Summer play scheme input 

Working with charity Enableability on their summer play scheme for children with profound and multiple disabilities. 

Over the past few years members of Chance to Dance have visited this play scheme and performed various dances for the chidren there as well as leading dance workshops.  The most memorable was the Frigate Bird dance, where the dancers impersonate Frigate Birds who steal each other’s sticks to make their own nests and dance duets with each other. By the way our ‘sticks’ were soft and brightly coloured. The children totally inspired by the dancers performed their own version of this dance stealing sticks and dancing in pairs.  Much fun was had by all. 

What was noticed on the initial visits was that the more profoundly disabled children related well to the disabled members of C2D and were seen to participate more actively with them. 

This developed into a few Chance to Dance members, both disabled and non-disabled visiting the play scheme to deliver dance workshops.  This has the double benefit of engaging the hard to reach children and young people on the play scheme and giving appropriate C2D members the opportunity to develop their leadership skills. 


DANCEFEST July 2006

This is a project that grew and the seed of the idea came from our 10th Birthday Celebrations. We started with a celebratory day of dance for local disability dance groups in the Wymering Centre, Portsmouth. The morning was taken up with dance workshops and the afternoon with the various groups performing their dances. A lovely lunch was included, because sharing food is an important part of socializing. 

Alan Kenny, himself a wheelchair user was invited to choreograph ‘Respect’ for C2D and challenged to group to work differently, which was very empowering for everyone. C2D were joined by Blue Froot, Commonweal Dance Co, Gosport Creative Dance Group and dancers from Bishopstoke Day Services. 

Feedback was very positive and everyone wanted to do it again.  Duncan Shepherd produced a DVD of the day, a copy of which was distributed to all the dance groups. This was funded by the Awards for All Lottery Fund.

Unfortunately it was impossible to repeat this experience, the Wymering Centre was destroyed by fire.  Consequently C2D have to find another way of sharing the fun. 

We moved to smaller premesis, the church hall at St Peter & Paul, Wymering and had to work with smaller numbers.   

Developing DANCEFEST  November 2007 – April 2008 

This took the form of inviting various disability dance groups to join our regular weekly sessions and visiting Cliffdale Primary School to perform and lead a dance workshop. The outcome of this was such a positive response from the people from Portsmouth Day Services that the following term with funding from Adult and Family Learning in the Portsmouth City Council, Chance to Dance visited Portsmouth Day Services in  

Visiting Schools June July 2007

We visited two schools during this Summer Term, performing ‘There and Back Again’ and the ‘Frigate Bird Dance’ before leading a dance workshop for Yr 6 pupils. They had the opportunity to perform their version of the Frigate Bird Dance which proved to be hugely popular with them. 

Community Presentation Project. April 2005-6 

For this project selected members of C2D were trained to deliver presentations about what the group does to various community groups throughout the city.  This included visits to the Portsmouth Foyer, the Friday Club and the Gateway Club to tell these members, whose ages ranged from early twenties to Senior Citizens. This also gave members the opportunity to continue to develop their skills as Dance Leaders. 

We had a final presentation and performance at The Discovery Centre in Edinburgh Road where we invited as many people as possible from the groups we had been able to visit and those we had not, which culminated with a performance of ‘Carnival of Animals’ with Anthony and Betty in the sparkly purple octopus costume and of course a fun workshop. 

This project was funded by Global Grants.  

Fantastic Elastic mini tour June – August 2005  

A summer performance programme of Fantastic Elastic was perfromed by a varying number of members in the group and showcased at Paulsgrove Showcase of Talent, Studio Theatre - Dance the Night Away, Jubilee Lodge: and HMS Victory.

10th Birthday Celebrations and launch of CD Rom  

We had a big Birthday Celebration in the Wymering Centre and launched our educational CD Rom about our practice. The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Portsmouth were able to join us, as was Ray Biggs, of full circle arts based in Manchester who reviewed this for us. We had a lovely lunch and invited as many dance practitioners as we could think of and the idea of DANCEFEST  was born. We had a dance workshop followed by a perfromance in the afternoon. This was funded by Awards for All Lottery Fund.