Sekou Diaby: Dance is big right now. It’s everywhere. Trends on TikTok. Classes. Clubs. Dancing like no one’s watching. Dancing like the whole world’s watching. But where is it for young people right now? What does it mean to them? That’s what we’re getting curious about in this film. My name is Sekou Diaby. I’m an actor working across film and television, but for me, it kind of all started with dance. I started breakdancing when I was about ten years old, and the lessons that I learned back then I use every single day now. It was priceless. And so in this film, we’re going to speak to people with all different perspectives on what dance is, to find out what young people feel about dance right now. Let’s go.

Sekou: We started out by visiting one of my old dance crews, IMD Legion in East London. Where we met up with founder and artistic director, Omar Ansah-Awuah who actually used to instruct me in dance almost 10 years ago.

Sekou: How you doing bro?

Omar: I’m good, I’m good. How are you?

Omar: I used to joke about this but IMD was like X-Men. It was basically misfits that just didn’t fit in anywhere. And when they tried to join this dance group or this company or this business or that, they weren’t seen as good enough. So it was kind of like, yeah, I’ll take you on. And that’s how we got IMD to this day.

Sekou: At IMD, I got the chance to speak to some of the young people to see what they thought about dance.

Sekou: Talk to me about dance. Why you wanted to get into dance in the first place.

Zachariah: It wasn’t long after Covid, so obviously that was when TikTok got big. So I was influenced a lot by the media. And then also films like ‘Step Up’ and in lock down I used it as a way to express myself really.

Anastasia: When I was younger I could be such a perfectionist. I always wanted to draw, but then I would always want it to be perfect. But I felt like in dance, even if it wasn’t perfect, I still felt like it felt right rather than if I went outside a line in a drawing. So I just feel like it’s just so much easier to express myself and still be outside the lines, but still love the way I’m dancing.

Omar: And I think a lot of young people feel a little bit lost. And I think that’s why things like dance have been such a saviour for so many young people who may not even want to make it as a career, but are still doing it even up to ages of nearly 30, because it’s a gateway to getting away from everything that they’re unsure about, and it actually helps them on a path to then find what they want to do.

Sekou: I was here a decade ago. Like literally in this studio there. I feel grown. I remember what it was like to be their age, to be coming here to dance. And from my experience, I’ve got into the world and I’ve met loads of different people, and not everyone has what I got from dance. Most people don’t. I feel like these lessons are rare to come across.

Sekou: From IMD, we headed over to Porlock in Somerset to visit the group Stacked Wonky, who take an improvisational and experimental approach to movement.

Sarah Shorten: I’m really interested in offering the young people here a version of technique that is about how do you channel that child that you’re leaving behind? Be it through presence, be it through improvisations. Or through like how I am with a watching audience or with my fellows on stage from a really human perspective, because I also think that everything that’s going on in those moments, moment to moment, contain big lessons for the rest of life.

Sekou: Yes guys. How you lot doing?

Erin: Really good. Thank you.

Sekou: So talk to me. We’re here at Stacked Wonky.

Erin: Yeah.

Sekou: What is Stacked Wonky?

Isaac: It’s a performing arts group. It’s a lot of, like, improvised, like movement.

Erin: I feel like Stacked Wonky is a group that we all kind of get to express ourselves in. It’s like a break from the real world, kind of thing.

Sarah: This is not the most important spot. The most important spot might be right here. Not because it’s Sekou, but just like because like the space in front of people and near to people is more valuable than what somebody has determined is important, the centre. Let it settle. So you make really clear decisions to be part of what’s happening, rather than, I’m gonna have to go.

Erin: For young people you’ve got, you have a lot going on. You’ve got drama of school or exams. Just the pressure from pressure from like society and everything that goes on. You have a lot to handle and to have something. It’s kind of like it’s nice because it’s just a break. Like you can just kind of pause.

Isaac: Yeah. An escape.

Erin: You can just pause everything and just go into our own little world and do our own little thing. And I think it’s really important to have something like that.

Sarah: For sure. It always amazes me just how there’s something invisible, but magic about this type of permission to be physically, kind of, literate and open and confident and also fleet of foot. To be able to use your body for expression. Or I call it broadcast. I think what then happens is through being with their peers and being in front of adults who are watching, they sense the kind of delicate power they have to be able to move people. So I think for me, we have to question ourselves endlessly; What makes for freedom of expression for a child in this age?

Sekou: Seeing Stacked Wonky really made me think about the importance of play for young people. And with that in mind I met up with youth specialist, Tina Ramdeen to get her opinion on this.

