Celebrating Somerset’s creative & cultural practitioners: Darcy Berkley

Last month I sat down for a one-to-one artist mentoring session with Darcy Berkley, a freelance dance artist who performs, choreographs and teaches in Yeovil, Somerset. I learnt of Darcy’s keen interest in the connection between the arts and improving physical and mental health and wellbeing, and of how passionate she is about dance being accessible to everyone.

Darcy currently teaches various classes at Westlands and is Head of Dance at Bethany Brown’s School of Musical Theatre in Chard. She tells me “I like to go where the wind takes me” having trained in Barcelona and moving abroad four times, it’s clear that she has global ambitions. During our one-to-one Darcy takes me through some of her project ideas “I do have lots of new ideas I want to explore in Yeovil that are on either end of the spectrum from glitz and feathers to Dance for Health.” To get the ball rolling on one of her ideas, she has recently enrolled to study counselling alongside other work.

“I only started dancing as a teenager which was later than most of my peers and I was also injured during training at dance school in Barcelona, leading me to leave my studies, so from this, I am really proud to work in my dream career despite always feeling like I was a step behind where I wanted to be.” Darcy is a local creative who has recently returned to the UK after a career opportunity abroad, and through talking with her, she has what it takes to be a freelancer in the arts and is definitely not ‘a step behind’.

“I think I was born with contemporary in my DNA so I always love choreographing and teaching contemporary dance. I like the freedom of it. Growing up, my main dance training was Somerset Youth Dance Company and it opened me up to how flexible the genre can be - one time playing a real game of Tag on stage as part of a dance. So I’ve always liked showing how it can be so unserious, weird and wonderful and I often teach exercises to Abba and Hannah Montana. I also love dance for health, I am a trained Parkinson’s Dance Science teacher and find the benefits so fascinating, it is such a rewarding class to teach so maybe those two are tied favourites.”

For myself (Anthony Kosky) as a freelancer, the vulnerable nature of where your next work is coming from requires a certain type of mindset and planning, We spoke about her reasons for sticking to being self-employed “I struggle to sit still so being a freelancer means I have more control over changing up my day to day life and I find myself working some very random jobs that I would’ve never been exposed to otherwise.”

This requires learning new skills or keeping on top of current skills and trends to fulfil your creative ideas. Alot of the ideas Darcy spoke to me about have wide audience and artist appeal which I believe is needed with how funding in the arts is currently and of audience demand. “I really love to learn new things and I have no shame in being a completely rubbish beginner at something so if I’m not doing a course, I’m normally trying to learn a new skill. Most recently I have been learning to dance with Hula Hoops and love it. I feel very lucky that the creative industry opens you up to lots of other things too so although dance is my main focus, I am a supporting artist (aka tv extra), I have modelled on the runway for lots of great brands and even recently was paid to be an undercover dance floor filler to keep the party going at an event. I don’t tend to have too much free time for other hobbies, although when ‘New Life’ was open in town you could probably consider shopping there a hobby with the amount of time I spent in there searching for bargains to use as dance costumes.”

We concluded our chat with a discussion on Yeovil and arts opportunities in the area.

“I am always very torn about how I feel towards Yeovil from a dance artist point of view. It’s come far but also lacks opportunities for growth. I’ve grown up in Yeovil but it’s hard to watch the town’s demise and with minimal creative work opportunities, I often worry that there isn’t enough to sustain creative careers here. I often go further afield for performance work opportunities like Cardiff, Bristol, London and even Liverpool & Cheshire. I find it exciting working in new/other places and it’s great to network with lots of new people, but I would love there to be more opportunities on my doorstep for myself and other artists, so I hope to help be part of making that happen somehow.”

This was an important and very real point made by Darcy, and the truth is we need people with ideas and the will to start new projects in order to, as she puts it ‘be part of making that happen’, part of a rebuild or transition to a new era we are now living.

During the first 6 months in this role, I have met a number of artists I believe have the ideas to create grassroots events that grow, and in time build the thriving arts and culture scene that Darcy talks about searching elsewhere for. We need to offer new ideas to audiences and work in different was to adapt to changing times.

“Somerset will always be my home, but I am definitely excited by the big wide world and have always had a desire to live and work in new (and sunny) places. But for now, I think I will keep my feet on the ground… for a little while at least.”