Cumbria Youth Dance collaboration with TDPT

5 tips to make the most of a blog entry

Topos is a year-long artistic collaboration between Cumbria Youth Dance Company and Wired Aerial Theatre, to create a suite of new work – 1 dance film & 2 performance pieces – on the theme of mountains. Exploring the relationship between Labanotation (a way of recording dance movement) and topos (a similar notation method used by climbers to record their routes), dancers will work on the Cumbrian fells and in the studio to explore the transition between vertical & horizontal, producing 3 unique pieces of choreography for sharing at Kendal Mountain Festival, in the gardens at Brantwood, Coniston during John Ruskin’s bicentenary celebrations, and at Lakes Alive festival. The first performance has already been seen on stage at The Lowry as part of U. Dance NW 2019.

Photo: Henry Iddon

Part of the project will involve the young dancers creating blog posts describing their training and explaining how they are using the inspiration of their native Cumbrian fells to create contemporary dance.

So: to celebrate this project and to kickstart the TDPT collaboration here are 5 top tips for developing a good blog entry:

  1. Think carefully about how you combine your media. Do you have images and/or short video you can use to complement your ideas in writing?
  2.  Be simple and natural with your writing – blogs can be informal and are often all the more engaging when they are. 
  3. Think of your audience – who are you speaking to?  In this example – for TDPT – it is a mix of readers from all over the world, so don’t assume everything will be understood and explain local terms or jargon (briefly though!)
  4. Keep things short and sweet. Blogs are often read while people are doing other things – so keep the message simple.
  5. Above all – have a clear focus, so you know what you are trying to say. For this project it could be answering a simple question: How can mountains and nature inspire a training in dance? 

And remember – I’ll be around for the next few months as part of the project team to help and advise. So please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

Jonathan Pitches ([email protected])

(TDPT co-editor and academic at Leeds University)