Dance Your Life Away

The story of contemporary community dance in Oxford, and the extraordinary woman who launched it in the 1980s.

Cecilia Macfarlane believes that we are all dancers from the cradle to the grave. More than that, really: she thinks that we dance from our first kick in the womb to our very last blink - and, perhaps, beyond.

At her convent school in Bath, when she declared that she was going to be a dancer, the Head Mistress told Cecilia: 'Go dance your life away!'.

When she came to Oxford as a young mother, she found only ballet was available for children, and started up Oxford Youth Dance for her own son and daughter. Thirty years on, Oxford - a city better known for more prestigious art-forms - has the longest-running and perhaps most vibrant community dance scene in the country.

You can be two or 92, in a wheelchair or able-bodied, a middle-aged office worker or a young man planning a professional career in dance - in Oxford, you really can 'dance your life away'.

Presented and produced by Beaty Rubens.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2016.

Contemporary community dance in Oxford, from the cradle to the grave