A DANCE group and a theatre company in Oxfordshire have won more than £173,400 from Southern Arts to bring different kinds of entertainment to the county.

Anjali, a pioneering dance company based at The Mill Arts Centre in Banbury, is celebrating after picking up £94,260 for a project called Moving On Up. It aims to help adults and young people with learning difficulties to demonstrate their dance potential to the world.

And Aurelian Koch and Lucy O'Rorke, who run the Bouge-de-la international touring theatre company from Oxford, have been given a grant of £79,229 for their project Opening Doors.

Coincidentally, The two companies are working together on an outdoor show with special needs group Scene Shifters, in Chipping Norton, which will be performing at the town's hospital fete in June.

Bouge-de-la which has an office at the Pegasus Theatre in Magdalen Road, east Oxford, and rehearses Lawn Upton Middle School, Littlemore, will be putting on a trilogy of shows based on the theme of evolution in an Oxford park for the next three years. The company, which was set up in 1993, aims to attract and inspire new audiences who do not normally go to the theatre.

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