Dave Toole inspired others to chase their dreams - Nick Ahad

There are beacons to help you believe in the increasingly rare commodity of hope. This week I want to tell you about two such lights, both stories featuring theatre company Slung Low.

The Leeds organisation has delivered 340 books to Ingram Road Primary School following a scheme that allowed people to buy one book and donate one to the school.

What makes my heart full about such a tale is not that a child at that school now has a new book – lovely though that is. It’s that the company has delivered 340 messages of hope, lit 340 tiny sparks and some of those sparks might fan into flames, giving children a fire for reading that burns the rest of their lives.

I think that’s a recipe for hope: kindness plus possibility. Slung Low is connected with another story I want to share, one that demonstrates possibility.

Leeds dancer Dave Toole was known as one of the stars of DV8’s show The Cost of Living, broadcast on Channel 4 following a triumphant stage show tour, he was known to some as the man who flew at the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, but he was known to many in Leeds as a member of the Slung Low theatre company family.

It was with Slung Low that he made and starred in The Johnny Eck and Dave Toole Show, staged at the Royal Armouries in Leeds in 2013, a glorious piece of theatre that was essentially about the famously grumpy Dave Toole.

Dave passed away last week, but the impact he has had on the people who loved him, particularly those in the arts world, will live long.

Dave was born without the use of his legs, which were amputated when he was 18 months old and he went on to tour the world as a dancer during his three-decade-long career.

I first saw him dance in The Cost of Living in 2003 at Leeds Playhouse and he was completely magnetic.

He used to work as a postman before fulfilling his dream of becoming a dancer. There are some that might have looked at Dave and suggested he do something like, I don’t know, maybe a job in cyber. But Dave wanted the world to watch him dance – and fly – which he did at that opening ceremony.

One of Dave’s many legacies is that those who follow might decide they too can chase their dreams, even ones that are as impossible as flying – because he made it possible.

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Thank you

James Mitchinson