We gathered in the rehearsal room, about 30 of us. Peth opened and welcomed and then I (Julia Voce, former member and now leader of the BAD group for five years) began with inviting everyone to say hello with ‘just your eyes’. We then moved in to a warm up; physical, vocal then spacial. Everyone was encouraged to get involved in every exercise but also to take care of themselves and sit out if it wasn’t for them at that moment.

We shook our bodies, and sighed to release tension, sang ‘Every morning when I wake up, I want sing a song‘ then started to move around the space. I invited everyone to start making contact first with a brief moment of ‘being present’ and then with a little jump, performed at exactly the same moment as someone else.

We played a clown game called ‘The Good School of Bad Dancing‘ – people were extremely game and threw themselves into some wonderful bad dancing, and there are doubtless some very special photos existing of this exercise.

We focussed on our feet for a moment in a circle and sent a pulse around by tapping one foot and then the other- then I invited everyone to separate into audience and performers and we set up to share some of the work on Shoes and Feet that we have been working on.

We shared four sketches/scenes that focus on the beauty, fun and ridiculousness of feet- or us through our feet. All of the work was devised by the group used movement, dance, object manipulation, Russian, French, clown and ensemble storytelling.

Then we talked in quite a lot of detail, then made frozen pictures, about what we saw and what we experienced in the two hours we’d spent together. Some of the words, phrases that I remember are:

invigorated, excited, foot fetish fun, delightful, nervous, challenging, uncomfortable, surprising, noticed something I hadn’t taken care of before.

We closed and then about half of the group went to the pub.