The GLAM effect

Last weekend, I bundled my husband and two sleepy pre-teens into the car and travelled up to St Austell to catch a performance of GLAM by Etta Ermini Dance Company and Van Huynh Company.  After a frantic drive up the A30 dodging the Royal Cornwall Show traffic and a hilarious running circuit of White River Place’s Wilko in search of the exit, we emerged into the sunshine ready to party.  The disco tunes were playing, a crowd was gathering, and anticipation was building.

The London based dance theatre collaboration were touring in Cornwall with Carn to Cove. Commissioned to perform in St Austell as part of the Tresorys Kernow project (which is funded by the Community Renewal Fund), their production GLAM incorporates bold choreography, a sparkling wardrobe, astonishing acrobatics (all impressively performed in platform heels of course), brilliant audience interaction, and a feel-good soundtrack.

The show ties together its inspirations of club culture and the journey of the LGBTQ+ community, and celebrates the power of bringing people together through dance and music. Colourful and full of energy, the performers had everyone in the audience dancing and moving.  They got particular bonus points for deftly sidestepping a tiny boy who launched himself forward onto the stage, intent on collecting fallen neon plume from a feather boa, and also for persuading some reluctant PCSOs to bust out some moves.

The company were joined by students from Cornwall College drama programme, who I later found out had only learnt their routine the day before. Their enjoyment and exuberance were infectious, and they raised a huge cheer from the crowd when they took a well-deserved “curtain call” with the main cast.  We left White River Place humming tunes and wondering out loud whether the company could teach us how to dance in heels.

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Every once in a while at Creative Kernow, a piece of feedback reaches us which just makes everything worthwhile. We are lucky to have a great ongoing dialogue with the communities we work with, but it’s true that we usually hear about things that aren’t working so well much faster and more frequently than those that are.

The feedback that reached Creative Kernow this week came from our St Austell pollinator. Pollinators are volunteers who connect their communities with all the cultural and creative opportunities on offer in Cornwall and they’ve been working with the Tresorys Kernow partners to commission activity to meet a particular local demand.  This is what the pollinator shared concerning the performance of GLAM in St Austell on June 11th (edited with her permission):

All the students in the performance are part of the LGBTQ+ community at the college and were thrilled to spend time with professionals from the same community. One of the students said it had been the best day of their life so far and they would never forget it.

There was an unexpected outcome which came from a conversation I had with three young people who recently moved to St Austell. They told me they were lonely and excluded since their move and were desperate to find a new family to join; I took them over to meet the college students who welcomed them immediately into their fold.

Honestly, the look on the faces of the three newcomers was beautiful – they’d come to see GLAM in the hope of finding new friends and that is exactly what happened! Tresorys Kernow did that.

Once you set out to help rebuild the high street in a post-Covid era, as our Tresorys Kernow project has sought to do, it has to be for everyone.  Creating a safe space where people can meet and be themselves is absolutely vital. Feather boas and glitter are optional, kindness and tolerance work equally well.  But culture and creativity have this intrinsic power to bring people together for life changing moments. Whether it was the colourful performance, the smiling audience, the burgeoning confidence of young people taking part, or the crucial, positive human connections made afterwards, this show has changed lives and we are proud to have played a role in making it happen.

Huge thanks to all involved in championing this piece of dance theatre for St Austell and to the performers who gave us 100% fabulousness.

We respect the integrity of marginalised communities to make their own decisions about how to tell their stories. And we want to hear them be told.

We stand in allyship with our partners and collaborators against homophobia and transphobia. Creative Kernow and Cornwall Museums Partnership are committed to inclusive and open-minded cultural provision in Cornwall, reflecting the diversity of people who live, work, and visit here.

Fiona