dance magazine – dance art journal

EQ DANCE CO.’s Sanctuary at Longfield Hall | Review & Interview with Artistic Director David West

Words by Jodie Nunn.

Paved with poeticism, poignancy, and playfulness, EQ DANCE CO. offers a conversant take on the quest for physical, mental, and spiritual Sanctuary, emblazoned with a profound nuance that glistens like golden flecks in a woven tapestry of everyday existence.

Having previously reviewed an excerpt of this piece as part of Resolution Festival at The Place (London) in May this year, I was delighted to receive an invitation to attend EQ DANCE CO.’s final week of rehearsals to review this performance in its entirety. EQ DANCE CO. creates dance works centred around mental health and the human experience, with Friday 30th September 2022 marking the premiere of the company’s first full-length piece, Sanctuary.

At the helm of the project, Artistic Director David West leads the cast of four in this spiritual search for security, emblazoned with a profound nuance that glistens like golden flecks in a woven tapestry of everyday existence. With a spiralling acceleration, the dancers circumvolute the physical, mental, and spiritual manifestations of sanctuary, navigating the ritual of repetitive routine, the struggle for connection and companionship, and the sabotage of self-image.

Sanctuary opens with West’s character: a statuesque representation of physical sanctuary. A whirring soundscape dissonantly lingers in the air, its cyclical, sinister strings pushed forward by a plucking undertow. The cyclical rhythms in the accompaniment are reflected in West’s movement, depicting the relentless rigmarole of routine, each time becoming more crazed, flailing, and uncontrollable, as if been manipulated by an external entity. West demonstrates a grounded lightness as he soars through the space, the accompaniment shifting to support the atmospheric luminescence of his circling. The juxtaposition of violent frustration and accepted quietude is well controlled by West, particularly prominent in moments aided by staging, draped in what appears to be a child’s blanket, or later donning a pastel pink cape, matching that of his childhood toy bunny.

Pagan Hunt and Ellie Trow are in constant communication. The vivacious warmth of the classical guitar, melodically intricate, softens the spearing projection of the piece. A platonic soulfulness is outstretched via the exchange of origami hairgrips, worn and pinched, the theme of connection and companionship clear. The playful and meandering exploration is sliced by the ruin of the home-base tent, designed by Loe D’Arcy, and crash of thunder and subsequent rainfall, the demolition of their shared sanctuary. Trow exhibits pain, struggle, and desperation, showcased in breadth and breath, her body opening and closing in vast concaving and convexing movements, initiated from torso, expanding to extremities. Hunt on the other hand sweeps with a frantic, hurried anxiety, pinpointed in a morass of dynamic intention. Hunt and Trow tentatively mirror one another in a trance-like state as they suspend in a vaporous, transcendent promenade. As the score erupts with verve, so does the pair, boasting wide smiles and vast, hovering floor sequences. The duo navigates the light and shade of searching for sanctuary in community with honesty and integrity.

Mental manifestations of sanctuary and the omnipresent shadow of self-image are expertly confronted by Alys Davies. The ominous undercurrents present in West’s opening solo rear once again, now refracted in Davies movement, entangled in a chaos of cloth and conceit. Davies masterfully shifts her weight both actively and passively across the space with unfathomable ease, liquifying durationally in the face of tension. Davies darts with an accelerating charge, ravaging up the space, blind to her surroundings, a simple pink cloth tied across her temples. Her solo is poignant, the perfect vessel for which to carry the audience through to the final quarter.

Sanctuary’s finale spirals with liquid warmth. For the first time, all four characters interact, weaving in and amongst one another, the simple sheeted set, and the central, golden strand of sanctuary. Appliquéd with a playful poeticism, the company embroider a relatable tale with nuance and poignancy.

I spoke to West after the performance, dissecting the notion of sanctuary, his approach within the studio, and his hopes for the reception of this piece.

Q: Having cultured the notion of sanctuary, initially conceived from shared experiences of the pandemic, do you think your understanding or even experience of sanctuary has changed as a result of creating this piece together?

