Dance company celebrates 20th anniversary after working on Birmingham 2022 Festival

Sonia, from Wolverhampton, started the Sonia Sabri Company in 2002 and is is one of the leading contemporary South Asian dance and music companies in the UK.

The company presents Kathak dancing – a form of classical Indian dance derived from the Sanskrit word for story – in a contemporary context with influences from urban settings.

Sonia was honoured to be one of only two associate choreographers for Wondrous Stories, the epic show which launched the Birmingham 2022 Festival in Centenary Square.

From March 17-20 the free outdoor performance dazzled audiences with an aerial spectacle including a flying book, bicycles and a large globe, alongside atmospheric digital projections.

The show marked the beginning of the Birmingham 2022 Festival, an ambitious artistic festival throughout the year to celebrate the Commonwealth Games, and is the region's largest ever celebration of creativity.

Sonia said: "I have done a lot of international touring and Britain is at the top of the rankings in championing diversity and inclusivity - like nowhere else I've seen.

"I think the Commonwealth Games will certainly place the region on the international map.

"And I hope we can also really show the vocational routes within dance. Hopefully it can propel the idea of taking a career path which is not necessarily only through the academic route."

Sonia has already had a busy year, preparing for Wondrous Stories and touring the company's first production for children, Same Same ... But Different, which combined Kathak, contemporary and street dance, beat boxing, and physical storytelling.

And later in the year, Sonia is putting on the company's first solely outdoor production, a pop-up ode to a series of Indian miniature paintings from the 12th century - the Mughal Miniatures.

Sonia said: "It's a brilliant project. It's celebrating the deep-rooted cultural and political and human links between the 12th century and the modern day, inspired by Indian miniature paintings.

"These are usually quite small and very intricate, to the point where some of the paintings are painted with eyelashes - the detail is incredible.

"So we're looking at some of the things which they relate to, such as power struggles, politics, human relationships, and celebrating the environment.

"And we're bringing these themes to life. The miniature paintings are actually going to become life-size. And rather than having still images, we're going to bring those still images to live in episodes of dance, live music, theatre, spoken word, rapping.

"They were the Instagram of their time, capturing the current affairs of the day. So we're going to capture the stories of today, what it's like to live in the 21st century, coming out of the pandemic.

"In our show, we're really trying to surprise those answers and broaden people's perceptions of culture and time."

A key part of Sonia's work is reaching out to communities who might otherwise struggle to access arts opportunities and to boost their mental health.

This year the Sonia Sabri Company is launching a Global Music Youth Ensemble in partnership with Celebrating Sanctuary Birmingham, to give young people from migrant communities living in Birmingham the skills to compose and perform music.

Conceived and led by the company’s co-founder, Tabla Maestro and composer Sarvar Sabri, the project will work with young people aged 12-25 who will learn from professional artists, some of whom come from migrant communities themselves.

Participation is free and rehearsals are now taking place on Sundays at the MAC in Birmingham.

Sonia said: "From what we hear, it's one of the first of its kind and we're proud to have thought about this initiative.

"There are all kinds of musical groups but how young people access them is usually through a very conventional method - such as studying violin at school.

"But there's nothing like that for other genres of music, so we're looking at Indian, Arabic, Jewish, Haitian, Nigerian music - musical genres that people probably have never even thought about even heard, genres from where they're from."

The Sonia Sabri Company has also worked with women with physical and mental health issues on a community dance partnership, which saw "dramatic" health benefits.

Sonia launched The Butterfly Project in 2021 in partnership with Sähëlï Hub, a charity dedicated to improving the health of women in south Birmingham.

The project brought dance sessions to women with issues such as anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, and diabetes, who had been told by their GPs to do physical exercise or a creative initiative to benefit their health.

Sonia added: "Over 70 per cent of the women we worked with had dramatically reduced their high blood pressure, their anxiety, their depression, they're off some of their more depressive tablets.

"We now have access to over 2500 women who are GP referrals. A lot of them are in very difficult households or they felt they lost their self-identity because they're at home and they're carers or nursing or just being full time moms or wives - so I think they needed that.

"They needed to feel well, physically, mentally, and emotionally. So we delivered live workshops for them, listening to them, sometimes even just sitting there with a cup of tea.

"So there's a real success story there which hopefully is going to be a national roll-out programme."

While it's an action-packed year for the 20th anniversary of Sonia's company, there's still time for reflection.

"It's gone super quick," Sonia said. "Which is a really good sign, because being in the arts is hard work.

"But despite the challenges and the obstacles we've really enjoyed presenting and touring work, reaching the people that probably would never have been reached if we weren't in the art, so there are so many rewards from doing what we're doing.

"And we're looking forward to another 20 years, if not more. There are challenges around who is going to be the next generation of musicians and artists, we are seeing that the music and dance industries aren't being supported by the government, as much as even just five years ago, and that's detrimental to the survival of the art sector.

"So our company is going to try and at least retain and inspire people who are interested in dance and music and want to take it on as a career or as a significant part of their lives, but also to nurture the next generation.

"The arts crave intelligent, wholesome, considerate people, so the value of the arts has to become greater.

"And we have to also be conscious that through the pandemic, it was quite significant in realising that if we didn't have music, or entertainment through digital means, then how would we have got through this?

"From a big company point of view, we transferred everything online. We've never been as busy as we were during the pandemic - 3.7 million people actually engaged with our work.

"That's a phenomenal, phenomenal reach, because we would never have done that otherwise.

"But the fact is that if we didn't have music or dance and a way to express ourselves through the arts, people would go insane."