Alsop sixth form students have had the unique opportunity to participate in figure drawing workshops in collaboration with Liverpool Empire Theatre and the English National Ballet.

The context behind this collaboration was to contextualise the similarities between dynamic drawing and dance. Students worked with visual artist Heidi Wigmore, who led the group in a series of warm up drawing exercises to sketch the figure quickly, and modelled strategies for the students to use to record the figure in motion.

Ms Paula Alker, Head of Art comments: “These exercises took Alsop students out of their comfort zone and encouraged them to freely record the figures form. Therefore, they became more intuitive and expressive with their marks and lines.”

The young people then had the rare opportunity to sit in on the ‘Company Class’ of the English National Ballet. They were able to draw the dancers whilst they warmed up and rehearsed sections of Swan Lake. Students were given an insight in to how hard a dancer’s day is, with vigorous training sessions to maintain fitness as elite athletes. The sixth form artists had to work incomplete silence as any noise could distract the dancers and cause potential injury. The results were exceptional, and the students produced a bank of ‘super-fast’ gestural drawings which recorded the dancer’s relationship to the space around them.

Heidi Wigmore, Visual Artist writes: “The workshop with Alsop students combined the act of drawing and looking. Dancing is thinking with the body and drawing is the closet action to thought.”