The Spokes

Spokes Social Ride

thespokes — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:18:36 +0000

Takes place on the third Wednesday of every month. This Wednesday we are meeting at 6pm at Sandbar for a fortifying pint followed by a leisurely ride to Didsbury, where we’ll stop for some refreshment before heading to the cinema to see “The Iron Lady”. Cycling to the cinema?! Apt we think considering Maggie’s views on transportation after a certain age. If buses are for failures, bikes are for dancers we say. All genders welcome. Tell all your friends!!

we recruit! we recruit!

thespokes — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:18:45 +0000

hey spokelings!
now is your chance to have some spokey fun for yourselves, oh yeah…
we are having an open session for potential newbies to come and have a go on our bikes, have a chat and a biscuit, meet some nice women, and do some general arseing around
so if you ever wanted to DANCE on your BIKE! Come along!
likewise if you’ve seen the spokes and can’t quite believe we’re real and not some hallucinogen-inspired mirage, come also!
Sunday 11th September at 2.30pm, at the tennis courts in Longford Park, Chorlton.
I’m sure you’ll be able to spot us…
REMEMBER! no previous experience in anything to do with bikes or dancing is required!!
Caz x

The Spokes have a ‘Worliday’

thespokes — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:40:37 +0000

So we had a relaxing get together on Sunday, we haven’t seen each other in a while so it was nice just to catch up. Only a few Spokes were present however, we had a VERY productive brain storm for our new routine. As well as being very excited, we are quietly confident that it will be our best routine yet! We had lots of ideas, some sensible and some not so sensible. Some of our ideas were incredibly ambitious but potentially amazing if we manage to pull them off. For now, let’s just say we think we might even be able to convert a very famous celebrity car addict to the joys of cycling….. CCxx
PS Kat has a new nickname, ‘Mega-spoke’ – those of you who know her, or who have seen our performances, will understand why!

Summertime

thespokes — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:03:13 +0000

It’s been eerily quiet here on our blog but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy Spokes. After a hectic few months doing lots of performances we are now spending the summer behind the scenes being creative and gathering ideas for our next routine. If you want to get involved, we are having an Open Bike Play session on Sunday 14th August at 2pm in Chorlton. Come down and have a go on our little green bikes. Perhaps you will love it so much that you will want to become a Spoke too!

New Show!

thespokes — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 20:06:16 +0000

Greetings Spokes fans. We’ve been in training with our new director for quite a few months now and the finished product is almost ready to be released into the public realm. The new show tells the story of the evolution of the bicycle. Join us on this journey through bicycle utopia, fighting off the bike devil, and (hopefully) finding a happy ending.

We’ve secured some brilliant performances supporting causes we’re all big fans off. First up is International Women’s day. This is a very exciting event to be a part of as it’s celebrating 100 years since the first International Women’s day. Manchester , being the UK birth place of Women’s Suffrage, will be hosting a great variety of events for you to get involved in. See here for details: http://www.manchester.gov.uk/iwd
Bicycles played a very important role in the emancipation of women and are still seen by many of us as the most liberating aspects of our lives. We’re headlining the events at the town hall and after our show will be the release of 100 balloons to celebrate the anniversary.
Sunday 6th March, Manchester Town Hall . Events start at 12, Spokes are on at 3:30.

Next up is a trip to Manchester ’s greatest park: Plattfields. A special event is combing the month long celebrations of International Women’s Day with Holi – the Asian festival of colour. Well, we like to be colourful, we like community events, we support women, and we love Plattfields, so this is a good combination of things. Times are yet to be announced but head on down to the park on Sunday 20th and prepare to get covered in colourful paint, as well as enjoy the bike dancing of course!
For more info you can contact the fabulous Anna PowWow, Spokes Numero Uno fan and Ms Plattfields herself on anna@powwow-ecoarts.org.uk

Finally, and the biggy, is Chorlton’s Big Green Festival. Where the unofficial theme is bicycles, and the unofficial unofficial theme is The Spokes. We’re up to all sorts here. Not only will we be performing the new show but you’re all going to be treated to a very special appearance of the UK’s only other bicycle dance troupe! Yes, there is more than one of us! The amazing Les Velo Bici from Bristol are making the journey up to Manchester . Last year The Spokes travelled to Bristol for the UK ’s first ever bicycle dance off. Now it’s round two on our home turf. So come on out and show your support. We’re going to need it, these girls have got some sick tricks up their stylish sleeves!
Chorlton’s Big Green festival is an entire day of fun, entertainment, workshops, stalls and all things eco. St Clement’s Church, Chorlton, Saturday 16th April.
See here for more details: http://greenchorlton.org.uk/

The Spokes – The Show!!

thespokes — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:50:05 +0000

A big change is happening within the way The Spokes approach new routines!

Our usual approach tends to involve pulling routines together within weeks then throwing them out onto the unsuspecting public without any real concept of what it looks like. We enjoy this approach, it’s what the Spokes are: random, spontaneous, chaotic, a little weird.

