- Who are you and what do you do at Big Weekend?
At Big Weekend we were planning on running part of our 25th Anniversary Urban SINfonie showcase. As part of the programme we'd planned to have Breakin' battles between world class dancers, with international judges flown in from France and New York, delivering workshops and Q and A's to the dance community and the members of the public in Cambridge.
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What is your occupation outside of Big Weekend?
We are a Hip Hop arts organisation based in Cambridge delivering a year round programme of dance, art and access to culture through classes, theatre performances, E-zines, artist development opportunities and events. We work closely with schools, colleges and youth provisions in Cambridge and beyond.
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How has that changed due to Covid-19?
A lot of our work is moving online. We're currently redeveloping all our class programmes and outreach into Participate Digital, a new set of dance workshops to be able to stream from Vimeo and other platforms. We're planning Urban SINfonie as a complete online festival, running on the 18th and 19th July.
Find out more on the Sin Cru website by clicking the image at the bottom of the page.
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How has your life changed due to the current situation? For good and for bad?
Our office team is all working from home and on Vimeo to each other for a set amount of the working day, I imagine it's the same for a lot of people doing administration work right now. We are restructuring all our delivery to be able to work over computers, some parts are more challenging than others. Our dance company is not able to meet up for rehearsals so we have had to put some of our practical work on hold, this means unfortunately we can't work on new choreography for performance, but we're still offering our artists a company class twice a week and an open session in their own home spaces but coordinated over Zoom, so they can get some support and feedback in their training.
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What do you look forward to the most after this?
I think the whole organisation will give a collective sigh of relief when we know we can get back to hands on work, connecting with the community in Arbury and Kings Hedges, where we're based, being able to open up physical classes again, check in with the young people we work with.
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What is your favourite moment or memory from Big Weekend?
'One year we we're performing on one of the stages, it was raining. Jordan, one of our company members, had recently had his hair cut, bleached and then dyed blue for a modelling job, we were wearing our blue and purple SIN Cru t-shirts. We had to make a human bridge between the floor and the stairs to get up on stage without caking our trainers in mud, mud is not a good look on a slippery stage when doing backflips and headspins. Every performance is always accompanied with a hundred 'what if's' when you're the one in charge; 'What if someone slips and hurts themself?', 'What if I slip and hurt myself?', 'What if the drum kit becomes entangled with my long legs mid windmill and my new Adidas Gazelles go flying with the cymbal and kick drum all crashing down on the kids mid dance routine?'. My main concern that day was that Flash Jordan, with the rain and the hair dye, was going to end up with his face the same shade of blue as his t-shirt and we would forever have to call him Smurf Gordon from then on out.' - Lucy Crowe, Director
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How much are you looking forward to Big Weekend 2021?
I'm not from Cambridge, and don't have a massive series of experiences of Big Weekend. This year I was really excited to build with Cambridge City Council and Big Weekend. We have put on events in Cambridge for many years, differing in size and support, but always working with and for the community, so the opportunity to partner with Big Weekend on our delivery was something I was personally really looking forward to. Hopefully we can still build in the future, so i'm massively looking forward to programming some activities at Big Weekend for our 26th Anniversary next year.
Click below to find out more about Sin Cru and their Urban Sinfonie
Click below to see more Behind-the-scenes @ the Big Weekend Interviews
