Last month was Valentine’s day. I’ve never celebrated the 14th. Not a fan of the commercial consumerism but I like celebrating love. As a theme it offers loads of fun movement, dance and music inspiration for performances and community dance projects. Spiltmilk Dance loved it so much they made a show about it: The Little Love Cabaret
Watch the trailer here
We toured The Little Love Cabaret in 2018 shoving love up and down the UK. It was about all different kinds of love, a scrapbook show of love. It was great. I did have to sing which was nerve racking for someone who comes from a family of singers and has been told to stick to the dancing but more on that later…
Here’s me and my forehead having a moment in one of the promo shots:
Another photo from the promotional photoshoot with The Other Richard in 2017:
Love warriors at the ready ❤️💪🏹
I had a great time improvising before this shot, smashing flowers on the ground rock n roll style. Love warrior inspo music here might have been Les Miserable “somewhere beyond the barricade…” I’m not 100% sure but conversations about love revolutions did feature a lot in the development of this show.
I do remember though that in this moment the gold boots were too small and underneath that determined face I am counting how many seconds before I can relax. In the name of art eh? The things we do for love eh?!
Me and Adele (Co Artistic Director of Spiltmilk Dance) traveled to London to work with the super talented photographer The Other Richard. After the shoot we went for some food, me hair boofed up, face full of make up shoved in glitter. At the time I had a wonderful metallic gold water bottle. The guy serving us looked on in amusement and asked what festival I’d been at. When I said none, confused he asked why I was like a magpie with so many sparkles in the middle of a Leon in London?
I did change out the wedding dress at least…
We toured across the UK to 20 different venues from February – May 2018. I didn’t share as much of my performance work on social media or blog back then so I’m enjoying a good throwback now, highlighting this fabulous show and everyone involved. Plus it was the first tour I ever did of this size and may ever do (that’s size in tour dates but also number of people – seriously there were loaaaaads of us!)
One time we got snowed in after a show in New Mills (I think this exact weekend 4 years ago?!) and I made a film about it. What else you gonna do when a snow-venture presents itself? I’d been taking videos as it started to snow and then we couldn’t get home that night, found a lovely b&b at 11pm, so I carried on documenting behind the scenes creating a little movie magic for us all to remember our 24 hour adventure in New Mills by.
PRESENTING: Our adventure in New Mills, with Spiltmilk Dance
There was a birthday video to make and send before going on stage. An essential part of the warm up.
FYI: There are no flat roads out of New Mills. I’m imparting this valuable information for when a future you performs a cabaret in New Mills and gets snowed in
So the singing thing…
Pretty scary.
On the third tour date, we got applauded after our opening song. That was a confidence boost. Thank you kind people in that library down in Wiltshire. Maybe I didn’t sound that bad after all? Luckily I had Hannah Butterfield and her amazing vocal and guitar skills next to me to guide me through and well, the audiences seemed to enjoy and neither Sarah or Adele asked me to lip sync so…
Whats that I always say to people? “theres no such thing as you can’t dance”. Well this may be true of singing but think i’ll still leave it to the pros in my family…
Spiltmilk Dance Co Artistic Directors: Sarah Boulter and Adele Wragg
Performers: Lucy Haighton, Jennifer Manderson-Smith, Hannah Butterfield
Tour Manager / Set & Lighting designer: Matt Sykes Hooban
Guest Performers:
Aka Dance Theatre – ‘Number 13’
Rhiannon Faith Company – ‘I don’t care bear’
Grace Surman – ‘Would you rather be lost?’
(plus the 3 babies, teenager, other partners and a dog)
Lucy Haighton 