West: “I would say it’s definitely developed from an origin point and continues to do so even now after its debut. I think our sense of sanctuary is always going to be challenged at some point of our lives, and for potentially various lengths of time, be it physically, for example your health or living situation can change overnight, or mentally, you can deal with a couple of problems, but what about when it comes in waves, then oceans, how do you stem the tides? Within this work we look particularly at self-image, crippling indecision, frozen by external pressures, and learning to look inward to find strength. Spiritually, we look to finding sanctuary in others, be it friends or family; this expands into community and what constitutes as that, understanding the individuals within it and understanding that not everyone will necessarily get along. I think we can all agree that we all want security, sanctuary. I believe that this is an important place to practice empathy. With all that said, to answer the question, the context of sanctuary is always shifting, changing in us and around us, therefore my experience of it is in constant flux.”

Q: What was the process of creating this piece, and did you understanding of sanctuary influence your approach within the studio?

West: “When we took on our cast after an online audition process last year, my collaborator Josh Baker-Mendoza (the writer for this project, helping to flesh out the narrative, storytelling element of the show) and I led with effectively interview style questions, giving our cast some artistic license, sharing their thoughts on what sanctuary meant to them. Slowly but surely, we started to see a framework appear, which led to the anthology of the individual characters and their stories, where the main pillars of sanctuary appeared, as a physical, mental, and spiritual thing. This would lead to a RnD structure, gaining understanding of each character; working with the artists, we created first drafts, and when developing the final section, we worked on how each character would co-exist in the space together, and to figure out what was their shared goal was, what was the shared form of sanctuary.

Most recently, leading up to the debut, we spent the last month reworking and redefining the individual characters. We took the time to define what really mattered to these characters, to see them as living, breathing people; what would they care about in certain moments? This was the driving force in the final stages of production. What was also the main driving force leading us to where we are now was the kids. We originally aimed at 12+ years, but we were encouraged by Creative Scotland, following our last RnD period, to aim for a younger audience. Working with schools in Camberwell, London, performing and conducting workshops, made the project so much more worth it. Even with this younger age group, kids are starting to discover what their sanctuaries are.”

Q: What do you hope audiences take away from this performance?

West: “Ultimately, we want people to be able to relate to the characters in a real way, we are a mental health dance company after all. We want to make people laugh, cry, even feel frustrated, it’s all important. The experience we want to provide is an authentic one. We aim to provide people a chance to see themselves on stage, so they can process some of their trouble from an outside perspective looking in, to see it before them, rather than existing in thoughts running around inside their heads. Dance is great way, and especially with us being a dance theatre company, to show these thoughts and manifest them physically to the highest standard, and with honesty.”

For future performances and workshop opportunities, you can find EQ DANCE CO. over on Instagram.

“Experience, aliveness tell us that time isn’t linear” | Interview with SERAFINE1369

Words by Stella Rousham.

Time is an essential organising principle. It determines when we sleep, wake, work and play. Whilst the mechanisms of time are often taken for granted, SERAFINE1369’s (Jamila-Johnson Small) latest multi-part installation, We can no longer deny ourselves, seeks to rupture the illusionary coherence of linear time.

Through sound, poetry, video, live performance and sculptural objects, We can no longer deny ourselves, transforms the River Rooms at Somerset House, into an ‘exploded clock’, inviting audiences to reflect on the fragmented components that construct our perception of “reality” in time. Identifying as a ‘body-based artist’, I spoke to SERAFINE1369 on how their training in dance has influenced their on-going interest in how spaces affect bodies and bodily sensibility, capable of conjuring feelings of welcoming or hostility; holding or rejection.

SR: What can audiences expect when they visit, We can no longer deny ourselves?

SF-1369: Some visually subtle interventions in the dilapidated rooms of a grand old house. A spatialised soundtrack that feels like many voices, dialoguing and harmonising, chattering and shifting, something like weather, rebalancing as you move. A sense of the presence of invisible forces, something like haunting. Your attention being drawn to the shifts in light brought by the weather, and the way this demarcates space differently each time. Many archways that frame and reframe the elements and bodies in each space as you move. If you are open to tuning to it, an energetic shift and an opening up of space. Between 12 and 3 you will encounter a performer: either Alexandrina Hemsley, Steph McMann, Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome or myself.

SR: Can you tell us a little bit about your background as an artist? I like how you identify as a ‘body worker’?

SF-1369: I trained in contemporary dance from 18, at Lewisham College for a year and then at London Contemporary Dance School for 4 years. The thinking that emerges from dancing informs my approach to everything, and I’ve been searching for a way to articulate that. I’m still training in dance, it’s always my teacher. If I say to someone “I’m a dancer” it is often very apparent that I am not communicating for them the scope of what I actually do. I relate all the work I do, and the interventions I make, to body work.

