Ageless Festival: Celebrating Participation – Leeds City College

Choreographers/Directors: Tamara McLorg, Villmore James, Lucy Haighton, Jennifer Hale

Yorkshire Dance is presenting a third edition of Ageless, a two-day festival that “invites you to celebrate the richness of human experience, art and beauty by reimagining age through dance”. One might initially think this is an impossible goal, but once you see the triple bill that makes up the Celebrating Participationyou begin to wonder. In different ways, all three pieces have a profound and deeply moving effect.

The first one is Footsteps in the dust by The Performance Ensemble, comprised of professional and community dancers aged 60 and over. The largest group of the three covers a wide range of dance abilities, but all move, in their own way, with grace and register with the audience. The mood is elegiac and, indeed, except for the early stages of The Fallenwhich remains like this throughout the night.

Choreographed by Tamara McLorg and directed by Villmore James, Footsteps in the dust The piece highlights migration, and initially the 20 dancers hug the perimeter of the very large dance space as the train whistles sound. Then they pick up their battered suitcases and move slowly in unison. As the piece progresses, sections with everyone performing together alternate with sections with just two dancers, music is provided by cast members singing and by a rich variety of recorded music, and eventually the end of the journey is reached with a recitation of a perfect peaceful world. Then the dancers disappear into the audience.

The third Sheffield bite dance continues with The Fallenchoreographed by Lucy Haighton. A dozen older people (50 or older) sit on three sides of an open square and individually introduce themselves to what happens when they fall. The mood is lightened by touches of comedy in facial expressions and gestures. As the piece progresses, it becomes darker, with many of the gestures from the first piece replicated, notably the upward thrust toward God, the sun, or whatever.

Men! Dancing! from Liverpool close the show with Crossing the Bardirected by Jennifer Hale. Six men in sailor uniforms dance skillfully, even athletically, breaking up into pairs, coming together again, though the idea of ​​“the creation of cells, organs, and consciousness” is by no means always apparent. But then a good musical treatment of Tennyson Crossing the Bar combines with his fluidly repetitive movements to provide a mesmerizing climax to the show.

Over the course of two days, Ageless offers seven presentations, plus films, talks and workshops (plus a two-hour closing party!) and highlights ability wherever it arises, regardless of age.

Revised July 12, 2024; Ageless continues through July 13.