X6 collective 1976

The X6 dance collective was formed by a small group of dancers including Ferguson Early

The main reasons for starting it was:

• To give practical help to those dancers and choreographers who were no longer in the protective environment of institutes like The Place

• Finding space that was cheap, warm and large enough to rehearse/create in

• Finding teachers with whom to take class and having a place in which to share and discover new ideas were continual problems for many independent artists

• If new work was to be preformed, the additional problems of finding the dancers, of booking a suitable venue and of getting out advance publicity were even more difficult to solve

The group moved into a well-lit room with a wooden floor in an unused dockland building at Butler’s Wharf

The classes and workshops were open to anyone who wanted to attend and covered a wide range of movement techniques

Performances by X6 were often experimental as a result of their small informal space, varied backgrounds and influences and their overtly political stance

The fact that they were a collective presented a challenge to the dominant conservatoire model that had survived from ballet

They created a non-hierarchical network of independent artists that today is a much more familiar model

While by 1980 many artists had started to loose interest in X6’s ‘turgid politics’ or the lack of finished work there is little doubt that X6 had left an impact on British dance by showing that very different ways of making dance were possible