Trip the light fantastic is a temporary project that lit up empty windows and dark corners in Archway, north London from January to March 2010. It celebrated a lightness of step and how light can reveal the fantastic.

I worked with over two hundred local people who love to dance. Thirty local businesses and community organisations were involved in the installation of the work, as well as several hundred more in participatory events. The project involved once-in-a-blue-moon dancers to committed dance enthusiasts, from street dancers to jivers, ballroom dancers to belly dancers, young and old.

A series of forty largescale photographs of local people dancing were installed in existing Archway business and office windows. At night the ambient light from within transformed the facades of the buildings into lightbox displays. Six participatory dance events took place in temporary spotlights that transformed forgotten corners near to Archway Tower. They included tango lessons for commuters and a site-specific Butoh performance. The project celebrated the uplifting effects of light, dance and social gathering.

Trip the light fantastic was an Alight commission by AIR (Archway Investigations and Responses) at Byam Shaw School of Art in partnership with the London Borough of Islington funded by Transport for London and Arts Council England.

www.archwayinvestigationsandresponses.org/associatedworks.html