RDP Liverpool

The Resilient Dancer Programme session hosted by Balbir Singh Dance Company, featuring the revered Bisakha Sarker MBE, a long-time Liverpool-based choreographer and pioneering advocate for dance in health and social care settings, set out to explore growth, renewal, and tenderness through movement. BSDC artists, dancers from the company’s Resilient Dancer Programme, and a mix of musicians and interested artists from Liverpool—gathered to learn from Bisakha’s lifetime of practice, stories, and gentle provocations.

2024 to 2025

Dancing Outside the Studio

The session focused on the use of dance outside formal settings—how to begin meaningfully when a traditional introduction to Indian dance might not land. Bisakha reminded us that dance in this context should never be about learning difficult steps for a stage performance. That, she said, is “so horrible, so naïve.” Instead, she guided us to start with something as simple and meaningful as a namaskar—hands together, a small bow, and a moment of shared respect.

From there, she led us into stories of her work with blind participants, where she replaced visual cues with sound and sensation: bells on fingers, gentle head turns, and imagination-led movement. “Make a dance in your own mind,” she said, helping us all to understand dance not only as something to do, but something to feel, to inhabit. The focus shifted from form to energy flow, and from instruction to exploration.

Kali, one of BSDC’s most experienced dancers, reminded us to attend to the heart as well as the mind: “Where the mind is, there the heart will follow.” It became a theme of the day.

Improvisation, Imagination, Inclusion

Bisakha spoke of working with children, asking them to imagine a picture in their hand and letting the picture lead the movement. She shared insights into how cultural references—like the opening of a lotus—can exclude people unfamiliar with those symbols. When a participant described the movement as being “like fire,” it unlocked the possibility of shared understanding. It’s this adaptive, intuitive practice that underpins the Resilient Dancer ethos—meeting people where they are, with what is in the room, be it an object, an emotion, or a silence.

What followed was a living example of this kind of engagement. We explored improvisation using text from Tending the Fire by Robert Bringhurst, a Native Canadian creation story. As the poem was read aloud, we responded—dancers and “non-dancers” alike—to phrases such as:

“Please, would you teach them to cry?”

From Movement to Metaphor

The metaphor of the umbrella emerged in conversation: protection, shelter, love, friendship. Bisakha shared a dementia-friendly performance she created beginning with a Chinese umbrella dance, which evolved into a participatory experience—a "knowledge exchange" in her words. The umbrella was carried through as both object and symbol, holding a space of emotional safety.

We moved on to the idea of waiting—a key feature of life for many in the healthcare system. Bisakha asked: how can we turn waiting time into valuable time? Could dance become part of the waiting, part of the healing?

The session returned to metaphor repeatedly—through the motif of knotting and unknotting (used in BSDC’s Unmasking Pain project), through clay work as a metaphor for reshaping the self, and through spontaneous moments of play, like the origami paper boat Bisakha made from a napkin and sent travelling around the circle, its journey growing in imagination with each pass.

Presence and Grounding

A key takeaway from the afternoon was the idea that in these sessions, the space between people matters as much as what each person brings individually. There is no hierarchy in the room; no artist, no participant, only people. “We are always starting from the beginning,” Bisakha said—a grounding reminder that dance, like life, is a series of fresh starts.

We reflected on the presence of Mother Earth in traditional Indian dance—how touching the ground at the beginning of a performance must become more than a ritual. “It must be real,” Bisakha said, “especially now, in a time of climate crisis.”

The day concluded with no performance, no applause—only reflections, shared warmth, and deepened understandings of the intangible tangible. Of how dance might live in the in-between, in gesture and gaze, in stillness and silence, in metaphor and memory.

5As for the Room (from Kali)

Acknowledge – Accept – Attention – Articulate – Action

… and Allow it.

This session left behind no ticket stubs or stage photos—but it left us with something lasting: a clearer sense of how movement can meet pain, how community can hold space, and how dance can be a way to connect not only with others, but with the stories and feelings we carry in our own bodies.

“

• I saw the meaning of respect and trust demonstrated authentically. BSDC did not just pay lip service to ‘learning from the wisdom of elders’, but by putting a four long workshop into the hands of an older dancer and trusting the process, he demonstrated his belief in the individual and in the process.

• The feeling generated of ease, acceptance and inclusion allowed participants to let down their guard. The real exchange comes from the confidence that if one opens one’s mouth one will not be ridiculed. It sounds obvious but is not always so easy. BSDC has made this quality of inclusion its calling card.

• The observations from participants that most struck me were on strategies of workshop content: ‘simple but specific’; finding a metaphor and an action to bring the difficulty being experienced into focus without headlong confrontation. The examples given of indicating chronic pain being experienced through the medium of clay or colour chart or playing with knots. The simple physical interventions of ‘namaskar’, improvising to a story, passing a paper boat were simple and effective exercises and showed creativity and originality in the way the participants responded to the stimulus.

• The practical suggestions from fellow artists: ‘ when speaking to someone with a terminal illness, talk about the subject at hand, no need to focus on how long there is to live, but how to invest meaning within the moment’.

In conclusion there is something very delicate and intangible that BCDC is able to create: a web of connections based on mutual respect and understanding, a place from which creativity emerges.

- Sanjeevini Dutta ”

Dancers

Balbir Singh
Bisarka Sarker
Caitano Saldano
Devaraj Thimmiah
Eleanor Stephenson
Freya Davis
Kali Chandrasegaram
Kinga Malec
Sanjeevini Dutta

Poet/Writer

Adam Strickson

Photographer

Balbir Singh
Joshua Hart