Blue Eyed Soul Dance Company, Shrewsbury, Shropshire

Blue Eyed Soul delivers dance activity underpinned by a series of fundamental principals:

• Blue Eyed Soul embraces difference and actively seeks the creative partnerships between disabled and non-disabled people of all ages.

• Blue Eyed Soul is a successful inclusive dance company, which offers a dance repertoire, education and training programmes, each strand being interdependent and integral to the whole.

• Blue Eyed Soul exploits the value of dance as the most physical of art forms, to explore the potentials of the human body as the primary medium. Blue Eyed Soul encourages all participants to experience the extremes of their abilities in a supportive and sharing environment.

• The form and content of all the work is based on the particular, the collective and the universal experiences shared by all participants. It is driven by a desire to transcend barriers of cultural, social, political, physical and experiential differences. This fundamental principal is a key to the uniqueness of Blue Eyed Soul and the communication of humanness in its work.

• The Company is based and creates work primarily in a rural context. Although this is not exclusive it is an important element reflected in the Company’s profile and programme of work.

• Blue Eyed Soul is committed to working with a range of experienced choreographers/directors, who challenge, influence and inform the creative output of the Company.

• The Company ensures that the techniques used in devising work are accessible to everybody. This is achieved through adapting movement material and interpreting both form and content to suit the needs of individual dancers. In order to achieve this high level of access many different dance techniques are called upon: - improvisation, contact improvisation, contemporary dance, social dance and movement forms such as Alexander technique, pilates, yoga etc.

• The Company is interested in the creation of newly devised work in unusual as well as the more accepted settings for dance; this has created inspired work in a service lift, on a staircase, a railway platform and a beach.

• The Company’s ongoing training programme includes dance management and administration, performance and teaching skills. It is planned and structured so that Company members and staff can access it at an appropriate level to their experience and relevance to the Company’s and their own creative ambitions.

• The Company is registered with the Open College Network and is developing its training schemes for participants.

• In order to sustain and increase a wider network of interest and skills in inclusive dance practice, Blue Eyed Soul encourages and responds to the training needs of professionals working in the field of arts, education and disability.

• Brokering partnerships between institutions and organisations, disabled and non-disabled people, and ensuring that all education and community projects pursue their inclusive and creative potential is of paramount importance to the Company.

• An underpinning policy of company management is the consultation between artist, dancers and management that informs the core operation of the Company.

• The pursuit of excellence applies to all aspects of the Company and its work.