Please enjoy a poignant birthday message from our Artistic Director, Kimberley Cooper.

Happy 36th Birthday DJD! Forgive me for being extra sentimental today. Sometime shortly after we moved in to the DJD Dance Centre, someone asked me to write something for something, I can’t remember what… I imagined I was the building and wrote this and I don’t think it ever got used, so here it is for you on your day. I hope everyone has a dance for you in their houses today. I can’t wait until (y)our house feels like this again.

They built me with purpose, brick by brick, concrete and wood, wire and pipe.
I felt special, unique, with a twist and a lot of glass.
I wondered what I was for.

I didn’t sit empty for long,
In fact, they came in before I was finished.
They came in droves.
They came to dance.

I am home to a unique group of people, they don’t just walk and sit, in fact those things are rare inside of me.

I am filled with music,
And movement.

Little ones,
Big ones,
Some learning to tell their right foot from their left
Some who do things that are so spectacular they would take my breath away
if I had breath,
I feel like I do because that is something the people in here do a lot, breathe, more than most.

My floors are soft, I support them when they throw themselves down, and up.
Many of my rooms are doubled, so two of my side by side spaces can have completely different dances happening at the same time both with their own feeling and sound, although I can’t stop the energy from leaking through the walls, I wouldn’t want to, they wouldn’t want me to.

Sometimes when they arrive, they seem broken.
Then they dance, and they change.
They leave smiling and come earlier next time.

I have this extra special place, where the extraordinary ones dance, sometimes they have live music and special lights. They work so hard and then the seats fill up with people who sit, and sometimes when they watch, the way they breathe changes, sometimes they gasp, or laugh, or cry, and then they clap their hands together.

There are many audiences here, the birds, the sky, the people walking by and looking in my massive windows.

I may seem like I am just sitting here but I feel like I am vibrating, laughing all the time with these bodies that are finding joy within my walls, luckily they built me with a strong structure, because sometimes I feel like I could lift off and fly away, with all of energy of this magical feeling of all of these people and this thing they call “the spirit of jazz”

Kimberley Cooper
DJD Artistic Director