Connecting with our family home through dance
The influential architect Le Corbusier famously said a house is a machine for living in. But a home seems so much more than this.
Home: there is so much conjured up in that one word. The sounds, light, memories, smells, physical sensations, emotion, the feeling of being in the space alone and with others, a sense of the past, present and what is to come.
Last year I was tasked, along with my sisters to clear my family home, a place my parents had lived for almost 45 years, and where I had lived for 11 years between the age of 7 & 18. Over the last 20 years I have lived close by again and witnessed my childhood home as my parents came to the end of their lives. After a relatively short illness my mum died in the front room of that home in November 2020. Shortly after my Dad was diagnosed with leukaemia and died in 2021.
During these difficult few years I would go and dance in the mornings, as I still do, at Wainsgate Dances a wonderful gathering of like minded souls who dance alone but alongside others in a magical Sunday school Chapel space. I’m a dancer and mover at heart. I teach Feldenkrais classes, a somatic movement practice which brings you into the present moment so you can be more fully yourself. It’s a learning process.
As I was clearing my parents home, mostly on Wednesdays a day I would go do the shopping for them when they were alive, I would lie on the floor tired from the emotion of it all. I could feel the urge to move as the rooms became empty. Each room had a different flavour some memories coming vividly as I danced, practicing my tap dancing in the cellar as a teenager on the piece of board Dad put down, helping Mum have a bath as she became increasingly fragile. She so loved being in the bath that day. I came home after one day of clearing the house and said how great it had felt to dance in the rooms. I somehow wanted to mark this moment. And so the idea of this film evolved very quickly as Sarah Mason responded positively to my request to come film me dancing in Mum & Dads home.
So we met on a day in March 2022 and I showed Sarah from room to room. I danced and she filmed. The light was so lovely that day.
A couple of days later I handed in the keys for the next owners of the house.
I treasure this film now. It’s a moment in time.
Thanks to Sarah Mason for her wonderful work.
