To mark the #DefnyddiadDyGymraeg campaign (use your Welsh) Catherine, Artist Director and CEO at Dawns i Bawb gives us insight into Welsh medium dance.
Dawns i Bawb is the community dance organisation for North Wales developing dance activity for all ages and abilities throughout Gwynedd, Ynys Mon and Conwy. Our programme follows our six strands of community dance:
- Dance & education – Dance days for schools
- Dance, community cohesion & widening engagement – Dawnswyr Dre – 4-11 years, Youth Dance Company – 12+ years, Inclusive Dance for disabled adults 16+ years, Community Dance Programme for the Bangor are, and Ballet for Adults
- Dance for health – Life Stories Project, Dance Company for people who have been affected by Dementia, Dance for Care Homes Programme, and Dance Fitness for Adults
- Dance & Welsh – Supporting people to learn Welsh through dance
- Strategic & artistic developments – Develop work opportunities for people that face barriers in entering the workplace
- Performances – Annual Winter Show, and Interactive Performance for Care Homes
Dawns i Bawb is one of the only dance organisations in Wales that operates through the medium of Welsh. Over 90% of our communities are first language Welsh speakers. Our role is to respond to our communities and offer activity that is inspiring, empowering and positive and therefore it is crucial to us that we are able to offer a Welsh language service.
HOW IS DANCE RELATED TO LANGUAGE?
We very often hear people say that language is not important to dance as dance is a ‘non-verbal’ arts form. We challenge this notion. For people to be able to dance, a creative process and experience has to take place. The most important aspect of a creative process is communication, and for communication we need language, whatever that might be.
We are proud that we can offer our communities the experience of creating and dancing through the language that they speak in, think in, dream in, express themselves in and through which they live their lives.
PROVIDING A BILINGUAL EXPERIENCE
Dawns i Bawb has a strong Welsh language policy. All of our marketing work is Welsh or bilingual, all our staff and dance artists are Welsh speakers or learners and all our sessions are delivered through Welsh or bilingually. We encourage all our staff to use Welsh language music within their sessions.
MIGLDI MAGLDI
In partnership with Galeri, we run sessions called Migldi Magldi – story, dance and singing for children 0-3 years and their adults. These sessions aim to introduce the Welsh language to children before they start school in a fun and inclusive way. The sessions also provide a great opportunity for parents to socialise with others through Welsh and also learn Welsh alongside their child.
BRINGING EVERYONE TOGETHER
Every year Dawns i Bawb holds an annual Community Dance production. This performance involves every group that is part of our Community Dance Programme – people from 0-90+ years of age including children and young people, schools, care homes, disabled adults and people living with Dementia.
It is a great opportunity to celebrate Dawns i Bawb and our communities. The performance is a Welsh language dance performance that uses Welsh language text, images, poems and music. Over 100 performers take part every year to a sell-out audience.
DEVELOPING WELSH SPEAKING LEADERS
Our biggest challenge is finding Welsh speaking professional dance artists. Throughout Wales there is a significant lack of Welsh speaking dancers. We have been productive and innovative in our response to our challenges through creative Welsh language Community Dance apprenticeship schemes.
These involve paid, yearlong posts for dancers to learn skills to become Community Dance leaders and develop confidence in leading through Welsh. It also provides opportunities for dance artists who are non-Welsh speakers to learn Welsh as part of the scheme. To date Dawns i Bawb has trained over six Welsh speaking community dance artists.
Find out more about Dawns i Bawb at www.dawnsibawb.org.