SR: In what ways have movement and dance informed the installation and the material objects/space you use?

SF-1369: I think I make installations similarly to the way I make performances. I consider what the space says, immediately and culturally, how that impacts bodies generally and my body specifically. I’m thinking about the dis/comfort of bodies and how I might support people to stay present in and with their bodies whilst in the space. What might make me feel welcome and want to stay, if and how it’s possible to move there, where the exits are, which gestures I might make to establish territory.

I’m trying to make less hostile conditions. People in heightened states of alarm have the tendency to lash out or revert to habitual ways of thinking and doing. We live in a culture where the unknown is something to be feared. Inviting people into performances of experimental, unresolved unnamed dance practices with a queer black performer jerking around can be confronting for people. I work to host, to hold, to welcome and to shift the terms.

SR: What was the making process behind the exhibition? Did you see the space first or have the idea?

SF – 1369: I’ve been a resident at Somerset House (as Project O with Alexandrina Hemsley) since 2016, so I was familiar with the River Rooms from other events. The space – and the choreography it suggests to me – was very much in mind, something I was responding to, when coming up with the idea.

I’m working to elaborate upon, re-frame or further follow threads from previous works, and the speaking clock is something Josh Anio Grigg (Sound Designer) and I have been working on/with for a while. So the clock was already present in one way, then seeing these rooms – their archways and multiple doorways – the space sort of spoke of a display of fragments – connected but separate – and I thought about physicalising this clock somehow.

The large bowl of water is also something that features in another work, a performance called When we speak I feel myself, Opening which premiered in March 2022 at Sadler’s Wells. And the lilies, which are in the pendulum room [of the installation], were also present in from darkness into darkness an installation I did for Art Now at Tate Britain in 2021.

SR: How have you reflected or used the space at Somerset House for the installation?

SF-1369: I’ve been thinking a lot about what is framing what and how the different elements sit in changing relation as you move through the space. The space is not a white cube or a black box. I like that there’s no fantasy of neutrality. At the same time, it’s a very particular space in a building with a lot charged history and it’s also a protected space, being a listed building, where many things are not allowed. These parameters have definitely informed the installation. It’s been a good challenge to figure out how I can get my voice into those rooms that are already speaking so loudly.

I think of the first room as a reception space – this is where the large bowl of water is, offering an initial proposition of stillness, reflecting the light and forms from the surrounding room. TV monitors flank the archway beside the bowl, framing its stillness and heaviness with movement and light to create a sense of opening. This leads on to the space where the pendulum is suspended, at heart height, and a speaker which plays voices and the sounds of rain. I think of these voices as that of an oracle, as they chatter above whilst you are with the pendulum.

SR: I’m interested in the way that the installation offers an imagining of time that is non-linear. The conception of time progressing in an evolutionary, chronological way seems to me to be connected with capitalist and colonial projects. What was your thinking behind ‘non-linear’ and ‘imaginary’ time?

SF -1369: I think it’s something I feel necessary to assert as it comes from – or through – my experience of blackness as an embodied position, and the particular knowledges this brings to/of death, erasures and gaps in space-time/memory/history. This is a knowledge that speak through rhythm and cycles of trauma as they move through lineages, ‘out of time’.

I think imagining ‘non-linear time’ is also a matter of listening, feeling, dreaming and cultivating. Imagining, as a word, only functions in relation to constructions of reality right? Children are told to stop making things up, to stop imagining things, and sometimes that’s just about their experience and sensitivities not matching up with the vision of reality they are being groomed into believing is “real”, yes, capitalist and colonial projects. Sometimes I feel like I am living in someone else’s fucked up fantasy.

I think as (so-called) adults it’s important to keep imagining, to access alternate realities and aspects of our experience as living beings. Experience is a tool of imagination. Equally, imagining, is the way we can access experience, knowledge, memory, sensation and truth. Where we attribute meaning has a lot to do with imagination and conceptions of reality, how we conduct ourselves, what we assume and anticipate.

“EXPERIENCE, ALIVENESS TELLS US THAT TIME ISN’T LINEAR, THAT WE CAN JUMP TIME, GET FOLDED INTO TIME, CREATE ROUTES BETWEEN DIFFERENT TIMES…”

I’m very interested in dream work – and what is time in dreams!? It’s wild, so much happens or seemingly nothing at all in those hours of sleep. I’m thinking now about Jeremy Narby writing about DNA in The Cosmic Serpent (a book we sometimes read from in the performance), how we have enough DNA in each of our bodies, that would, if unravelled, encircle the earth 5 billion times. Experience, aliveness tells us that time isn’t linear, that we can jump time, get folded into time, create routes between different times…

SR: I think perceptions of time and the seemingly logical coherence of chronological time has really been disrupted by COVID induced lockdowns, when ritual markers of time were halted. Has this informed your installation in anyway?

