Studio Wayne McGregor ANDInclusive dance workshop

20 April 2017

Hello, I’m Mima Williams. I’m the Projects Intern at Graeae Theatre Company. A New Direction is kindly funding my role and it’s brilliant! What an incredible opportunity. I absolutely adore my internship. I've learnt so much in seven months and it’s been interesting, challenging and exciting.

A New Direction invited me to the Studio Wayne McGregor dance workshop at ANDInclusive on Monday 28 March. It was an honour to be invited and to be representing Graeae.

I didn’t know what to expect but the workshop was really enjoyable.

Beforehand I did some research into the Wayne McGregor studios. I found out that he was a Choreographer at the Royal Ballet and Sadler’s Wells and he also worked with Rambert Dance Company. He also worked on the movie Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire!

In the workshop, which a London school also attended, we started with an aerobic type of warm up, moving around the room and introducing ourselves to each other. The workshop was really interesting to join and observe and the choreography, well, it really inspired me as an artist.

We then got into smalls groups where we were asked to create new movements. There was a young man in my group who created a movement which was fantastic. The young people were all brilliant and responded really positively about the workshop.

During the workshop the response of the students to me was surprising, some did say they were shocked to see a disabled artist (me) in the room. Some of them didn’t know how to communicate with somebody with a disability. I was intrigued about how at fourteen years old it was incredible young people may never have been in a room with a disabled person before. However, one of the participants did have a disabled extended family member.

As I took part in the activities, a spark of excitement ran through me - I hadn't been in a dance workshop in years. After the event I was inspired to do some research and found out about Candoco, a disabled dance company. I did not know that was something that existed. I found that really exciting and I will look into it further in the future to widen my knowledge about the arts world.

I think the afternoon was a great workshop and the leaders were fabulous.

Find out more about ANDInclusive @ Tate Exchange