Engagement
At DeNada, we are committed to engaging with the communities we create work about and for. We are strong believers in how creativity, the arts, and above all, dance, can promote LGBTQ+ inclusion; forge new transcultural relations; offer a safe and creative space for the realisation of non-normative identities; open up exciting and important dialogues; and educate about gender and sexual identities in dynamic and impactful ways.
Our community engagement takes many forms. From engaging with particular groups in the research and creative processes of our work, to ensure honest representation of underrepresented voices, as well as to fully understand their realities, to exciting, unique and innovative outreach offers that accompany our touring activity. While we believe in the magic of the theatrical experience as something that is transformative and leads us to reflection, we also believe in the huge benefits of continuing to explore a production’s themes through engagement in wraparound educational or artistic activity.
DeNada promotes the acceptance of gender and cultural diveristy both with adults and with young people. This means we are constantly imagining new educational activities tailored for specific groups, so that we can engage as many participants as possible.
We share one message: inclusion. And whether for adults or for young people, we speak it through one language: dance.
Engagement for ADULTS
DeNada has an exciting and innovative outreach offer for adult participants, both for artist and non artists. Our offer is generally focused around the production we may be touring, but we also offer activities that promote LGBTQ+ inclusion and education outside of our touring activity. To find more and to book, please get in touch.
Here are some examples of our outreach activities:
For non artists
Drag and makeup workshops
Pre-show audience warm ups
Gender-bending Latinx dance workshops: tango, salsa, sevillanas, and more
Post-show themed parties
Studio visits and meet the cast and team
Process experience: come experience an adapted version of our creative process
Community cast creations: join the cast of DeNada in specific performances
Dramaturgy laboratory: learn how to better read dance with DeNada
Performing gender workshops: playful explorations of how we perform gender
Pre-show introductions and post-show talks
For artists (dancers, actors, physical theatre practitioners)
Physical character work workshops
Workshops on emotional sincerity for performance
Workshops on performing gender
Repertoire workshops
Technique classes: classical ballet and contemporary dance
Gender-bending Latinx dance
Queer partnering workshops
Drag workshops
Developing a queer creative process: workshop
Performing and directing dance work for young audiences: workshop
Careers development: mentoring, careers sessions, shadowing
Engagement for young people
DeNada loves engaging young people in its work. Our outreach offer for young people is aimed at educating on gender diversity and tolerance; tackling bullying; promoting multiculturalism and inspiring further engagement with the arts. We have designed fun and dynamic activities for young people of different ages, working in collaboration with specialists and charities to ensure our activities reach their educational potential. Our work for young people is mostly centred around our current family production, The Bull and the Moon; visit its website to find out about the production as well some helpful resources for families and carers.
We enjoy engaging with young people and their carers live, but can also deliver many of these activities online.
Outreach for young people
Post-show flamenco dance workshops
Drag queen story time
Spanish arts and crafts: make your own fan, rose or hair comb
Drag arts and crafts: make your own wig, makeup workshops
Drag dress-up
Behind-the-scenes experiences: close look at costumes, set, props
Spanish word games
Post-show kids parties
Salsa and tango for young ones
Creative writing workshops
Continued Professional Development for professional, carers and interested adults
At DeNada, we believe in reaching out to adults who work with young people- educators, community practitioners, healthcare providers, carers- to offer resources and information on how to better promote and educate on gender and cultural diversity through the arts. Some of our activities include:
Educational guides: a bespoke resource pack for school teachers, offering insights into how to prepare students for the performances, suggestions on how to explore gender diversity in the classroom, suggested reading, external resources and practical activities/games to carry out in schools.
Our resource pack has an intersectional approach, and describes how the production’s different aspects can be explored in different subjects at school, such as music, modern languages, English, drama, geography/social studies, art, maths, PE, and more.
The pack has been created in collaboration with multiple charities supporting LGBTQ+ youth and trans families, ensuring all information on gender identity and diversity is treated sensitively and in an accessible way; as well by education specialists.
Workshops for professionals: DeNada can deliver practical workshops, lectures and discussions with local educators and social workers, to share insights into the creative process of the work, explore its messages in more detail, and offer practical resources through which to explore the work in schools and youth centres. Ideally, these sessions happen prior to performances, so that students and young people can have a more holistic experience of the performance, and can be delivered at schools. venues or community centres.
These sessions are delivered by choreographer Carlos Pons Guerra, company dancers and if requested, by charity workers or specialists who engage with the promotion of gender diversity, anti-bullying and trans youth.
How to read dance and theatre: these workshops, aimed at educators, offer those with less experience of the arts tools in analysing dance performance and their semiotic aspects. They offer skills in how to teach young people to read the messages behind performance work and how to initiate dialogues about a work’s themes.
SPACES
DeNada loves the creation of unique worlds that happens inside a dark theatre. However, we understand that not everyone feels comfortable in theatre venues. That is why we have developed work that is flexible, and can be performed in theatres but also in the places where the communities we create work for gather. Many of our works can be performed outdoors and in unconventional spaces: one of our favourite things is when people are surprised by dance in the streets and maybe one day follow us into the theatre. We are excited by the people we may reach with our narratives when they are performed where people less expect dance to happen.
For those that cannot access the spaces where we perform, DeNada offers high quality digital versions of our productions, which can be accessed during our tour periods.
For schools, community groups and youth centres, we are also developing accessible, digital editions of our work for young audiences, complete with digital educational resources. Watch this space for updates!
Research
DeNada believes in the potential of dance to develop knowledge through research and performance. The company has engaged in academic and scholarly activity from its origins, working within the fields of queer studies, Hispanic studies, literary studies, postcolonial studies, performance studies and intermedial/transmedial studies. As well as co-authoring papers, and being the subject of several academic works, we often seek academic collaborations in our processes so that our performance work may contribute insight to the fields we work within.
As part of our engagement offer, we deliver lectures, lecture demonstrations and practical workshops at higher education institutions, on topics such as:
The queer adaptation of literary and cultural texts
What is a queer creative process?
(De)colonising cultural texts through dance adaptation
Performing gender
Performing Hispanic history
Reconstructing and culturally salvaging historical dance works
Creating queer dance work for young audiences
Queer adapting children’s literature
Hispanic colonial history
Dance and transcultural relations
To date, we have collaborated or shared knowledge at some of the following institutions:
The University of Michigan
Stavanger University
Vanderbilt University
The University of Leeds
The Northern School of Contemporary Dance
Wolverhampton University
Leeds Beckett University
The University of Salford
The National Ballet School of the Dominican Republic
Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts (India)
Roehampton University
Trinity Laban
If you are a researcher interested in the work of DeNada, and would like to discuss possible collaborations, we are always happy to hear from you. Please get in touch!
If you are interested in us visiting your institution, also please get in touch