This Is How Gorgeous It Feels

Photo Credit: David Wilson Clarke

Third Bite Dance defies expectations of the older body and celebrates the adventure of ageing and empowerment through movement and creativity.

“What a wealth of experience we have between us, what preconceptions about the older body we can dismantle, what stories we can tell…”

- Third Bite Dance Performer

This is how gorgeous it feels film script

This is a hapless cannon

This is a patchy house

This is a flicker of a party

This is a story of daring do,

a maniac coming up against a wall

This is arching wreckage

This is a growing wound

But here is the engine room

It’s a little untidy in areas, in need of attention

And here are the mythological chemical reactions

It’s heavy lifting,

these are poor materials to work with,

But I love the imperfections

This is a flexible archaeology

of special historic interest,

a landscape of days and nights,

an unbelievable past

My body finds an echo in the marrow of the bones

What was lost has now been found

This is an energetic sloth

This is a lost vole

But haven’t we loved the water?

This is a waning roboticist

laughing like a little owl

These are naughty gods

Why did I hide you for years?

This is a migrating giant

This is a scattered celebrity,

who never let me down

(That's not true)

This is a solo dancer

This is Bolero!

This is the twist and turn of aromatic dust

We’ll try and work it out. We can be really good together

These are flattened hands, unsteadily edged

They did everything I asked for

Strong

Graceful

(Is your speed right?)

Balanced

Feel the music, move with it

She’s at it again

This is a footballer going sideways

This is a disco

This is a badly tuned cello: no pauses, no rests; the bow moving and moving

Do these movements mean anything to anyone else?

This is finding my way, in the flurry of soil and the furry dark

This is bundling through the earth,

content in the roundness of bone and joints and warm blood

A blindness, a mole of a movement

Turn your head aside from my ramblings if you dare

This is a profound lodger with a critical gaze

These are perfumed pants

This is a shattered angel

refusing to lie down, 

starting a singing insurrection

This is how gorgeous it feels

There are consequences to jumping with bold blood

But I am still here

I take up space

This is a fork: shiny and heavy with tart desire

This is a coiled spring

This is a swiss army knife - some parts completely unknown

This is a short-term repository for the soul

This is the regret of not appreciating enough

These are indefinite pumpkins

This is a curious distribution 

(too many chocolate biscuits)

This is a bubbling distraction

(Leading from the inside)

This is the silky-haired bounce

Nowhere is it written that the truth is hidden underneath a wig

This is an untidy marriage of flat-topped buckets

This is a bunsen burner, shining happily in the dark,

since I was born, through the good years and the lean

This is the years of service, care, cherishing, love, respect, expressing.

This is no taxi for the brain

My companion through thousands of miles

Stay with me

Credits

Director

Lucy Haighton

Performers

Paula Bushell

Liz Hall

Dianne Hancock

Steve Holmes

Alison Lally

Debra Lane

Clee Claire Lee

Pam Marshall

Clare McManus

Jane Mellor

Liz Seneviratne

Filmmaker

Aaron Howell

Composer & Sound Designer

Richard Smithson

Writing Facilitation

Andy Owen Cook

Producer

Samantha Jane Turner

Film Premiere Broadcast

Tom Robbins Production

Locations

This film was created on Zoom during lockdown and filmed in Sheffield in the dancers’ homes and gardens and on location at:

Gilcrest Woods

Handsworth Park

Parkwood Springs

Rivelin Valley

South St Amphitheatre

Photographer

David Wilson Clarke

Flyer Designers

Heather Bingham

Lucy Vann

Funders

This is how gorgeous it feels was made possible by funding from Arts Council England, J G Graves Charitable Trust and Sheffield Town Trust

Thank Yous

Third Bite Dance would like to thank the following for their help and support:

Cecilia Macfarlane and Vicky Thornton

The Montgomery Theatre and Arts Centre

Yorkshire Dance

Members of 50+ Contemporary Dance Sheffield, all the 50+ Sheffielders who contributed answers to our Beautiful Questions and attended the taster sessions for the project

Beautiful Question Responses

Answers to Beautiful Questions from the wider 50+ community in Sheffield and beyond that contributed to the creation and development of This is how gorgeous it feels

If your body could talk when it dances, what would it say?

