This summer, Greenwich Dance will be celebrating love in all its forms with From Greenwich with Love a new work by award-winning choreographer and Rendez-Vous dance artistic director Mathieu Geffré.
From Greenwich with Love will include a series of love duets based on real Greenwich based love stories told by the community and performed by six amazing professional dancers.
Meet Fern, one of the cast members, where she shares all things love and life with us here at Greenwich Dance.
From Fern with Love
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive – Dalai Lama
What does love mean to you?
Love means to me a real strong care. Love is my family, love is my partner, love is my friends.
What’s your favourite love song?
Oh you make loving fun – Fleetwood Mac
What/Who was your first love?
The Spice Girls!
Dog or Cat person?
Dog
When did you encounter dance as a practice? Was it love at first sight?
Probably when I started going into intense training when I was 15… it was definitely love at first sight but the love for it always changes the love I had for it at 15 is different than the love I have for it now at 25.
How different was your life one year ago?
My life was different in many aspects – me and my partner had moved back in to my parents’ house for the lockdown, spent many months out of a big city and surrounded by more nature, walks, family and time. I think especially at this time last year I was feeling a lot more lost and in confusion at where we were with the pandemic in terms of how to move forward with my career, financial stability and finding a purpose for myself. I feel I now have more of an understanding with this, things are slowly coming back around and I have goals and a direction that I want to take with dance and outside of dance. I think my perspective has changed in the past year massively, with what is important to me, where I really want to put my energy, and which relationships I hold close to me. I think after having a such a huge chunk of time taken away from us it has made me really evaluate what I want to do with my time, who I spend it with and what doing.
Whats the first thing you did when the restrictions lifted that you couldn’t do before?
Had friends over for a BBQ in our garden, nothing crazy just sun, music, couple of beers, good company and lots of laughs.
What does your name mean?
Fern is an English topographic name from the Old English ”fearn”. It refers to someone who lives among ferns.
Do you think once you love someone you will ALWAYS love them, or do you think love can fade?
I don’t know if I have a definite answer to this or if it something I have ever really thought about…. I think it depends what kind of love it has been but I feel like yes love can fade but even if you don’t ‘love’ them anymore there would always a love and fondness for the memories and experiences you had with them.
What’s the last show you binged?
Peaky Blinders!
What’s your Love Language? ( Quality Time, Giving/Receiving gifts, Physical touch, Acts of Service, Words of affirmation)
Quality Time
What memory do you replay the most?
I don’t know if it is the memory I replay the most but it’s a time I think about a lot at around the age of 21 my last year of uni. I really clearly remember a lot about this time and can still now put myself back there, as if sat on the sofa as an outside eye as me now at 25. I look back with great fondness of this time, I think for the first time I’d really found my true friends, friends who I knew would be in my life for a long time. I remember looking around at everything and just thinking we were none stop, go go go all the time, of none stop laughter and spontaneity. I really think we were all at our freest maybe with the feeling of being very independent but of no strong responsibilities financially, work related or life related and feeling a strong sense of freedom and I remember feeling and living like a 21 year old, which I think is something really beautiful as it feels sometimes when we come out into the real world sometimes we’re not really in the present moment – we have a lot of worries which make us live in the future or past, whereas I think then we were really just living day by day.
Share the last photo you took without the context
Whats something you hope never changes?
My Mum’s Sunday dinners!
Catch Fern and the rest of the outstanding cast members perform in From Greenwich with Love on the dates listed here.
