The performance begins with our audience being thrown into a bustling Waterloo Station, with all the dancers wandering the platform waiting to go on their individual journeys.

The solo poem by Isabelle Mathews focused the audience to a single journey before all the pieces unraveled each choreographer’s voice on their lived migration.

 

Here is Isabelle’s Poem:

I have left my home and family,
the country I love, because it is no longer safe to be there.
A brick through my window,
the ominous sound of gunfire, neighbors once loved and trusted,
I do not know who my friends are anymore.
Civil War tears families apart,
There are no winners.
This is my life,
packed with essentials only,
no time for sentiment.
People said “Go you will be safe there”.
I look around but there are no welcoming faces.
They stare at me and their eyes say “you do not belong in this place”.
But there is no going back,
not yet.
Can you not see I need your compassion,
a place of sanctuary,
to belong?
“One last glance,
those hostile eyes have melted.
They seem to say “we were once where
you are now.
A hand outstretched.

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In order of appearance:

The Silent Language by Barbara Mirata.

Knowing others is observing their proper rhythm. The answer lay in how they use the silent language of time and space. (B. Mirata)…language of space is just as different as the spoken language. Most important of all, space is one of the basic, underlying organisational systems for all living things—particularly for people….
(Edward T. Hall).

A beginning by Jane Judd with D2D Dance Company.

A Beginning is an exploration, in three parts, of emotions experienced in moving from one space to another, one house to another, from one town to another and from one Country to another. The Piece embraces elements of contemporary dance, mime and drama.



To Build a Home by Magdalena Redlowska.

A journey through migration made with children from Holmleigh Primary School, Hackney.



All the Way by Magda Radlowska and Aneta Zwierzynska

All The Way portrays the contradiction in our public and private habitual behaviour. The title of the performance comes from the poem by Charles Bukowski (Roll the Dice); life has no limits but only one purpose – to go ‘all the way’, our own way. Inspiration for the piece came from the understanding of migration – a shifting and changing in space. All The Way is a unique fusion of contemporary dance, capoeira, contact improvisation and live music.



A Place I Call Home by Simona Scotto with Counterpoint Dance Company. [Assistant choreographers: Ruby Embely and Francesco Mangiacasale.]

Leaving a place to end up in another: unfamiliar, exciting, unknown. A celebratory dance piece about human migration; physical, emotional and mental.