Glory

Glory was an hour-long, large-scale, inclusive and immersive dance event marking the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and celebrating the city’s rich Commonwealth community. The design challenge was to create a reimagined Athletes Village as an installation allowing audience members to interact with individual performers as well as offering shared community spaces. This represented the journey of Glasgow’s people coming together, often through conflict and harsh conditions, into a shared endeavour, living under one roof.

The co-director role involved supporting the development of the rigour and discipline of athletes as well as the sense of shared community to represent the humanity of all those who make up Glasgow’s social tapestry. The work asked questions about the elite and every-day and represented individuals, over 30 professional and on-professional performers, achieving personal goals of engagement and expression. Glory also considered where and what is home, the journeys we have made, the borders and boundaries of cultures and communities, what connects us and what it means to live under one roof. The performers’ interactions with the moveable set included manipulating sections of it, which meant that the roles of designer and co-director merged and involved negotiation and collaboration with performers.

The work was performed over five days which allowed the community of performers to evolve and the sense of the whole event to become stronger. This was of particular importance as much of the creative period involved working in two separate groups. In performance, audience and performers shared the space, immersing themselves in the Athletes Village to achieve a sense of belonging and the confidence to engage with the planned and unplanned, those moments that are unique to each iteration. The work explored the ways in which performance creates strong bonds, linking audience members and performers in rituals of community.

Choreographed and co-directed by Janice Parker
Designed and co-directed by Richard Layzell
Music composed by Michael John McCarthy
Lighting designed by Pete Ayres