New dance performance piece to receive world premiere at Leeds Art Gallery

“We met Katja through Leeds 2023 who brought a group of Dutch artists over and they visited us here,” says Hannah Robertshaw, creative director at Yorkshire Dance. “I did a presentation and I spoke about our intergenerational group of community performers Company of People of all ages who we work with to create high quality professional work. Katja came to speak to me afterwards, she told me about her work archiving movements and asked whether there might be potential to collaborate in some way.” Heitmann was inspired to begin her archive after the death of her father. She found herself thinking about his gestures and mannerisms and wondered if there was a way, more generally, of capturing people’s movements and recording them for posterity. Working with professional dancers who interview people of all ages and backgrounds about their movements, Heitmann and her team have so far spoken to nearly 2,000 people, with the archive continually being added to.

“What Katja was particularly interested in, as it was not something she had done before, was to work with non-professional dancers,” says Robertshaw. “We do a lot around that with our community development work and so we put out a call-out for non-professional performers of all ages and the response was brilliant.” Heitmann then ran a series of three-hour workshops over five days at Yorkshire Dance, working with the community performers. “I popped into the workshops while Katje was here and it is very much a thoughtful, meditative practice,” says Robertshaw. “It is really beautiful to watch. It feels really quiet and still. It will be a very moving piece that looks at how we hold all our experience in our bodies. It will give audiences the opportunity to think about the people they love and their movements, it is a way of honouring people. It will also challenge people to think about bodies, their own and others, in a different way. Our bodies change as we age, for some people that can feel confronting or celebratory, depending on your perspective but there is something really uplifting and hopeful about bringing people together to find joy in movement.”

There are 17 people taking part in the performance – 13 community performers from Leeds and four professional dancers from Heitmann’s company in the Netherlands. Over the past few weeks, they have been rehearsing intensively together at Leeds Art Gallery in preparation for their performances in the central court area of the gallery.

“It has all been done with such care,” says Jane Bhoyroo, principal keeper at Leeds Art Gallery. “It’s lovely to have the central court as a performance space and it is very exciting to premiere this work in the gallery. It is a wonderful opportunity for us, thanks to Leeds 2023 bringing artists over from Europe on a research trip. We really wanted to work with Katje because what she does fits so well with how we engage with our local communities and it is great to have the partnership with Yorkshire Dance.”

Bhoyroo is keen to continue and build on that relationship. “We have worked with dancers before, from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, and it is something I would like to do more of,” she says. “We have worked with different artforms in that space; we like to do that and visitors find it very inspiring. The project has really highlighted the strength of collaboration and of making those international links while creating local engagement with local audiences.”

Motus Mori: Corpus, Leeds Art Gallery, December 8-10 at 12pm and 2pm. Free entry. Performances last approximately 30 minutes. Booking not required.