What's it all about?

The Forest: a dance piece... for children? Yes! The Forest is a dance, and it’s an installation, and a spectacle, and a piece of moving art, and it’s funny, and a bit scary, and lovely, and strange, completely bewildering, and at times just plain silly.When we made The Forest we talked and played with lots of children; we took them to forests and watched what they liked to do, what interested them, what they wanted to explore.  We asked children what they would want to see in a performance about forests, and what they would not. They told us about wolves and bears and the light through the trees, They told us about paths and witches and things falling from the trees. They told us that in their forest, back home, where they were born there are colourful birds and snakes and dangerous things. They said it should get dark and owls should hoot and we could definitely use our torches and build a fire and sleep in the forest at night.Then we took what we know about forests; about all the myths and legends and characters, and the animals and the getting lost and finding your way, and the running around wildly and kicking up leaves and the climbing and swinging from trees, and we made ‘The Forest’.It’s a little bit of everything we know about forests.