Sutemos means twilight in Lithuanian. A name chosen by the newly arrived immigrant children who banded together to form a dance group in Dungannon.
When the Community Relations Council funded a 3-day workshop based on the child migrant experience, Jane Coyle knew there was an obvious choice to be made.
“Dungannon is so multi-cultural,” Jane explained. “It felt right that we do our workshop there, to build on the idea of the child migrant experience with children from a migrant and multi-cultural background.”
Jane is an award-winning playwright and founder of Powerstone Entertainment.
But success would require a collaboration with other creative experts. So she enlisted Patrick J O’Reilly, artistic director with Tinderbox, and Sheena Kelly, choreographer for DU Dance.
In 2011, DU Dance helped create Sutemos – an intercultural dance group aimed at 12-18 year olds – in the County Tyrone town.
Since then, the dance group expanded to cater for children under 12 with the addition of Suteminis.
Both groups would be integral to the 3-day dance theatre workshop – entitled Little Stranger – that culminated with a live performance in Ranfurly House Arts Centre on 17 February 2020.
“I was utterly amazed by the focus of the little ones,” Jane enthused. “When it came to the bit, after three days of workshop tuition, to see it all come together in a live performance was wonderful.”
Dance has been an instrument in transforming the participants’ daily lives, improving social interaction and building confidence. For the parents of the children, who had immigrated to Northern Ireland to make this their home, seeing language disappear as a barrier was transformative.
“It’s community relations writ large,” Jane said. “It’s different people coming together as one.”
The workshop involved the children coming together under expert tuition to develop three dance theatre vignettes, which they performed to an audience.
“The workshops were fun, and freeform – about taking ideas and developing them,” Jane explained. “But in the end they had to perform in front of people, in front of their families. The children were very disciplined because they were determined to do well.”
Funding from the Community Relation Council allowed Jane to bring in expert creatives to help structure the workshops, as well as leave a lasting impression on these young dancers.
“We were able to hire experts and rent a beautiful dedicated dance space for the performance,” Jane said. “We wanted to provide a professional experience for the children, and something of lasting value. None of which would have been possible without CRC’s help.”
CRC Funding Schemes
Little Stranger, a three-day dance performance workshops, was funded by the Community Relations Council’s CR/CD Small Grants Scheme. Read more about our Small Grants Scheme.