Sekou: So, from your experience, why do you think like creative programs are? Do you think they’re important for young people? And if you do, why?

Tina: My goodness, they are so important for children and young people. We are inherently creative beings. We understand who we are and the world around us through creativity. And that starts from a baby learning to explore the world, learning about other people beyond themselves, exploring and playing. Play is inherently creative. Through to going into school and learning about other people’s lives and your classmates and your teachers, and just understanding the bigger world around you. And creativity helps us to explore the places that we’re in, the people who we meet. It helps us to understand ourselves and really think about who we are. And we express ourselves throughout clothes and through the art and creativity that we absorb. And then just who we are day to day, what we choose to say. How we choose to say it. So it’s integral to exploring and understanding who you are. It’s also really fun. We’ve got to remember that as well. And in a time where growing up isn’t easy, those opportunities to just be free and experience joy is so important. And creativity provides that, and it provides you to do so either individually or connect with others and feel part of a community where you’ve got shared interests and shared experiences. And that also can’t be underestimated in terms of how important that is in a young person’s life.

Sekou: After speaking with Tina, we headed over to ACE dance and music in Digbeth, Birmingham.

Iona Waite: What we’re doing, it’s real. It’s felt. You felt that energy in the room today. You cannot find that or experience that from a screen and from recording. This is real. Like I said, real interaction. Eye to eye, face to face, feeling to feeling. That happens. And that’s what’s magical about everybody just coming together and being in that space.

Felix: I think that community and family is a very big thing in ACE. I love it. It brings people together and it helps bring confidence to dance.

Jesca: An impact that dance had on my life is that it’s been a release from when the outside world gets a bit too much. If something’s stressful at school or you’ve had a bad day. I like to dance to get it all out of my system.

Iona: I think for us, we’ve created this space where young people can thrive. Having a place where they can be confident, where they can connect with other young people, where they can be passionate about an art form. I think it’s incredibly important for young people to have that outlet. Also, in light of everything that’s happening in the world today. The rise of mental health, socio-economic things that young people might be facing. I think having dance as an outlet and a space where they can be free, even if it’s for one hour or two, I think it’s super important for them to have that space to express.

Sekou: With the joy and intensity of ACE still ringing in our ears our final stop was up to Durham. to visit TIN ARTS.

Sekou: So if you was to describe what kind of things do you guys do here?

Daiso: We do a lot of contemporary dance and so we focus on contemporary dancers and stuff. But when it comes to creating dance, it’s just kind of freedom. However you feel you need to move.

Sekou: Okay.

Martin Wilson: The studio has to be a place of risk. A safe place of risk, but they have to explore more than they’re comfortable with. So I think that’s all about curiosity, all about creativity, all about placing risk with them in a safe space. And hopefully that will give them enough confidence and enough curiosity to go beyond that and see what else is out there for them.

Lilli: You can out, like, a lot of anger by just putting in like more power into the dance. Like when you’re angry inside, you have all these like built up emotions and you just let it all out when you’re dancing. But you wouldn’t even think that you were angry. You just think you’re, like, passionate about it.

Daiso: Yeah, maybe also, sometimes when you don’t know how you feel, it just naturally comes out in the way you’re moving. Like, if I was just, like, having a bit of a move by myself, if I didn’t know how I was feeling, it would kind of just happen naturally with the way that you’re moving.

Martin: There’s so much going on from the five senses, from the sound the touch, the feel, the hear, the smell. But also around, being around people. It’s about negotiating space with people, about negotiating, being in that space with people and accepting others for who they are, but asking others to accept you for who you are. So I think a lot of the way we structure the dance here is about building acceptance, being with people, and it’s constant negotiation and renegotiation of how you’re moving with and almost against the other young people around you.

Sekou: Speaking to the young people today was very interesting. When one of the girls was saying, coming into the space and moving, it helps you figure out what you’re feeling, almost like a distillery or a filtration system. And I thought, yeah, that’s super interesting because even if we were given the chance to express, I think a lot of young people wouldn’t know where to start. And dance is a way, where you don’t need to know where to start. You just go.

Sekou: We set out to ask what dance means to young people, and I guess there’s not one answer other than it means a lot. It at times can feel chaotic, but so does life. And young people are finding a safe place to escape from that chaos for a while, somewhere to go with the flow, express and understand themselves, finding their own order in the chaos. With friends. Without the need for words. Not having to get everything right. Where connection is not governed by an algorithm. They’re learning to connect with themselves and come together in community, learning about how they move through the world and how that affects other people. Seems like something we could all afford to consider a bit more in this moment in history. These are life lessons, and I just hope we continue creating the spaces for young people to learn them.