Reflections on Sagacity 2017

At Green Candle we are thrilled with the response from Sagacity 2017 and as we reflected on the success of another fantastic festival of older people dancing, we also wanted to celebrate our 30th Birthday year with some of the participants and performers who make the event so special.

 

Our Sagacity workshop day this year was themed around the year 1987 – Green Candle’s founding year and a memorable year in popular culture, music and dance. Participants in our workshop day learned sequences from Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ and Dirty Dancing, as well as learning the Jive to Jackie Wilson’s ‘Reet Petit’ and developing creative choreographic ideas based on the Bangles ‘Walk like an Egyptian’; all from the year 1987.

 

The dancers thoroughly enjoyed the fun and variety offered on the day and shone in their performance sharing session:

 

“We had the most amazing time. The dance instructors were fantastic, friendly, enthusiastic and encouraging. It was lovely to see the dancers from other groups, and the food was lovely. Thank you so much.”

“Great fun. Great music. Meet lovely people. Brilliant learning new routines and seeing it come together. Thank you.”

SagaCity! 2017

Sagacity! 2017, Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ workshop 

SagaCity! 2017

Sagacity! 2017 Dirty Dancing workshop

 

On day two we were thrilled to host six high quality older dancers companies who performed an eclectic range of dance work in the theatre at Oxford House. Performances were by ‘Boundless’ from Trinity Laban, ‘no Dance no Joy’, ‘Hornsey Dance’, ‘D2D’ Dance Company, ‘Slo Mo’ and ‘Dancing to the music of time’ from Greenwich Dance.

 

“What a beautiful evening celebrating how wonderful older people are. A brilliant much needed positive representation of what older people can do. We need it!”

 

“Inspiring and motivating dancers. Fabulous performances, thank you for all your good work.”

The Green Candle Senior Dancers also performed a promenade piece which led the audience through Oxford House and out into the sunshine of Weavers Fields, taking inspiration from the landscapes of our East London home and engaging a wider audience of evening onlookers in the park.

 

Green Candle Senior Dancers - Art in Motion

Green Candle Senior Dancers - Art in Motion

 

Thank you to all the performers and participants who joined us in making Sagacity 2017 such a great success. We look forward to seeing you all again next year!

 

~ The Green Candle team ~