Arts Council Intern Sophie Linham's Blog

Dance Film Filming Week: During this week, I was working with Thomas Walmsley and Brook Wassall to film one of my projects; a dance film. I was really excited to be combining dance with technology and was so happy to be working on it with some highly skilled videographers. We used music from two local composers, Eleri Morgan and Arron Clague, who were given four locations around the island each, and asked to compose a short piece of music that for them, reflected thoughts and feelings of that place. This week, myself, Thomas and Brook visited these eight locations and filmed some of my choreography. It was really excited to be able to dance in unusual settings, as well as use a drone and different camera techniques/equipment. I was nervous going into the shoot as I didn’t know what to expect, I’d never danced in front of a camera in this way before, only when my friends are the other side and it’s being filmed on my phone. However, within the first five minutes of the first day, I was put at ease and just got straight into dancing – I felt really in my element. We are currently in the editing process of the film and I am really looking forward to its release later in the year. For me, it was lovely being able to work with different professionals from different disciplines, and spring boarding ideas back and forth.

Throughout these few days, we had lots of different kinds of weather. We had sun, wind, rain and even thunder, but we got some really good shots and fingers crossed, it turns out as amazing as it was looking on set.

Hospice (Forget Me Not) Workshop: This time I worked with Hospice again. I always look forward to going up and working with this group as I always feel as though they get so much out of the session. Today I felt that the structure of the session really worked with how the group was feeling. At the beginning for our warm up and a few partner exercises, the group had lots of energy and were absolutely loving the music choices. We then stopped for a tea/coffee break and we didn’t rush. It was nice to sit down with the group and have a chat about things they had going on or coming up, how they were finding the sessions and all things like that. After that we carried on with a few more exercises and a cool down, by the time we got to the cool down I noticed that some members of the group were starting to get a little bit tired or hungry/thirsty, so I think we stopped at quite a good time. This was also the first time that I had worked with both patients and partners – which was lovely! Everyone got involved and it was great to see so many smiles. Some of the participants that I had seen before were already much more rhythmic and maybe even a slight bit more flexible, which was great to see after only a couple of sessions. I really had a great time and evidently, so did the group.