Gary Clark Company & Eldon Street HSHAZ

The Gary Clarke Company - a professional dance theatre company led by renowned Grimethorpe-based choreographer Gary Clarke - worked with the HSHAZ to deliver a series of trail performances around Eldon Street connected to their touring performance WASTELAND (the trilling sequel to their highly-acclaimed COAL). The show reflects on the history of the South Yorkshire coalfields through and following the miners strike and the collapse of the industry in the 1980s, and subsequent cultural phenomena such as rave that emerged after the loss of the industry. The trails were designed to take that performance out of the theatre and onto the High Street, reaching audiences who wouldn’t otherwise engage and animating the town centre, ahead of two sell-out shows at Barnsley Civic.

The trails included live performances in multiple locations on and around Eldon Street and the Glassworks Square by the Gary Clarke dancers, the WASTELAND Pit Men choir and Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band.

Following on from the success of the WASTELAND trails, Gary worked with the HSHAZ team and photographer James Mulkeen to create a series of striking images in which dancers from the company responded to the architecture of Eldon Street through dance and movement. This was a way of reframing and refocusing attention on the architecture of the HSHAZ area and connecting into the long history of performance on the street that has spanned more than 100 years. The photographs were showcased in an exhibition at Experience Barnsley museum in the Town Hall with an accompanying film which opened at the start of April 2023 and ran until the end of May 2024.

Empire Palace of Varieties

Gary Clarke used the amazing stories of 62 Eldon Street as the inspiration for an exciting new performance piece ‘Empire Palace of Varieties’. This was funded by the South Yorkshire Combined Mayoral Authority as part of the Shared Prosperity funding, and was premiered at the Parkway Cinema over two days in September 2023. The performance explored the different threads of the site’s story – including Benjamin Walker’s fight to save his theatre, Miss Juliette’s performing sealions and the Empire Theatre fire – through movement and dance, with a bespoke soundtrack and film backdrop. The response to the performance was incredible and at times very emotional. An amazing way to celebrate this hugely important but previously unknown piece of Barnsley’s history. Read our blog about 62 Eldon Street