Be curious about the power of dance - Jo Mawdsley

We all know that dance bolsters physical and mental health – it helps improve posture and flexibility, it lifts our mood and eases anxiety. It sharpens the mind, it increases strength, it builds social bonds and possibly most important of all, it's great fun. As we begin to emerge from the pandemic – don’t we all just want to have some fun and share in collective joy?

The Michael Clark Company with The Fall in I Am Curious Orange

To celebrate the next major exhibition at V&A Dundee, Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer, we are developing two projects that will show the power of dance to improve lives. In this way dance and design share so much – at their best, they work with people to create new possibilities and new ways of seeing the world.

Michael Clark is a defining Scottish cultural figure, well known for his unforgettable and inspiring choreography that has challenged and redefined the limits of dance, its relationship to design and its place in contemporary culture. Dance has the power to bring together different communities, abilities and ages in shared joy and creative expression.

Because We’re Curious is the title of our community engagement project and is an exciting collaboration with two former Michael Clark Company dancers, Matthew Hawkins and Dawn Hartley, both of whom danced with the company in the heady days of the 1980s.

Jo Mawdsley is Head of Learning at V&A Dundee

The exhibition is such a rich opportunity to explore Michael Clark’s practice and his approach to making dance. With a focus on his unique stage-draughtsmanship, seen on the pages of his working notebooks, Because We’re Curious aims to engage dancers and non-dancers alike in collective movement and joy.

Because We’re Curious is a fusion of the titles of two of Michael Clark’s stage shows – Because We Must and I Am Curious, Orange. Conceived by Matthew, movement vocabulary aligned to vowels is used as a ‘score’ or ‘code’ to structure the creation of new dances in and around the museum.

First trialled with dance students from Glasgow Clyde College, the project invites participants to create their own vowel-related and space-related moves, linking collective performance and shared experience – a form of community choreography, if you will. We have recently been working in the museum with student dancers from Dundee and Angus College, giving them the opportunity to work with two remarkable professional dancers and choreographers, while also delighting our unsuspecting visitors with impromptu dance workshops around V&A Dundee!

We are also excited to be collaborating with our partners Alzheimer Scotland and will be programming a series of workshops over the summer for people living with and or caring for those with Alzheimer’s and dementia. Dance has been proven to have a positive effective in stimulating social interaction, enhancing mood, reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms, increasing self-awareness and self-expression, and improving the quality of life in people affected by Alzheimer's.

Lorena Randi and Victoria Insole in Before and After The Fall 2001

Based on the success of the project with brain injury charity Headway East London at the Barbican in 2021, and conceived by Kate Coyne, former Associate Director of Michael Clark Company, participants will explore a range of ways to use their bodies to create shapes, respond to music, and express themselves through movement.

This type of response to Michael’s work will, I hope, help participants and visitors to look at his work in a different way. Curiosity, in its broadest definition, is about having a strong desire to know or learn something, to seek out new experiences, knowledge and feedback while remaining open to change.

This project offers participants and visitors alike the opportunity to be curious, to be open to something new. The mind is like a muscle which becomes stronger through continual exercise. Would you like to know more? That’s because you’re curious…

Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer runs from 5 March to 4 September. Find out more at www.vam.ac.uk/dundee

Jo Mawdsley is Head of Learning at V&A Dundee