THE extraordinary Low Ham Mosaic is to be the inspiration for a new dance film featuring Taunton Youth Dance Company.
The mosaic, now displayed in the Museum of Somerset, is the earliest piece of narrative art in Britain, and tells the tragic love story of Aeneas and Dido as written by the Roman poet Virgil.
It was found in a remote field at Low Ham, near Langport, in 1945 and was brought to light by a series of accidents.
In 1938, Low Ham farmer Herbert Cook discovered a fragment of tile while burying a sheep found lying in a field.
He realised that the fragment was not like other tiles then in use and that it had an intriguing combed pattern on one surface.
He took it to the County Museum in Taunton where it was identified as part of a box flue tile from a Roman central heating system.
In 1945, Lionel Walrond, a 17-year-old who lived nearby at Pitney, saw a reference to the tile in an archaeological journal and asked the Cook family if he could undertake a small excavation.
Further excavation in 1946–7 revealed the entire mosaic, together with other remains from a large courtyard villa.
Now the mosaic’s remarkable story will be brought to life by students from all over Somerset.
Taunton Youth Dance Company. Photo: Clayton Jane
As part of the project, Taunton Youth Dance Company will be visiting the Museum of Somerset to find out more about the mosaic, and the love story it depicts.
Filmed by Katherine Edwardes and choreographed by professional dance artist and TYDC Company Director Jenny Grant, the film will use the medium of dance to interpret the mosaic’s stories and to share them with a wider audience.
The dance film will offer students aged between 15 and 25 the opportunity to create a professional dance film, to use a historical stimulus as the basis for choreography and to film on location, including at Low Ham.
Filming will begin in January 2017 and the film will premier at the end of March.
To find out more about the project or to get involved in TYDC, e-mail info@tacchhi- morris.com.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here