The "Ila" project connects fine art, live music, and dance with young audiences.

This web-site documents the project’s process and is a place to provide resources for the schools and galleries involved. The site also hosts an updated page where classes can share thoughts and ideas about the artwork and choreographic process with each other across geographic locations. ​

 DancingStrong believes in creating a performance piece that has a starting point (Preparation for R&D) within the community.

The ILA project includes four stages; the first being preparation for Research and Development through working with young people in school settings to explore and respond to artwork from three museums through movement making, drawing and links to the core curriculum. Working with children in different geographic locations (in UK and USA), the project takes high quality dance, art, and music workshops into school classrooms. 

The project develops children's skills in visual literacy, physical literacy, and mathematical literacy as tools to support the creative processes of making dance.  Children explore the works of art provided by local museums and galleries and create their own dances in response. Later the children become advisor-consultants to the creation of a final performance piece, inspired by the children's responses to the art work and performed by the  DancingStrong  professional dance company.  ​

It's a Collaboration of people, art, and dance

We will be working with three schools and their local museums. The UK: A school in Bristol and Bristol Museums and Galleries along with a school in London and V&A Museum of Childhood. In USA : between a school in Beecher and The Flint Institute of Arts.

The project is also a space for students, classrooms,  and communities in these areas to exchange art work and experiences with each other. This project is a unique opportunity for young people to be a part of the creative process of dance, exploring ideas about line, linking to the curriculum, and witnessing the creation of dance performance. As well the project gives children and their families the opportunity to  deepen their relationship with Museums & Galleries and the arts in their area and further a field through the network of the ILA project collaborators.

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