Colette Fahy

Dance Till You’re Dead

This work is the result of a six week collaborative arts project between Colette Fahy and Hazel Dixon (artists) and a small group of older people based in Friends of the Elderly Bolton Street.

“While working with our group the initial idea was to focus on the idea of routine, as many of the members would have experienced quite a few different ones throughout their life.

This led to the topic of dancing, how many forms of dance, such as ballroom and line, are no longer common among our generation but were a part of everyday life for the group members. Death and humour also seemed to be a regular topic among the group. Hearing their funny anecdotes and jokes around death was surprising to us, because it showed how comfortable they were with the topic, while to us it was slightly taboo.

With this type of dancing undergoing a social death of its own we decided to tie both audio clips of death stories and video pieces of dance together.”

This project was supported by CREATE, the national development agency for collaborative arts.