SF-1369: No doubt my experiences over the last years have informed this work. But I’d say my interest in cycles and breaks in time has been present since I started making choreographies. In my early choreographic processes, I often worked with timers in – egg timers, alarms. When my father died in 2014 how I understood time totally transformed. Grief is a different register of time; as is blood, as is DNA. It is always a shock that he’s dead even though I don’t forget.

I was broken in 2019. 2020 I needed to stop because there was just too much movement inside of me to handle doing things like talking to people, feeding myself, making plans for the future. I needed to tune in. This is one of the offerings in my installation, to be with all the internal and external movements.

SR: Was it intentional that the installation is taking place during a marked transition between time/seasons, with the clocks going forward soon?

SF-1369: No, just appropriate timing for the work! A kind of encouraging aligning.

SR: How do you envision the installation changing in the future?

SF-1369: The real test of this work will be presenting it another venue. At this point, I don’t fully know what is a specific response to the space and what is ‘the show’ – if I can make that distinction. It’s very entangled and I’ve spent a lot of time in those rooms, tweaking details so that the work speaks to – and from – the space.

* * *

Catch We can no longer deny ourselves at the River Rooms, Somerset House Studios from 23rd September – 30^thOctober 2022. The installation is open from 10am – 6pm, with a daily performance between 12 – 3pm. Entry is FREE!

As part of the final weekend of We can no longer deny ourselves, on Saturday 29th October, there will late night opening of the installation with live responses from a selected group of artists. Tickets for the long night can be purchased here.

To keep up to date with SERAFINE1369’s work on social media:

Instagram: @serafine1369

Web: https://jamilajohnsonsmall.wordpress.com/work/

“Experience, aliveness tell us that time isn’t linear” | Interview with SERAFINE1369

Words by Stella Rousham.

SR: What can audiences expect when they visit, We can no longer deny ourselves?

S1369: Some visually subtle interventions in the dilapidated rooms of a grand old house. A spatialised soundtrack that feels like many voices, dialoguing and harmonising, chattering and shifting, something like weather, rebalancing as you move. A sense of the presence of invisible forces, something like haunting. Your attention being drawn to the shifts in light brought by the weather, and the way this demarcates space differently each time. Many archways that frame and reframe the elements and bodies in each space as you move. If you are open to tuning to it, an energetic shift and an opening up of space. Between 12 and 3 you will encounter a performer: either Alexandrina Hemsley, Steph McMann, Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome or myself.

SR: Can you tell us a little bit about your background as an artist? I like how you identify as a ‘body worker’?

S1369: I trained in contemporary dance from 18, at Lewisham College for a year and then at London Contemporary Dance School for 4 years. The thinking that emerges from dancing informs my approach to everything, and I’ve been searching for a way to articulate that. I’m still training in dance, it’s always my teacher. If I say to someone “I’m a dancer” it is often very apparent that I am not communicating for them the scope of what I actually do. I relate all the work I do, and the interventions I make, to body work.

SR: In what ways have movement and dance informed the installation and the material objects/space you use?

S1369: I think I make installations similarly to the way I make performances. I consider what the space says, immediately and culturally, how that impacts bodies generally and my body specifically. I’m thinking about the dis/comfort of bodies and how I might support people to stay present in and with their bodies whilst in the space. What might make me feel welcome and want to stay, if and how it’s possible to move there, where the exits are, which gestures I might make to establish territory.

SR: What was the making process behind the exhibition? Did you see the space first or have the idea?

S1369: I’ve been a resident at Somerset House (as Project O with Alexandrina Hemsley) since 2016, so I was familiar with the River Rooms from other events. The space – and the choreography it suggests to me – was very much in mind, something I was responding to, when coming up with the idea.

SR: How have you reflected or used the space at Somerset House for the installation?

S1369: I’ve been thinking a lot about what is framing what and how the different elements sit in changing relation as you move through the space. The space is not a white cube or a black box. I like that there’s no fantasy of neutrality. At the same time, it’s a very particular space in a building with a lot charged history and it’s also a protected space, being a listed building, where many things are not allowed. These parameters have definitely informed the installation. It’s been a good challenge to figure out how I can get my voice into those rooms that are already speaking so loudly.