My body would say thank you for setting me free and making me feel joyous.

Oh please, let me fly

hello. ah I can breathe again now. I love to move freely organically and be part of the rhythm of life

It would say "Sway, never give way, spin into play, I laugh as I pray, go forward or stay, wear myrtle wear may, both hide and display, be certain or stray”

At one.

Yippee!

Don’t give up push me I’ve got this

I don't want this to end…when's this going to end?

see how I float along Just like in a dream

I'm a female body but how come the way my owner uses it makes it look like a dad dancing... at least she's having fun!

It would say "I'm singing in the rain", it would say "look at me, really look at me! Can you see me now? I'm older but I'm not invisible”

I have my own mind, my own thoughts and my own dreams: I exist apart from the talking head that judges I am not able.

Stay calm and be free.

I am still here. I take up space. I have something to say which is beyond words, although words might work too. To move is the external manifestation of what I feel inside.

Thank you

Take off those glasses and let the spirit take you!

It would say it was in a cocoon, being caressed by soft fabric encasing my body and making me feel protected and safe. it is continuous and do not want it to stop. There is a sensation of feeling calm and away from the cares of the world immersed in my own movements which are continuous and relaxing

How many times have I told you that you lead with the right leg in the waltz not your left - you're not on a Royal Navy parade ground anymore!

Why aren't you doing this more often?

I feel lighter, I feel free.

I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it!

I am free

Thank you for all you do to enable me to move, feel 'freedom' in movement, and utter joy to feel the body move. It says to me ""Keep going, keep moving"". My senses become more acute in movement and my imagination takes me 'elsewhere’. I let it run free. When I dance, it also speaks of my limitations in movement. Due to various surgeries my body has had to endure, and the consequences of this. My body shouts at me I have let you down when you (me) have cared for and nurtured it in the best possible way. I feel angry at times with my body. However I am very thankful for what it can do for me. Therein lies the dichotomy of what my body says to me. I will keep dancing!!! No matter what occurs in the future. My spirit will dance forever.

I will try hard to keep you moving the way you want me to. But one day, sooner or later, I might not be able to. So, live, love and dance in this present moment. Seize this day! I am sorry but sometimes I ache, I am tired, I wobble. It’s the knees, always the knees. I will try hard to help you distinguish left from right but this might seem to get harder for me and you might become more and more upset, fatigued, frustrated. But I will help you to learn new ways of coping and succeeding so that you will feel proud and fulfilled. I will try hard to help you to disappear in this moment, to find yourself and lose yourself in the dance, to touch a void and to connect but to disconnect. I am your body and we have been on this adventure of life for a very long time. If this is our last dance, I will try to make it a beautiful one: it's what we deserve.

Need to take my body to limits to release any negative thoughts, use the music as a guide. Enjoy it, feel blessed that I can move and express myself through dance. Release. Calm.

Ribs and trunk doing the work - the obvious bits (?) the undulations, extensions, openings out only exist because the spine does all the heavy lifting. It used to be more flexible, needs to be more flexible - that’s the engine house.

The rest, knees, arms, hands, feet move as a consequence of these deep body movements.

The breath – ah, that’s hugely important - impacting on speed and flow, can drive a movement or be driven by it.

If you were a dance or movement, what would it be and why?

I'd be a slow sweeping meditive move, almost trance like. I'd be that move because dancing lets me escape my racing mind for a while because when I dance I have to be focussed in a way that nothing else can do.

Cha cha cha, because it’s simple with endless possibilities

flow, an organica natural lyrical flow ... because it is my nature

I would be a Bolero for its passion and fire, its anger and pride, its stamping, its flourishes, its slow start, its chaotic build-up, its crash into silence at the end.

Lyrical.

Salsa

I would be a musical theatre dance, a solo dancer with a great ensemble singing behind me and an orchestra filling my body with its music, why : because that is what I love

A circle dance. Stilettos and handbags piled up in the middle

I would be the wind moving through the grass and the trees

Probably "the Floss" -   doesn't look that good, not a lot to it -  but its silly and fun!

Jazz ballet:  improvising, interpreting, losing myself in the sensuous notes of that saxophone.

