It was good to see familiar faces from the Postcard Review project again, and to find their enthusiasm undimmed. We met in the meeting room at Dancebase, a perfect venue for the new project, which will use various aspects of dance as inspiration for a variety of writing tasks. The project is called ‘Let Loose’ and to kick things off I presented the group with my home-made ‘magnetic poetry’ – a whole lot of words relating to dance, cut out on slips of paper. A blank sheet of paper, and a first workshop, can be a daunting prospect, and I hoped that being given some ready made words to play with would remind the group that they already have the skills and creativity to make words work for them. They didn’t disappoint. We played around with concrete poetry, making shapes on the page with words, and came up with combinations both beautiful and amusing.
Later, Matt gave us a tour of the Dancebase building – we peeked into studios, and saw rehearsals and warm ups; we saw the abandoned rooftop barbecues, and were inspired by the light, airy spaces, and the incredible views. We learned a little more about the work that goes on at Dancebase, and hopefully sowed some seeds of inspiration.
Finally, we had a chance to read through some examples of dance writing. We had to whizz through these a little bit, and at one point I was speaking so fast that the note-taker’s computer froze. Hopefully in the next workshop we will have a chance to read through the extracts from writers as diverse as Edith Wharton, Richard Yates, Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson and Ian Hamilton Finlay.
Although we didn’t have long to look at the extracts, The Dancers Inherit the Party, a short poem by Ian Hamilton Finlay provoked smiles of recognition, and left us feeling inspired and enthused about our next meeting.
let loose 