Encourage, Excite, Ignite, Inspire

Inspire – Bridgend Youth Arts Festival

Bridgend Arts Council

Venue: Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl

End Performance: Fri 25^th Feb

Reviewed by Chelsey Gillard

After a week of workshops for dance, theatre and film Bridgend Arts Council staged a comprehensive evening of arts and culture. Bringing together It’s My shout, Bridgend Youth Dance and Theatre, National Youth Dance and National Dance Company Wales Associates the event was a treat for all. The art exhibition in the foyer showcased not only the photographers talent but also the amazing abilities of the young people in Bridgend, highlighting the recent star stories of Aneurin Bernard and other previous Youth Theatre members. Music throughout the night was provided by Louisa Sham, who played a beautiful range of flute pieces, accompanied by Mike Plowman.

It’s My Shout

The proceedings began with a short documentary about It’s My Shout 2010. The scheme is designed to train young people in the wide range of professions encompassed in TV and film; from acting and directing to location management and costume design. The documentary highlighted how the scheme can give direction and motivation to young people who may otherwise not reach their potential. Everybody involved in the scheme seems to have a great time and make valuable contacts. IMS gets better and better every year, with the final short films produced being high quality and hugely enjoyable.

One of the films, Edna’s Bench, was shown as it was filmed in Bridgend and involved a lot of young actors from Bridgend. It follows an unlikely friendship between a pensioner and a school boy who have both experienced terrible grief. By learning to open up and share their feelings the pair come to understand death and love that little bit more. The film is a real tribute to the scheme, although slow and gentle it explores a lot of worthwhile issues and offers real comfort to viewers. It breaks down the prejudice that a lot of older people feel towards teenagers and shows the need for respect of items and people in the community.

F.E.A.R. by BYT Step Up Group

This physical theatre piece was developed by Artistic Director Roger Burnell and choreographer Lizzie Davies with the help of a small group from Bridgend Youth Theatre. Designed to explore the groups’ fears it incorporated dance, physical theatre and voice work. Although not all the performers were dancers each one of them put their all into the routine and there was a real sense of ownership and pride in the work. Although the obscure mix of disciplines may not have been everyone’s cup of tea it was certainly thought provoking and  I would love to see more BYT break away groups like this concentrate on different aspects of theatre that they don’t normally get to experience.

Bridgend Youth Dance

The first dance, Cafe, was originally created for Holocaust Memorial Day and was built from ideas surrounding a cafe at night time in the era of Cabaret Berlin in the late 20’s and 30’s. Considering this group is made up of many performers who have never had formal dance lessons they performed very well. The fairly simplistic routine let the company focus on the emotions and timing of the piece rather than getting lost in overcomplicated moves.

Their second routine, Celestial was set to Florence and The Machine’s Cosmic Love. The choice of music was superb with the dance exploring the ideas of ill-fated love, reminiscent of the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet. A few dancers really stood out in their solos and overall it was an exciting and well polished performance.

National Dance Company Wales Associates

This excerpt from their By Singing Light show was inspired by the poetry of Dylan Thomas. The whole company was obviously very dedicated to their art, with amazing displays of flexibility, unfortunately these moves meant they fell out of time with each other on occasion. Apart from this the routine was exciting and varied, I would urge any young person with an interest in dance to see one of their shows.

National Youth Dance Wales Peer Associates 

This trio are young professional dancers who are former members of NYDW. The routine from, A State of Rest, was designed to see how far you can push the human body whilst still holding clarity and form; they certainly achieved this. Throughout the routine the concentration was obvious on the performers’ faces and it was nice to see a company that isn’t afraid to show that dance is not always effortless, even for the best dancers. Stimulating, inspiring and thought provoking – exactly what modern dance should be about!  

Bridgend Youth Theatre

The much loved theatre group performed an adaptation of The Merchant of Venice incorporating dance, singing and acting. Although as always the massive talent of the group shone through, the script they had to work with was awful. Many key scenes were lost and the main love stories were excluded. The unorganised script coupled with odd part shares made the performance completely undecipherable even for someone familiar with the play. This is such a massive shame because there are so many talented youngsters in the group, in fact I think this was part of the problem; trying to include everyone in what was essentially written for a minimal cast led to a confusing combination of choral speaking, short acting scenes were the characters weren’t constant and disjointed dance and song. The performance was so incoherent I doubt many noticed the major slip up in the last scene were Shylock was told to become a Jew or face death, Shylock is of course already a Jew. For projects like this to work small groups need to work intensively to ensure they themselves understand the script and I hope BYT will try this in the future. I can’t wait for the company to get back to what they’re good at - high energy, large cast musicals.

Overall the whole evening was a success. As one performer said in the IMS documentary, many people take themselves too seriously, it was refreshing to see a varied bunch of young performers having fun and creating something beautiful. I really hope this celebration of talent takes place every year from now on and it gains much more support from the local community. The slogan for the programme is “encourage, excite, ignite, inspire” and it certainly was all of these things!