Journey of a Lancashire Soldier film selected for National U Dance Festival
Ludus Dance and the Chorley Boys dance company are celebrating the news that their Journey of a Lancashire Soldier film has been selected by One Dance UK to be shared as part of the National U Dance Festival, which takes place in Birmingham from the 13th to 16th of July this year. U Dance 2017, the nation’s annual youth dance festival, showcases the strength and talent of young dancers from across the UK and enables hundreds of young dancers to participate in classes, workshops, careers sessions and social activities during the three and half day residential.
About the WW1 commemorative project
The Journey of a Lancashire Soldier youth dance project, a collaboration between Chorley Boys and Ludus Dance, was supported by funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Young Roots programme. It ran through 2015 as a WW1 commemorative project, culminating around Remembrance Week in November.
Twelve young men from Chorley boys worked to create a piece of contemporary dance theatre which explored the emotional and community dynamics between soldiers of local battalions as they signed up and went off to fight. In the piece, the dancers imagine that they sign up as a ‘Pals’ battalion (part of the East Lancashire Regiment) and head off to war. The most famous battle of, what was to become known as, the Accrington Pals was the attack on Serre (Battle of the Somme) – after which 584 of the 720 men were either killed, wounded or missing.
The film to accompany the dance performance was created by the boys with filmmaker Michael Wray and documents the episode and its aftermath.
Take a look at the film…
And let’s get LYDC to the U Dance National Festival too – we’re crowdfunding!
This is the second National U Dance Festival 2017 success for Ludus Dance. The Ludus Youth Dance Company, our flagship North West youth dance company which is currently looking for members for 2017/18, has been selected for the third year running to represent the North West in Birmingham at the 2017 U Dance National Festival. We’re asking for support to help get the young people to the festival to perform.
Please take a look at our crowdfunding campaign and help, or share the word, if you can.
