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Music and dance students collaborate with top UK conservatoire
Brighton & Hove Music & Arts String Ensemble and local young dancers received rave reviews from judges at the regional final of the national Music for Youth Festival in March. Their performance was the result of a collaboration with Trinity Laban during February half-term.
Twenty students, 14 from the string ensemble, and six local dancers, joined with four music and dance students from Trinity Laban – the UK’s only conservatoire of music and contemporary dance – as part of a national initiative called CoLab.
CoLab is run by the Conservatoire to give students from across the UK an insight into another artform, and a taste of life at one of the UK’s top conservatoires. This is the fourth time that Brighton students have been involved.
The musicians went to the Isle of Wight to learn traditional songs from the Copper family (a well-known singing family on the folk scene), arranged for strings. They were joined mid-week by Amanda Gough, Co-Programme Leader, MA Performance at Trinity Laban and her students, and Andy Sherwood who runs the string ensemble and also teaches violin at Trinity Laban. The group swiftly put together an 11-minute piece, which was performed at Trinity Laban on the Friday and also in Brighton on the Saturday for family and friends. The project received great feedback from everyone who was involved. It was a thoroughly enjoyable process for the students, giving them an insight into another art form and also Trinity Laban.
When the project was performed at the Music for Youth Regional Festival Series in Burgess Hill a few weeks later, adjudicators said: “Every aspect of this great project has been thought through and carried out with imagination and creativity - including dress, no conductor, no sheet music, all from memory, all one thing, not ‘dance + music’. The dance was so successful as a counterpart, complementing, economical, yet deeply expressive. Outstanding - congrats to all.” The group are hoping to be invited to perform at the National Festival at Birmingham Symphony Hall in July.
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