I would be a dance without rules, limits or judgment; celebrating possibility!

I’d be a breeze and float away

"If I was a dance and nobody minded about authenticity or cultural appropriation I would be the Haka because of its lowness, groundedness, passion, power, with the full-on face too. If anyone minded and I was a movement, I’d be the courtship ritual of the albatross - for the same reasons as above.

I love Latin rythmns, but I also love to be a plastic bag, caught by the wind in an alleyway.

I would be as water; free and flowing, grounded and agile, still and deep, playful and energizing.

A cha cha cha - full of energy but often uncoordinated.

Pasa Doble  - much stronger movements than in ordinary life

I would be a whirling round dance because it would be a bit like flying.

A mix as I like all styles of dance so maybe freestyle.

Tap dance makes you feel young and takes me back to the theatre and musicals

If I were a dance it would be the ARGENTINE TANGO. Full of sensuous movements, energy, lust for life. So much said without words. Connection and disconnection within the dance. All part of the human condition. Requires a level of trust and lots of intimacy between the dancers and a degree of understanding each other is needed. This dance is full of tension and letting go. So much communication is required in this dance and lots of passion. I love it makes me feel so 'alive' when I watch it.

I would be a contraction. I've lived a lot of my life like a coiled spring, holding everything in, pushing myself inwards to try and be invisible because grown-up life can be very scary. It's like I've held my breath as I've embarked on each new chapter, praying that it'll all be ok, that everything will be alright-standing on a precipice and feeling dizzy. Then I learned to breathe. I learned to exhale the anxiety, the erosion of years of despair and trauma. As I breathe out of the contraction, I breathe freedom, liberation, faith and hope. I breathe into the sunlight and dance out of the shadows.

Sway and stretch and move majestically through air on different levels and gradually reduce until gently coming to a calm of mind and body - possibly sitting crosslegged on the floor or curled in a gentle shape. Collected. At one with myself

An interrupted flow, jerks with soft edges. Cold outside, warm joints, undulating, feeling what follows and following it.

Focusing inward, eyes closed, a solo piece, concerned just with my body.

A type of dance- in a club, lost in the music, lost in my body, just listening and responding and being.

Connections – rib cage to shoulders, to arms, to fingers. Only connect.

If your dance could take you anywhere, where would you go?

I'd be in warm, golden sunlight.

To a rooftop terrace, with the smell of jasmine and the sight of a volcano

to the moon the stars the sky the planets and round and round

Dance takes me to magic lands, a sky where I fly, drift in high cloud, fall through rainbows form rivers from the mist of waterfalls, rush through rapids and loll though leas, out into oceans where I rest in the depths, crash onto surfing shores, languish in lagoons and evaporate"

Beach sunrise in Costa Rica.

Cuba.

To the hills with the sound of music

To Tainted Love

I would fly

Right now onto the stage with our local pantomime society... it should be our opening night!

Rio carnival, a Parisian jazz club in the 50's and the Spanish Steps in Rome.

To a land where time is a broad spectrum and where my life experience could meet my wisdom and partner each other in a dance of celebratory freedom and understanding.

Up in the sky, to the sea.

It would take me to an empty plain with big skies and the sound of the evening wind in long grass.

By the sea

Anywhere dis-inhibiting with space and air to move freely e.g. my kitchen / diner or a deserted sandy cove!

Argentina again to improve my tango

To see my daughter on the other side of the world

On the Eurostar arrival platform at the Gare de Nord.

Spain as I love salsa dancing it’s so much fun, sassy and sexy.

New Orleans Carnival

"If my dance could take me anywhere would be to visit many cultures and learn their dances and what it means to them. I would find this intriguing and the pleasure of discovering other people's cultures partly displayed in dance. Dance is such an integral part of any society. Would be so interesting to discover what dance means to their culture. I could learn to move, perhaps in ways I have not experienced previously. Dance on!!!"

Out of the shadows, into the sunlight

I would go to the beach - alone - walking through the stones down to the sand and into the water - standing and allowing the waves to sweep over my feet and suck my heels into the sand as they recede. There’s just me, no one else around, it’s warm, sunny, and I’m free.