Broken Chords 2008
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Company Of People
TC is the lead creative artist for Yorkshire Dance's Company Of People, which is rooted in the communities of Chapeltown and Harehills in Leeds, with an intergenerational age range of 14 - 86. It is shaped and continues to evolve because of the commitment and diversity of its members, the artists and the people that support and enable the project. The company celebrates humanity and personal stories, histories and identities and TC has choreographed two major dance theatre works that have been performed both in Leeds and abroad.
Company of People is funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Creative Europe and sits within a wider European Project called Performing Gender Dancing In Your Shoes.
Photo by David Lindsay
Company Of People is made up of an unlikely yet glorious collection of folk. An intergenerational group of mixed cultures, backgrounds and genders. It is a place where we can redefine what it is to be together where we have a chance to experience ourselves and the world in which we live differently. A place of possibility and joy, of playful anarchy, of seeing, being seen and having a sense of belonging. It's where we make our own rules, where we try things on for size. Where we move and make noise and express ourselves, where we are challenged not pushed, are held (lightly) and know with a twinkle in our eye that things in this space, with these people, will always be out of the ordinary.
It is my belief that experiences such as these, that test and redefine our sense of self and of our relationships with others, ripple out into our lives and into our wider community.
Photo by David Lindsay
In Your Shoes 2022 performance
Leeds Playhouse as part of Yorkshire Dance Ageless Festival
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The Epic Everyday 2023 performance
Leeds Playhouse as part of Yorkshire Dance Ageless Festival
Boulevard Festival Den Bosch, Holland
Gender Bender Festival, Bologna, Italy
Reclaim The Night Leeds - Promenade excerpts
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Photo by Dražen Prignica
QUOTES
Mike Banyan - COP member
I understood performing in my head, intellectually not in the heart, in the body. I couldn’t see the potential of dance for communication and self expression. COP has opened up parts of me that were not accessible before, hitherto unexpressed - playful, extravagant, queer. It was a revelation, it’s influenced other aspects of my life. I threw myself into it.
Izzy Britain - COP artist co worker
Thanks for the joy, the learnings, the quietly radical experience of three epic years of intercultural, intergenerational dialogue through dance.
The magic is a melting pot of all of us; our hopes, our dreams, our experiences. Yet TC is the one who creates the container in which we emerge. She draws out the stories and subtleties and guides us into embodied relationship across ages, backgrounds, cultures. She does it with empathy, care and an attention to detail I've rarely experienced before.
I think for all of us involved, Company of People is a special kind of medicine. A vision of creative community and co-creation that gives us a sense of the more beautiful world that is possible.
Arts Citizenship - Moving and Belonging Conference
TC represented Yorkshire Dance and Company Of People as an invited delegate to present at a round table discussion and deliver a movement workshop at the Arts Citizen Conference at Northern School of Contemporary Dance Jan 2024, speaking about the practice of co authorship, co-design and cultural production working with Company Of People.
Company Of People continue to be a creative sounding board for other artists working within the community. They have co created a 4hr improvisation piece as a research project with Fevered Sleep called How To Change The World By Doing Nothing
Photo by Elly Wellford