Here’s a lovely blog about the wonderful idea of sychnronised swimming on land was formed! Don’t worked to catch Yorkshire Life Aquatic in Lancaster’s Market Square at 1:00pm and at Morecambe’s Midland hotel at 5:30pm.
Yorkshire Life Aquatic’s founders are Zoe Parker and Lucy Meredith who first came together in 2013 after discovering that they both had a love of Synchronised Swimming and Esther Williams.
Lucy is an ex competitive synchronized swimmer and got involved in a performance project called Northern Big Board. This gave her a taste for synchronized swimming. However, finding local pools suitable for synchronized swimming was tricky. So Lucy started thinking ways to make synchronized swimming more accessible and how she might combine it with her theatre making skills.
Meanwhile, choreographer Zoe Parker visited an amazing pool in Leeds called Bramley Baths. Here she saw an underwater photography exhibition ‘Submerged” by artist Lizzie Coombes. In the exhibition, there were a number of pictures of women dressed in vintage swimming hats and Zoe loved the idea of mixing water and art. Zoe proposed creating a dance performance in and around water and the idea of ‘dryland’ synchronized swimming evolved.
At this time, Lucy wrote a blog about her interest in creating performance work using dry land synchronized swimming, and Zoe read this. When they discovered their shared interest, they decided to collaborate. The rest, you could say, is history!
What do you enjoy most about performing?
“Dancing with the mermaids is brilliant. The music is so much fun! We love the ridiculousness of swimming on land – and being together makes us feel really happy. Mostly, it’s the audiences that make performing so special.”
