Revoluton Arts funding helped us develop a new dance piece

Oct 10, 2019

We are Sonder Dance Theatre (aka Lauren Segal and Sophie O’Brien), a dance theatre company in Luton created in 2018.

We are an associate company of Next Generation Youth Theatre (NGYT), where both of us perform for NGYT Dance Company.

In 2018 we debuted The Path Where We Meet – a participatory dance theatre piece that explores the experiences of people around us as metaphorical ‘pathways’ and blurs the lines between performer and audience.

We wanted to further develop the idea behind The Path Where We Meet but dance rehearsal space is limited – especially as a start-up company. Funding from a Revoluton Arts Kickstart Mini Commission helped us access the space we needed to do this.

We used SurveyMonkey to collect local people’s stories of their significant meeting and parting moments and then chose two stories that stood out to us as the basis for developing a pair of dance duets.

We showcased our work at Revoluton Arts’ Creative Café in June 2019 where we screened video footage of our duets, entitled Sonder Stories.

As a result of creating and showcasing Sonder Stories, we were asked to perform at the Celebrate Luton Street Festival. We performed the duets that we had created, alongside text which was spoken by Carl Connelly, a former NGYT company member.

Performing the duets live gave us the opportunity to combine Sonder Stories with The Path Where We Meet to create an immersive experience for Luton audiences.

Revoluton’s Kickstart Mini Commission brought us both research and development opportunities and the chance to perform at a Luton festival.

Overall, our experience was successful – we could take time and space to develop The Path Where We Meet into a full-length piece.

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