Hi! We are Tenacity Dance Company!
Firstly, (let’s get this out the way) Tenaciwho?! Tenacity..
How you say Tenacity:
‘Ten’ (As in number)
‘a’ (Like a-pple)
‘city’ (As in London)
Now that’s cleared up!
Who are we and what
do we do?
Founded by Jack Andrew and Danni Marshall, Tenacity is a new
and upcoming Dance Company. Tenacity Dance Company are based in and around
Bournemouth. The group have been together for about 8 months now. They are a
company that are being assisted through AIM FYT, a charity helping companies in
performing arts, to become bigger and to help Tenacity with the dreams that
they have. The aim for Tenacity DC is to perform and raise awareness of real
life situations. They feel that, through dance, they can do this by showing the
passion and emotion for situations that could happen and do happen through
life. These certain situations are rarely spoken about, apart from major
circumstances, because people can find it awkward or feel that it doesn’t
happen to them so it can’t really happen that much. We all know that things
such as abuse, bullying, body image, depression and other situations do happen
and it can lead to things such as suicide. In Tenacity, we feel that if we
dance and spread awareness of the severity of these things that are happening
in people’s lives, we can help people understand and hopefully help people that
it is currently happening to. Tenacity pushes the boundaries of contemporary
and hip hop theatre. We have recently performed a piece about domestic violence
and have had really positive views on the moving performance. Combined, the
group have had years in the dance world, performing in Bournemouth, London and
all around the south and south west area.
How did we start out?
Starting any company is pretty tough! Me and Jack, we are
both still quite young! So, I wouldn’t say that we are ‘full time’ on the
business. I am pretty much full time working in a primary school and Jack is at
a dance college. But in the next few years, if the company takes off, hopefully
we will be able to rely on Tenacity more and it can be a real job. So, how we
started..
It kind of just happened! We were planning on getting a
group together and performing a piece in Bournemouth’s Pavilion Dance. So me
and Jack went into the studio and started a piece on domestic violence. It’s
something that can happen to anyone. It’s very rarely spoken about. It needs to
stop being such a sensitive subject. So many people go through it at some
point, either physically or emotionally. It can take years to except it and
even longer, if ever, to get over it. We felt that people can watch a dance.
It’s sometimes hard to see it on the telly but, through dance, I think that
people can see it in a different way and aren’t able to change the channel or
turn it off. It’s there. Just like in the world. So, we made some choreography,
not too violent but with a lot of emotion.
Next, was getting the dancers. We knew some dancers that we
wanted involved and we also contacted other places to see if anyone else was
interested. So it was fairly easy to find talent, especially in Bournemouth!
Something we have learnt, it definitely helps knowing people!
Rehearsing was the next part. Being older teenagers/adults,
it was difficult to find a time when everyone was free! Everyone has different
schedules and we totally expected that. But at the same time, we wanted this to
be amazing! It’s ok to do a dance but we wanted to make this a performance.
This meant practise, practise, practise! Practise until you hate the song that
is playing and you never want to listen to it again!! Truth!
Around this time was the time we actually thought this could
be a dance company! We got the name Tenacity, which means perseverance and
determination, which you need to be a dancer and to make a company happen! We
got T-Shirts made (which made us real!) and built social networking links, to
reach out to the public.
Since then..
Since our debut performance, I Bruise Easily, we have
started to really think about how to make Tenacity bigger and better. We worked
with Heart FM (a radio station in south west) all summer dancing at the
Bournemouth event ‘Family Fiesta.’ It was amazing, we had so many comments and
it was a good bonding time for Tenacity! We have recently started working with a
charity called AIM FYT. These people are amazing and have helped us so much and
help people in the performing arts world! With the help of them, we are hoping
to get around to places outside of Bournemouth and meet more people and see
more of the world! We are also planning our next piece on another situation
that needs awareness but you will hear more about that soon!
Thank you if you got to the bottom of this! This is our
first blog post so it’s a bit miss matched but hopefully it will get better!
Please support our company by liking, subscribing and sharing all our links! We
really couldn’t do anything without you guys!
Our links:
Instagram- team_tenacity
Thanks again! Speak soon,
Danni and Jack
Founders of TDC
