience enables greater understanding of themselves. This enquiry is demonstrated in the co-creative practice that Teale has been evolving with dancers in four classes across London for the last 4 years, alongside artistic collaborator, musician and vocal improvisation specialist, Jaka Skapin. Their combined interest in compassionate listening through music and dance improvisation has led to an interdisciplinary approach to sharing stories and bringing unseen and unheard voices to life in their practice. 

 

About Danielle Teale’s Dancing with Parkinson’s

The Danielle Teale, Dancing with Parkinson’s Programme has been running since 2016 with three London health partners - St. Joseph’s Hospice (Hackney), National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (NHNN) - UCLH Queen Square, and Queen Mary’s Hospital (St. George's Trust). The CID Project evolved from this work, and began in 2019 led by artistic director Danielle Teale with a Company of dancers with Parkinson’s based at Poplar Union, east London’s community arts venue. The project explored identity as a collective and as an individual, and considered the question ‘can dancing together provide a greater sense of self, and a deeper connection to our common humanity?’ 

 

Delivered by Danielle Teale in collaboration with Jaka Skapin the workshops took a co-creative approach. The dancers collaborated with Teale and a series of guest artists to explore identity and other themes that arose during the process including visibility, beauty, compassion and wellness. Out of that experience the group created a dance performance piece presented at Poplar Union alongside an exhibition of art, film and photography all produced in response to, and during, the process.