Focus On
Cecchetti Classical Ballet ~ continued
ALL GOD'S CREATURES
Sustainable dancewear Helen Banks, Brand Director at Imperfect Pointes Future Friendly Dancewear, shares her top tips on becoming more sustainable.
Kate Simmons tells us how her staff and students are moving forward, particularly after the disruption to the first few months of 2021. She explained: “I was determined that the start of the academic year, September, should run as smoothly as possible. Though we had made the most of performance opportunities, including turning our theatre studio into a ‘studio theatre’, the students and faculty all craved the chance to get back on stage. “The start of any year at KS Dance involves establishing and aligning the students’ placing and technique but when we were told that we could have the Brindley Theatre for hire in the last few days in October, we jumped at the opportunity. We had mothballed La Sylphide in March 2020 and had the production moved three times! It was a huge task to get the students ‘performance-ready’ in seven weeks, with costumes as well.
“Our Juniors were supposed to perform The Willow Pattern at the same time, so they got to dance too… most of the costumes were too small, but Tracey Moss’s determination and clever tweaks made it work! “The past 22 months have been trying and testing times for all of us, changing our studios, making them Covid safe, testing students, putting up with isolating and so on. I could go on! But we must remind ourselves that dance is what we do, it is part of our lives, it is how we survive, it makes us better people. “Let us all try to turn negatives into positives with a can-do, will-do attitude! Keep going, it will come good in the end. Children will always want to learn dance and audiences will always need entertaining. All the best for 2022!”
It has been almost two years since the start of the pandemic, and this forced a huge lifestyle change for many of us. As the mum of an up-and-coming ballerina, I was frustrated that, within the multimillion-pound dancewear industry, very few brands are focusing on sustainability. It may not surprise you to know that the number of garments made from oil-based synthetic fibres has doubled since 2000 (Greenpeace) and that £140m of clothing goes to landfill every year in the UK alone (WRAP). The dancewear industry is largely based on the principles of fast fashion and with high throw out and new collections sold online every week, that is a huge amount towards these statistics. As I was already training to be a sustainability advisor and consultant, I decided to launch my own sustainable ballet wear brand, Imperfect Pointes, in order to make a change. The good news for dancers is that the last few years have seen an explosion in new and exciting dancewear brands focusing on more sustainable options. Within dancewear, it can be a challenge to find the right fabrics to make leotards, unitards, tights or skirts that create less environmental impact and have a lower carbon footprint. Finding durable sustainable fabrics that can stand up to the most rigorous ballet rehearsal means that price can sometimes be perceived as premium. At the same time, dancers are starting to want transparency, and there has been lots in the media about greenwashing – when brands make vague or unsubstantiated claims about their ‘eco-friendly’ practices in the name of selling more products. Furthermore, the concept of ‘sustainability’ encompasses both social and environment aspects and following on from the work of the Black Lives Matter movement, we hope that dancers with black and brown skin tones will see much needed greater inclusion and representation, both on and off stage. After customer feedback and social media
46 Dance | Issue 495
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17/03/2022 07:38
