One of the more visible aspects of lockdown has been the rise in popularity of the social media app TikTok.

Whilst students will no doubt have already been very familiar with this, its popularity has increased in lockdown with a plethora of short dance moves being released, and widely shared, often involving family members. The popularity of the app (it has now surpassed 2 billion downloads) shows both the need to connect with each other and the popularity of learning dance moves and lip syncing! If you are new to Tik Tok dance routines, Peter Keefe, Chair of Rawkus Street Dance society, has kindly submitted a ‘tutting’ routine to our new online magazine, The Limit, that anyone can have a go at.

Dance Societies are more popular than ever at Loughborough. In recent years there has been a rise in social dance societies (rather than the more competitive Athletics Union affiliated ones) with Irish Dance Society and Urban Formation being new additions to add to the diversity of dance societies that also includes Rawkus, Bhangra, Bellydancing and Salsa. The quality, commitment and professionalism of all these societies is really great to see. Dance often combines athleticism and artistry and in many ways is the perfect artform for Loughborough.

Our first dance scholar, Aidan Kilby recognised that Loughborough had so many athletes and was very keen to try and convince male students, who might focus on sport, to give dance a go. Aidan made it his mission during his year as scholar to try and get more boys dancing. He thought the best way to achieve this was to engage them in a more ‘physical theatre’ type of dance and invited the fantastic Alexander Whitely Dance Company to come and do a workshop at the University. Aidan also did another workshop with the equally good Frantic Assembly company. Both companies tour regularly, often stopping at the Curve in Leicester, and I would highly recommend both to you. For now, you could take a look at some of the digital content on their websites.  

This year’s dance scholar is Yaprak Cakin who is studying for am MA in Integrated Industrial Design. She has been dancing professionally and has taught contemporary, modern and hip hop courses in her native Turkey as well as appearing in many dance shows. Unfortunately, one of the many events that we have had to cancel this term was a workshop with James Wilton company, who was identified by Yaprak as one that she would like to learn from. We very much see LU Arts role as supporting the ambition of the many dance societies, enabling them to engage with professional dance companies, as well as supporting individual students with a passion for dance.

I wanted to finish this danced themed digest, with a project that we worked on a few years ago with artist Serena Korda. She became interested in some images from the University archive which showed students involved in ‘mass movement’, something that had been developed in the 1930s in Germany by Rudolf Laban. The invented folk dance at the heart of the work was developed with the help of its participants, a mix of students and local amateur dance enthusiasts, who all contributed ideas from their own daily rituals to the final choreographed work. The processional performance moved from campus to town culminating in a dance outside the carillon in Queens Park.

Nick Slater
Director, LU Art