But now we’re testing a more professional idea…we have a director! Yes yes! Our acrobalance instructing has morphed into a new role and will be taking us through the whole process from inception, writing, choreographing, directing, marketing and then performing! These are very exciting times. We’ve got a deadline of four months to launch our first proper Show! That’s right, not just a random routine, but a professional Show! We can almost hear the cheers of the Glastonbury audiences already!

The Show will be ready for International Women’s week (if we can secure funding) and Chorlton Green Festival (of which we are apparently the unofficial theme!). After this, we will be able to role it out all year to whoever is willing to book us. Get your orders in there now!

Last night was the first rehearsal under our director’s influence. Activities included:
Playing games like stuck in the mud, but on bikes.
Demostrating our current collection of tricks with fantastic names like the Shoulder Dislocator, spin cycle and (everyone’s favourite) the Iron Fanny!
Drawing our idea bicycles, complete with essential features such as an aquariam on the handlebars (please look out for any stray fish in bike lanes)
Sharing stories as a response to three questions:
1. What is your earliest bicycle memory and how old were you?
2. Where is the most exotic place you’ve ridden a bike?
3. What does being in the Spokes mean to you?

It was really interesting to get to know eachother’s cycling history and experiences. Between us, we’ve riden bikes all over Europe, America, China, Guana and Tanzinia! Our first bike memories range from a 12 year old using a bike as the only way to get around in Conneticut, to a 1 year old in the basket of a bike in Jamaca!

The Spokes mean a lot to all of us: fun, friendship, empowerment, a postivie female image, making a difference, being a visible part of a community, knowing that bicycles and dancing make sense, and mostly it means we’re all a little weird!

We’re very intrigued to see how our director is going to turn all this into ideas for a new routine!

The future is very exciting, the future is GREEN (and black)!

Hallowe’en Spooking

thespokes — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 11:10:06 +0000

For one weekend only, The SpooooOOOks took their show to the streets of Manchester to communicate the HORROR of driving…through the medium of dance!

The routine was thrown together in just a few weeks and pokes fun in the fear culture surrounding misconceptions of cycling. Remember kids, you’d better not ride a bike, because you will get killed and you will become a zombie and (worse still) you will have to dance to Michael Jackson for the rest of your undead life (the horror!)

Car drivers are not safe either (perhaps they should have been wearing driving helmets?) Driving seriously harms you and those around you, so you too shall die and become a zombie!

Thankfully, evolution is here to save us. Watch as the undead drivers discover a new contraption, will only two wheels, and no motor. But how does it work? Can we form our own? Out of zombie bodies and pyrotechnics? Watch the video to find out!

View the Video here!

The SPOOKS!

thespokes — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 11:58:10 +0000

Word on the street is a new group have formed called THE SPOOKS! They aim to communicate the horror of driving…through the medium of dance!

Could be worth checking out:
Friday 29th, 6pm, outside Manchester Central Library
Saturday 30th, sometime from 2-5pm, Moat Park, Withington.

The Spokes in Copenhagen

thespokes — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 08:56:04 +0000

Two of The Spokes ventured to Copenhagen Cycling Capital to do some research on bicycle culture. We learnt a lot about how to encourage and normalise cycling, and gained a vision of life where 55% of adults commute by bicycle. It was a life changing and very inspiring experience.

You can read Becca’s blog about our trip here
Kat’s photos and a small review can be found here

And, perhaps most excitingly, we made it onto the infamous Copenhagen Cycle Chic blog, check out our feature here!

Here is Becca as cyclist number 10,030 on just this side of this one road, TODAY! Next to the counter is free air for bicycles! We LOVE Copenhagen!

The Spokes go to Bristol!

thespokes — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 13:25:02 +0000

When it comes to cycle culture, Bristol is one of the finer cities in our country. They’ve won the title of the UK’s first “cycling city” and with this came some finances to promote cycling. Welcome to the stage: “Bristol Cycle Festival”, a month of cycling related joy!

The Spokes traveled down and spread our love of bicycle dancing to our West-Country friends. On Saturday we performed two city centre shows in glorious sunshine to a great variety of crowds. We witnessed pedal-powered stages, a bicycle carousal and met some brilliant people.

Performance Photos

On Sunday we joined the UK’s only bicycle carnival. Instead of your usual parades powered by trucks, this was a gathering of floats on bicycles. Never have we seen such creativity on two wheels. The Spokes joined the parade through Birstol on our newly decorated bikes.

Carnival Photos

After the carnival brought one of the most amazing moments of our bicycle dancer careers. For years The Spokes have been Europe’s only bicycle dancers, but that is no longer the case. Welcome to the scene, Les Velobici, Bristol’s bicycle dancers! Over the past few months we’ve been in contact and organized a special performance for the Festival. We believe this to be the world’s first Bicycle Dance Off! To the sounds of Run DMC (what else?) we strutted our stuff, pulled of our sick tricks, and entertained a surprisingly huge crowd!

We hope this to be the start of many new things. A recognized and growing bicycle culture in a British City, a bicycle festival with the support of all the right authorities, the building of a national cycle community, and the growth of bicycle dancing!