S1369: I think it’s something I feel necessary to assert as it comes from – or through – my experience of blackness as an embodied position, and the particular knowledges this brings to/of death, erasures and gaps in space-time/memory/history. This is a knowledge that speak through rhythm and cycles of trauma as they move through lineages, ‘out of time’.

“EXPERIENCE, ALIVENESS TELLS US THAT TIME ISN’T LINEAR, THAT WE CAN JUMP TIME, GET FOLDED INTO TIME, CREATE ROUTES BETWEEN DIFFERENT TIMES…”

S1369: No doubt my experiences over the last years have informed this work. But I’d say my interest in cycles and breaks in time has been present since I started making choreographies. In my early choreographic processes, I often worked with timers in – egg timers, alarms. When my father died in 2014 how I understood time totally transformed. Grief is a different register of time; as is blood, as is DNA. It is always a shock that he’s dead even though I don’t forget.

SR: Was it intentional that the installation is taking place during a marked transition between time/seasons, with the clocks going forward soon?

S1369: No, just appropriate timing for the work! A kind of encouraging aligning.

SR: How do you envision the installation changing in the future?

S1369: The real test of this work will be presenting it another venue. At this point, I don’t fully know what is a specific response to the space and what is ‘the show’ – if I can make that distinction. It’s very entangled and I’ve spent a lot of time in those rooms, tweaking details so that the work speaks to – and from – the space.

* * *

To keep up to date with SERAFINE1369’s work on social media:

Instagram: @serafine1369

Web: http://www.basictension.com/

Maud le Pladec ‘Twenty-seven perspectives’ | review

Words by Maria Elena Ricci.

Maud le Pladec’s Twenty-seven perspectives, presented the 1st and 2nd of October in Rome’s Auditorium Parco della Musica, is certainly not definable in a few, concise words. With dance works of this kind, dance writers often become suspicious of the power of the written word, which can represent univocal meanings, categorisations which leave little to no space for imagination and free interpretation, of which art is the medium itself.

The French choreographer has defined her work as both formal and abstract. It is certain that there is a clear relation between Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony No.8, from which le Pladec generates the choreographic composition, and the dancers’ defined and literal movement language. Nevertheless, the almost imperceptible, yet constant rhythmical variations suggest ambivalence, dissonance which is audible musically and visible choreographically. Still, this “chaos” is accompanied by moments of solidarity, signs of peace, playful and competitive gazes. These elements coexist together all in the same space, as if this was a unique and intact musical piece. Instead, as the title of the work suggests, there are not one but twenty-seven perspectives or variations of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony No.8 by the musician Pete Harden, with whom le Pladec collaborates translating music into movement.

When the dancers enter the stage in sporty clothing they stop with decision, projecting solemn gazes. The solemnity, supported by the classical music in the background, is immediately contrasted by the athletic and competitive aesthetics of the dancers, who act as friendly game opponents. Schubert’s music lifts their presence beyond us to the point of making them appear as unattainable, out of reach, only to suddenly break the established tension with instinctual, geometrical movements which we recognise in repetitive sequences moving the “players” everywhere around the space. Unexpectedly, exquisite unisons surface, satisfying, although only momentarily, the audience’s need for harmony. Then, the tired dancers enter and leave the curtain-less stage, taking off and leaving jackets and pants on the sides, as if this was a real competition in a real field. The dynamism of the pausing and resuming of the game, a virtuosic and tridimensional dance, leave us hanging until we are left with nothing. A suffused light is projected on the empty, quiet space… we begin to breathe again.

Top images: Konstantin Lipatov. Bottom: Laurent Philippe.

This moment is completely different from what we have seen until now: we move from classicism to minimalism. We are gifted with the time to immerse our senses in a contemplative and abstract prospective. The cosmic void triggers our imagination and we begin to wonder about the limits of the spatial-temporal confines, beyond the physical space in which we are currently present. For a moment, I considered why people go to watch shows. I believe we crave the desire to feel something powerfully different, something that looks nothing like the world of crisis we experience daily.

