Dancing in the streets

By Jonathon Brodie The Contemporary Youth Dance Company of London were in the streets Saturday (July 23) to reclaim the city’s space through movement. Urban Pulse was the year-old dance company’s first piece ever performance and they did it with inner-city style in a parking lot on Dundas St. “London is a city where dance doesn’t really happen and if it does happen it’s at the Grand Theatre or usually bringing in a company from out of town,” said Dorit Osher, arts director for the Contemporary Youth Dance Company. “I just think dance needs to come into the city because everyone dances and it needs to be accessible.” The dance was an integration of interpretive, improvisational and emotional based movements the five girls in the show worked on for a month. To prepare their original piece, the five dancers traveled throughout London’s downtown observing other people’s movement and sounds. “I had people walk and observe the moment by moment happenings as they walked and heard noises,” Osher said. “Then they would reflect on how it would effect them. Those became kind of a script or choreographic pattern to start developing movement from.” The show only ran from July 22-23 but the dance company plans to have another show ready by the end of August.