Valiant Company from Šiauliai at the Everybody Dance Now project in Wolverhampton
4 August, 2011. This year for “Everybody Dance Now” project, the Central Youth Theatre in Wolverhampton have chosen to work with The Valiant Youth Theatre from Šiauliai in Lithuania, who will perform at the festival “The Doors” inspired by the music of the 1960s and 70s – The Doors, T-Rex, The Beatles.
The company tried to understand the experiences of their parents’ youth in the 60-is and 70-is and how it influenced their families’ histories, on which the preformance is based. The performance is a physical theatre with some Lithuanian language.
The Central Youth Theatre had a very strong connection with Lithuania during the late 1980s and early 1990s when it was part of the former Soviet Union. They undertook an exchange with theatre students from the Academic Theatre Vilnius, and staged a production of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone.
In 1990 CYT hosted the students and director Jonas Vaitkus in Wolverhampton and took their work (“Here to be There” by Oskaras Koršunovas) to the Edinburgh Festival where the group won a Fringe First.
The theatres have remained in contact, and are just about to collaborate with Jonas Vaitkus and his former students on creating a radio play about the events of the soviet occupation.
Central Youth Theatre has been established in Wolverhampton for 27 years and have performed over the years both locally and internationally. Everybody Dance Now is a local history project, this time exploring the story of social dancing in Wolverhampton from 1920s- 1970s. It is a Dancing for the Games project inspired by London 2012 and part of the Cultural Olympiad in the West Midlands.
More about the performance of Valiant company:
http://centralyouththeatre.org/dance_now/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=55&Itemid=61
More about the “Everybody Dance Now” project:
http://centralyouththeatre.org/dance_now/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=
4 August, 2 and 4pm, Arena Theatre, Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton WV1 1SE. Tickets £ 6. www.centralyouththeatre.org
To book the tickets online: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/176994
