The Gallery of Yes
Saying yes! What is a life worth living? What are we masking? No one can see the inner us!
These are some of the interesting themes explored in The Gallery of Yes, creative clowning and performance sessions at Skylight Circus Arts.
Skylight Circus continued our partnership with Extraordinary Bodies and their community connectors project, engaging a community group invited from our Silver Circus and Adult Circus members both with and without disabilities. Inspired by Extraordinary Bodies production of Waldos Circus of Magic and Terror, the project included a trip to the Lowry to see the production .
“The Gallery of Yes is very much about bringing a group together with creative arts for wellbeing”
Martine Bradford Creative Director
With local clown teacher Natalie, we explored new inclusive ways of working by being together and supporting participants to take part. We nurtured a creative outlet for exploring our feelings, making friends and sharing our creations! We shared tears, laughter, silly dances and many colourful outfits. We celebrated our developing clown characters with an exciting photo shoot to create ‘The Gallery of Yes’.
Photography by Ian Hodgson
Music by Steve Broomhead
Video by Dawn Pierson
Jamie’s Poem
From dances in pairs that went two hands, pivot and then wow, to follow the leader as a group of three before facing in different directions with diamond dancers. It’s the games of grandmothers footsteps went with dinosaur, zombies and aliens to star cushion oomp alala from one, two and three along with parachute of breath and big ball around it like a roulette table for the dressing up by a partner in fancy clothes to the graduation.
But at last Waldo’s remind us that magical and fear can be used both good and evil since love and hate has no bounds. That past discrimination should be left in the past and that using BSL to perform a song can be used to raise awareness to perform a song can raised awareness of how it would be deaf in the audience and that family is important, blood or not.
So in the end who “nose” what small lessons can be used in the future.
Jamie's Poem
Margaret
“The clowning experience has been wonderful. We covered so many things, we learned how to breathe and relax by using a parachute and also rolled a big ball around the parachute.
We learned different kinds of dancing, mirroring your partner, dancing with your eyes closed, very strange, but you learn to trust as someone else has to guide you, this also applies to sensory exploration. We got quite vocal in the wow dance and the diamond dance got a bit disorganised which only made it funnier. We played several games of grandmother’s footsteps on different themes was hilarious, wearing just a red nose and a hat and with a funny face that can set off people’s imagination. We dressed each other in fancy clothes and 5 clowns performed different themes from the coronation to the seaside, very inventive culminating in a clown graduation and guardian angel ball.
Undoubtedly the star of the show was the yellow star cushion oop a la la, it evoked so many emotions like happiness, love sadness, caring joy and silliness. We paid a visit to Waldos circus and saw how a circus is like a family supporting each other through fear, hatred and discrimination and that love really has no bounds, simple things can be enjoyable, also that people with disabilities can work together with different skills, subtitles and sign language were there for the deaf. The theme was a bout Nazi Germany and this shows that hatred has no bounds either, this must not be forgotten, people need to know.
Finally, never let anybody see you put your red nose on.
I myself have truly enjoyed every minute and at my age of 81 have a new lease of life”
Margaret’s Poem
