Winter Fun with Glasshouse Dance

Hello everyone! We hope you are all feeling well and now starting to enjoy the Festive Christmas countdown!

Over the recent Winter months, the Our Day Out workshops have been led by Glasshouse Dance. Laura, Sarah, Alysha and Xenoula have been inspiring participants to move to music in very creative ways! All the activities are seated with the option to stand up too.  It’s been a really relaxed and fun environment for all to enjoy.

The sessions have been running in Dereham, Watton, Attleborough, Thetford, Hunstanton, and Wells-Next-The-Sea and along with these in-person workshops, we have been posting out creative wellbeing packs, jam-packed with activities for you to enjoy at home, with an accompanying CD to follow along to. There is everything from discovering new movements with your hands and feet, to creating new dance moves using inspiration from looking out of the window!  

Seated dance activity Woman taking parted in a seated dance

This month’s pack also has a section about Archive Film, provided by our very own Community Cinema Manager Alice. Archive film is an important part of social and cultural history and records key moments in time, documenting traditions and people from bygone eras. The links in the pack, from the East Anglian Film Archive and BFI Player for example, provide you with the opportunity to reconnect with the past or even learn new things! Feel free to explore in your own time.

We have also collated, gathered, and created a film of various archive footage from across Norfolk, Suffolk and further afield, which has been viewed as a short film on a large screen at Our Day Out workshops with Glasshouse Dance over the last few months. The film is split into sections featuring carnivals, music and dancing in a public house in Suffolk, traditional dances and a depiction of what life was like in an artist’s commune in Norfolk.

Attendees enjoyed the quirky, funny, and captivating videos of what people used to do in the past! The room was filled with nostalgic chatter about what it was like back then.

Laura and Sarah of Glasshouse Dance have been dancing and working together for 13 years. They both began their dance careers as performers, but quickly realised their passion for teaching and choreography, and subsequently have been doing that for a combined total of nearly 35 years! Laura has won an award for her contributions to dance in Norfolk. She has also choreographed dances that have been performed at Sadlers Wells in London. Sarah has performed in theatres across the country, including the Royal Opera House and has also taught for dance companies such as, the English National Ballet, Richard Alston Dance Company and Rambert.

The remainder of the creative wellbeing pack focuses on an archive guessing game, where you have to guess which Norfolk highstreets are in the images, there is also a seated creative dance exercise and a recipe for a traditional Welsh tea bread called Bara Brith!

We hope you have enjoyed attending the Glasshouse Dance and Archive Film workshops or enjoyed attending some of the Zoom sessions. I hope you all have a cosy and festive December; with all the joys the month brings.

With Warm Wishes,

Camilla 🙂