The North Sea is changing from green to grey to washed-out blue and rain is pouring down. Eight people are wading into the water with their heads held high. Their arms are raised and slapping the surface, their bodies are being pulled from side to side. They are not waving, nor are they drowning, but dancing. These are performers from the Newcastle-based Company of Others, led by director Nadia Iftkhar – she is also in the water – rehearsing for a series of performances of Grief Floats that will take place on the sand and in the sea at King Edward’s Bay, Tynemouth.

“Grief Floats” is a project that began during lockdown, when Iftkhar felt surrounded by grief for those who had died from Covid, but also “grief at feeling like her sense of humanity was fading” when it seemed to her that certain lives were being prioritized over others. She remembers calling the company’s sound designer and saying, “I want to do a show about grief, and I think it needs to be set in the sea.”

Why the sea? Because the project’s deepest roots go back further than 2020. Iftkhar, now 42, had her first miscarriage at 21. “I’ve had many more since then,” she says. It was a loss she didn’t know how to deal with, but she read that creating a ritual could help. For her, that meant coming to this bay every year. “I go there on a certain day and spend some time with my grief, being there and learning what it’s like this year.”

The theme was expanded because the sea is a place where many people have lost their lives in the past and present, whether on slave ships or small boats. The dancers brought their own experiences of grief – including those of their ancestors – and there is a section of the piece where they stand on the shore and perform rituals that are shaped by their different cultural backgrounds. Researching these rituals around the world made Iftkhar feel “there is something wrong with grief in this country,” she says. “There is so much silence about grief.”

Iftkhar’s work is often grim and chaotic, she says, but this time she just wanted it to be beautiful. Some of the shows take place at sunrise, with the sun framed by the cliffs and the atmospheric ruins of Tynemouth Priory above. The show will go ahead whatever the weather, as long as it’s safe (a lifeguard and paramedic will always be on site). Of course, the North Sea is cold and there are no wetsuits. I watch them step into the water in rehearsal and they don’t even flinch. Dancing in the elements is unpredictable, uncontrollable, the sand literally moving beneath their feet. “When you see a dancer go under (underwater) and try to get back up, that’s really what’s happening,” says Iftkhar.

Also unpredictable is who else might be on the beach. The audience with tickets have headphones to listen to the soundtrack, but anyone who walks by can watch. During the rehearsal, there are screaming swimmers, a soccer game, a few friends deciding where to put their picnic blanket. And that’s what grief is like, Iftkhar points out: Life goes on around you without you noticing.

Iftkhar grew up nearby in Walker, the deprived Newcastle area where Company of Others is based. She was bullied at school as the only person of colour – her father is Kashmiri – but when the neighbours who looked after her took her to disco dance classes at the local community centre, she found something there that “felt like a really safe place for me, in a way that I had never noticed at school”. Dance gave her a sense of belonging and soon she was “hooked”. Iftkhar left school at 16 with nothing to hold her own, but eventually found her way into dance training and then community dance, working with leading dance teachers Tamara McLorg, Royston Maldoom and Janice Parker.

In 2016, she founded Company of Others to create a safe space for people who, like her, have been marginalized throughout their lives, whether because of race, class, disability or other reasons. Performances like Grief Floats are just a small part of what Company of Others does. It hosts a range of community groups for young people, over-60s, women of color, and refugees and asylum seekers, as well as community gatherings with shared performances and meals. All free of charge. The company has now been granted “sanctuary status” under the City of Sanctuary program.

Iftkhar works with people facing challenges and crises and wants to give them the same sense of safety she learned through dance, which is based on community and caring. Grief Floats is an offering to her artists and audiences, “knowing that many of us grieve in different ways. A way for us to deal with the grief, to get to know it and take it with us.” How does Iftkhar feel after making a show for public performance that emerges from a very personal grief? “It feels like I’m less alone.”

• Grief Floats takes place from 28 August to 1 September in King Edward’s Bay, North Tyneside.