Freefall Dance Company 21st Anniversary

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Fri 10 Nov 2023 - Mon 04 Mar 2024

Audiences and visitors to Birmingham Hippodrome can discover more about one of Birmingham’s gems – Freefall Dance Company which this year celebrates its 21st anniversary.

The company will be showcasing a new work Freefalling for 21 Years – ‘Still Life’ at the Freefall Café at the Patrick Studio in the Hippodrome on November 14-16. The piece is inspired by former BRB artistic director David Bintley’s hugely popular ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café – which also inspired an early BRB outreach project that in turn led to the formation of Freeform itself more than two decades ago.

Visitors to the theatre can also see the Freefall 21st Anniversary Exhibition of photographs, films and testimonies which opens on November 10 until March 2024.



Freefall features ten dancers with learning disabilities alongside BRB staff, freelance artists, senior teachers and teaching assistants. The company was formed in 2002 following a series of BRB learning and participatory projects in partnership with Fox Hollies Special School in Moseley.

Freefall’s artistic director and co-founder Lee Fisher was then a BRB soloist who helped facilitate the projects and realised the young people had massive untapped potential. “Fox Hollies was my first experience of a special school and I loved it,” he recalls. “I was blown away by this aesthetic and this joy for dance, the immediacy I was getting because these young people were in front of me - and they were beautiful and stunning.”

After one successful project, Café Atlantic, the decision was made to create a permanent company. “Café Atlantic sparked the idea of how we could collaborate further with the view of creating more opportunity and provision,” says Lee. “We were really excited by the idea of what platform we could create to show more of it, to experiment, to introduce ballet a bit more than we’d had the chance in other creative productions.”

The timing was also perfect for Fox Hollies, who together with neighbouring Queensbridge School, was then applying for specialist status as a performing arts school. “With BRB as our professional partner we became the first special school in the country to be given performing arts status in our own right,” says Fox Hollies deputy head teacher Teresa Fadden, who was part of the team behind the creation of Freefall.

Freefall has now expanded to ten dancers, including four founder members. And over the past two decades the company has built relationships with 19 schools, 3 Universities and worked directly with hundreds of young people.

For Teresa, the dancers gain in numerous ways. “From the day Freefall was set in motion it had the ability to offer those young adults an opportunity to have a social group with a purpose and maintain their lifestyle and their health. They meet on a Monday evening and that is their hook - they will be meeting with their friends and there is always a performance in the pipeline so that is their purpose.”

And she says audiences will be impressed with their work. “I never cease to be amazed at the pieces that Lee creates and supports, and I watch those young adults with severe learning disabilities able to know exactly what they are doing. They stand in those wings, ready to come on, knowing who should be doing what and when and keeping their concentration for long periods of time. They are very comfortable around the Hippodrome, it’s their second home and they own the stage when they go on.”

And Lee adds: “I think there’s a powerful sense of identifying as a dancer, a personal and also collective sense of identity. They feel part of Freefall. They’ve also got real pride in building their technique and developing their mastery. We make it quite autonomous in terms of the creation so they have choice and control over what they are doing. And we have been very blessed to work with great people in lovely places so there are some real opportunities.”

Over the past 21 years, Freefall’s impact has been massive. Through performances, online films, workshops and leading education projects, its members have demonstrated not only their love of dancing but also their talent.



This November’s performances feature the current Freefall dancers alongside pupils from Fox Hollies School, Uffculme School in Moseley and Hazel Oak Sixth Form in Shirley as well as members of All Saints Youth Group in Kings Heath and adults from Reddi Support in Redditch.

And at each of these centres current Freefall dancers have helped facilitate the performances and inspire the performers.

Teresa explains: “Our Freefall dancers at Fox Hollies are two brothers, and their nephew is in the school and he is one of the dancers in our group so this is a good way to identify talent and draw it through.”

In all, 60 dancers, aged from 14, will take to the stage in a work set to new music created by Freefall’s pianist and composer Richard Syner.

Lee promises audiences are in for a treat. “I want them to come away buzzing and energized having had a lovely, wonderful, interesting, aesthetically pleasing evening. It will be a great evening in the theatre.”

And Teresa hopes their work will inspire people who see the shows and visit the exhibition. “I would say to anybody who comes into contact with the anniversary events ‘open your mind and look at what a young person with a learning disability can do. Judge them as they should be judged by the quality of what they do not by their disability.’ Freefall is a gem in that it gives a small number of young people with a learning disability that opportunity to enrich their lives – and also the lives of others.”

Freefalling for 21 Years – ‘Still Life’ at the Freefall Café is at Birmingham Hippodrome’s Patrick Studio on November 14-16, see here for tickets. The Freefall 21st Anniversary Exhibition is on display around the Hippodrome and is free to visit between November 10 and March 4.

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