1Voice Weekend

This weekend (Friday 13th - Sunday 15th November) sees me join 1Voice in Blackpool. I am looking forward to renewing a lot of old friendships and making some new ones.
It's hard to believe that this is the TENTH anniversary of the Blackpool weekends! Congratulations to Katie, Tamsin and all those committee members and volunteers who have worked so hard over the years to enable this event to happen and to be such a valuable success.

Cosmic Celebrations Part 2

As promised, Part 2 of Cosmic Celebrations is now available for viewing.

Cosmic Celebrations

In 2000/2001, with funding from a Millennium Award, I put together a full stage production of a dance performance called "Cosmic Celebrations". Working with a group of friends, I choreographed the whole performance, wrote the music, booked the theatre, even planned the lighting scheme. The performance took place at Pacific Road Theatre, Birkenhead on 20th April 2001.
Below are parts 1 and 3 of the show. Part 2 will follow shortly.

Films

Two posts in one day!
As mentioned in my previous post, I am involved in the making of no less than three short films at the moment.

1. I have been working with the Callup Group in Liverpool to produce a promotional DVD, showing the sterling work which they do as a mutual support group.
2. A filmmaker called Andy Taylor Smith is making a cinema "short" about a pivotal moment in my life. This is nearing completion now.
3. Thanks to an Arts Council award, I have been working on a short dance film based on two dancers. I am dancing with Laura Haughey and have been very fortunate to have Bill Hopkinson as dramaturg. I plan to show the film at film festivals next year and, eventually, to put it up on YouTube.

Colourscape Merton and Clapham Common

August and September have been absolutely manic - so much so that I haven't had chance to post anything on here!
I am involved in the making of three short films but will talk about those in a separate post. This post is about my latest work with Colourscape/Eye Music.
16/17/18th September I was again working with David Stevens, this time at St Ann's School in Morden, South London, creating music and movement with some of the lovely children there and culminating in a fabulous performance on the Friday.
On the Saturday, the weather was absolutely brilliant and I again danced with Michèle Lainé in Colourscape on Clapham Common, both in my chair and also some floor work. We were joined for one dance by Mr Silver and a number of people commented on how terrific that was.
Photos will follow shortly.

Colourscape, Sutton (Cont.)

I have now put together a slide show of some of the photos of me dancing with Michèle (Be sure to turn up your speakers!) :

Colourscape, Sutton

June and July were absolutely manic, with trips to Ulverston, Preston, Barnsley, Wakefield, Rotherham, Devon and Sutton! I guess the greatest thrill for me was dancing in Colourscape at Sutton with Michèle Lainé, a brilliant acrobat and performer. You can view a slideshow of our work by visiting my website at Mouse on the Move - What's New. .

Relaunch of Forum

First of all, an apology! I have been so busy this year that it has been difficult to make time to update this blog. I will try harder - honest!

Now to the reason for this post. Sadly, earlier this year, the Forum I was hosting on Dance and Communication issues was invaded by a bunch of idiots ( I could use another word, but I won't!), leaving inappropriate postings, pictures and website links. This left me with no option other than to delete all posts and purge the membership list.

I have now put into place a number of security measures. All memberships now have to be approved by me. Registration only takes a couple of minutes.

If you have any interest in starting or joining in discussions on Dance or Communication issues, do come on over and join me - it will be lonely without you! The link is Alan's Forum .

ISAAC Story Writing Competition (Continued)

It was a tremendous thrill to attend the Story Reading Reception at Downing Street recently and to receive my certificate as the UK adult winner. It was brilliant, too, to renew many old acquaintances.
Huge thanks to Liz Moulam and Patrick Poon from Communication Matters, who had worked so hard to make sure the evening was such a huge success.

Communication Matters

I can't believe that we have already come around to the annual Communication Matters Symposium but I'm off to Leicester on Sunday! I'm looking forward to renewing many acquaintances, learning all the latest news and developments in AAC and having a lot of fun, too. This year I am giving a presentation entitled "What Dance Means To Me"which I am hoping to make the basis of the book that I am planning to write on the same subject.

ISAAC Story Writing Competition

I was delighted to learn that I was one of the UK winners in the recent ISAAC "Many Stories, One Voice" Story writing Competition. The competition was open to all communication aid users throughout the world and the brief was to write a short story (500 words or less) suitable for children. In October, I will be attending a reception in London, where I shall be reading my story. If you would like to read the story, just follow this link.

Huge congratulations go to the other winners in the UK - to Sean Lucas and Beth Moulam. WELL DONE!

Summer School '08 Sheffield

I've not long returned from a fantastic week in Sheffield where I ran five days of dance workshops as part of the Summer School organised by IBK Initiatives. The event was held at the stunning Centre in the Park, Norfolk Heritage Park and was designed to help the young people involved to think about their futures.

A huge thanks to all the people (IBK staff, support workers, volunteers and artists) involved in making the week happen (I won't start naming them - I'm bound to forget someone!) and a special thanks to Dr Pippa Murray for inviting me to participate. Everyone worked tremendously well together as a team to make the week such a success. Thanks also to all the young people - they were a joy to work with.

It was also fantastic to meet up again with Laura and Andy and to work with them. And, to cap it all, I also got the opportunity to visit Kevin Davies, who I worked with on "I'm with Stupid", and his lovely wife Andrea.

We Make Manchester - 3

Well, it's all over bar the shouting and I can relax a little before shooting off to Sheffield next week!

DanceForce were absolutely brilliant on Sunday - as far as I'm concerned the stars of the show! My thanks to Victoria, Kelly, Laura, Susan, Marcus and Raza for all their hard work, creativity and just being so much fun to work with. I hope that I will have a chance to work with them again. I'll be putting up some video here of their performance as soon as I get a chance.

Thanks too to Clair, an amazing powerhouse of energy (!) and to Maureen and Phil at GMCDP.

Ah well, back to preparing for next week.

We Make Manchester - 2

The work on the We Make Manchester Project is developing well and really exciting. The group decided to call themselves "DanceForce" and have been working hard over the past few weeks to create their dance piece, "United City", and also to prepare themselves to lead dance workshops for the young visitors to Urbis on 13th July.

We Make Manchester

At the moment, I am busy with a really exciting piece of work as part of the "We Make Manchester" Project. I am working with a group of young disabled people to create a dance piece on the theme "United - City" which they will perform in Urbis, Manchester, on Sunday 13th July 2008. The group will also be leading dance workshops for young visitors to Urbis. If you are between 13 and 18, come along on the day and see DanceForce perform, join in one of their workshops and also take part in the other exciting events happening to celebrate the things that make Manchester special.

My thanks go to Chris Abbott and Clair Heaviside who are facilitating this event.