London based creatives, multidisciplinary artist Annie Frost Nicholson (formerly The Fandangoe Kid) and The Loss Project announce their forthcoming joint venture, the ‘Grief Moves tour’.
‘Grief Moves’ enables the joy and hope of movement and dance to be shared with communities across the UK and beyond. It follows the ‘Grief Raves’ success last year; a Grief Rave brings people together via music, inviting the public to come and play songs that remind them of those they have loved and lost. ‘Grief Moves’, brings together our expertise, inviting the public to come and shake out their grief on the dance floor, releasing climate, political, or socio-economic angst with the space to collectively remember the loss of loved ones.
‘The Grief Raves were phenomenally powerful at World Trade Center in October and at Canary Wharf last Summer,’ says Annie Nicholson (aka the Fandangoe Kid). ‘We were able to create a feeling of safety and warmth for collective grief on the dancefloor, bringing people from all walks of life together to share memories of their loved ones over music.’
Founder of The Loss Project, Carly Attridge, shares that her work is a fundamental part of the collaboration to bring dance and movement, as tools to process and explore grief in all of its forms. It enables us to reconnect with our bodies using non-verbal ways to express our grief. Both Annie and I have wanted to bring together a dance floor that centres grief for many years, and It’s an honour to be able to bring this to life together with this collaboration.
Following the success of The Fandangoe WHIP and SKIP from 2021-22, which travelled across the country before being commissioned by Arts Brookfield at World Trade Center to encourage the public to share their individual and collective grief over an ice cream, The Fandangoe Kid and team are back with the Grief Moves tour, as they invite the public to shake out their days and many griefs.
Annie Nicholson, aka The Fandangoe Kid explains: ‘The dancefloor has been a space of silence and safety as I have navigated the many great losses and painful grief in my life throughout the past decade and having successfully installed public realm projects around grief and mental health over the past two years, we have noticed a distinct change in how people wish to connect and come together. There is an overwhelming need to shake out your grief physically right now.’
Similarly to both the Fandangoe Whip and the Skip, the team integrate a diverse and nuanced programme, encouraging audiences to reflect upon questions of both intimacy and release that a good dance space will cultivate, bringing us home to safety and forming inevitable bonds between dancing and our individual and collective mental health. We truly encourage visitors to shake out their day, their week, their lives, freely, in a safe space, with no judgement, underscored by good dose of Disco.
ANNIE FROST NICHOLSON
Annie Frost Nicholson (aka The Fandangoe Kid) is a multidisciplinary artist, who makes work predominantly for the public realm. Her practice seeks to create platforms for dialogue on the complexities of life, death and the human condition. Her practice has been documented for the past year by BBC World Service in a broadcast released last week.
The artist has recently developed The Hope Exchange as part of London Design Festival’s 20th anniversary, a permanent space for Londoners to escape their hectic lives. She runs a regular radio show called The Grief Mixtape on Soho Radio and her book Tender Hearted Bold Moves is available to buy, published by Rough Trade Books. She has several permanent installations in London and her work has been documented by Channel 4, BBC, and Creative Review. Her made to wear pieces have appeared at the BAFTAs and inside Vogue Italia and her debut film Into Your Light was screened at Tate Modern and on Manhattan Bridge.
THE LOSS PROJECT
Loss is a universal experience that will affect us all at some point in our lives. We have never lived through such a pertinent time where loss has been propelled to the forefront of our minds. Many communities are still facing significant and multiple losses of loved ones, income, connections, and community to the detriment of mental health and wellbeing. The Loss Project, founded by Carly Attridge, supports communities with grief and loss in all its forms. We use creative practice, movement, and nature as ways to help people to acknowledge, explore and process their experiences and support wellbeing. We’re on a mission to challenge the status quo and to host life affirming spaces that give people the tools and confidence to journey through grief. Our expansive work includes on and offline programmes, training and workshops, and creative projects, such as our work with The Fandangoe Kid. The Loss Project was recognised for its work during the pandemic in the Social Enterprise UK Roll of Honours 2020, and Carly was included in the UMI Social Entrepreneurship Index Awards 2022.