Our wondering minds are resettled when, from the parterre, we see dancers raising with bowed heads, as if they are called to finish their unfinished game. After all, to complete an action, like finishing Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, means nothing else than restarting it. Paradoxically, one must act in order to finish something. In the same way, the dancers resume their effort of bringing this work to an end: they climb up and down the stage, sitting on the sidelines to then go back in the field, over and over again. Audience members begin to predict, almost crave an ending, yet the constant resuming of the dancers’ game expresses a sense of continuity which goes beyond the performance apparatus. While the show does come to an end, the work, then unfinished, stays unfinished: the dancers have initiated a mechanism of new and infinite beginnings which knows no limits. While darkness swiftly pervades the space, we have the sensation nothing is really ending. Spinning on their axis with arms stretched at 90 degrees, gaze inwards, bodies generate infinite and circular trajectories which make us want to reach them, to be with them in that visible state of constant infinity where there are no endings, but only beginnings.

Engaging older people through community dance | interview with Moving Memory

Words by Katie Hagan.

Organisations based in local and regional communities are true agents of change. Moving Memory Dance Theatre Company, a north Kent based dance organisation established in 2010, is one such example, using movement or dance to challenge the stereotypes surrounding older people.

Led by director Sian Stevenson, a choreographer who’s been working in physical-based storytelling and community dance for over 30 years, Moving Memory Dance Theatre Company has had a demonstrable impact in its community and beyond, creating connections between dancers and audiences in Kent and overturning ageist perceptions around what a dancing body is.

We caught up with Moving Memory to chat about why community dance is vital in the UK, Moving Memory’s latest project DamnitDanceit! and how they are dismantling numerous geographical and social barriers to the arts.

Q: Thanks for chatting to us, Sian! When and why was Moving Memory established?

Sian: When we first set up the company there was little opportunity for older women’s voices and bodies to be heard and seen in a performance space. There were lots of problematic stereotypes.

It took time to convince venues that older women can and do get bums on seats, which is one of the reasons we took to the streets, as well as mainstream venues, to reach a non-traditional theatre audience. This wish – to offer opportunities to new audiences – has remained central to our vision and became manifest in our participatory programme, ‘Moving Well’.

Moving Memory started in 2010 as the result of a commission from the University of Kent Creative Campus initiative. We worked with older people in a care home and then found a group of older women (we invited all genders, but it was the women that came forward) to carry those stories about friendship and love into a performance space. Following this event, the group of women involved said that they didn’t want to stop moving, so the core company was born, and began to train and devise work as an ensemble of seven women, 50+ who have stayed together (with one or two changes) ever since.

Q: In your experience, how does community dance benefit older people?

A: The work we produce, and the way it is produced, addresses the ageism which “leads to poorer health, social isolation, earlier deaths and cost economies billions”. By showing that getting older can be liberating and life enhancing, and through working intergenerationally, we demonstrate the richness, value and importance of older people’s lives and contributions to local communities.

Moving Memory has a strong track-record of making a significant difference to the health and activity levels of the people we work with. The way we do this is described in feedback from the commissioners of Moving Minds – a project for adults with enduring mental health issues in Medway.

Q: Why is it important for dance to have this community presence in regional areas where access to art is very limited?

A: Traditionally, dance and movement-based performance opportunities have been concentrated in cultural meccas – the major cities in the UK. Access to the creative spaces and training opportunities have been the domain of those who are privileged. We need to establish a presence in places that are deprived of such resources, harnessing the diverse experiences of different communities, celebrating those people and offering new ways of putting their stories into the spotlight.

This feeds individuals’ and communities’ heart and soul, with knock on benefits in terms of health and well being socially, economically, culturally – in all ways.

Q: What’s the story of the Damnit!Danceit! project so far?

A: DamnitDanceit! was conceived as a result of a conversation I had with one of my daughters during lockdown about mental health and the need for a place and space to dance out sadness, anger, the heebie-jeebies, the stuff that pulls us down at times.

Moving Memory has done a lot of work in shopping centres and, in doing so, met and worked with a really diverse mix of people. So for DamnitDanceit! the basic idea was to take over a space in a shopping centre and explore the idea of establishing a flash mob company, investigating the benefits for participants, the community and the centre. It’s about empowering people to become the movers and makers of dances that tell their stories and experiences, and in doing so encouraging people to become the founders of a distinctive creative community.

We’ve piloted the project at two centres; the Pentagon in Chatham, and Royal Victoria in Tunbridge Wells. The response has been fabulous. Some people join us for the whole run of six weeks for the full two hour sessions, others pop in for a quick 10 minute groove and leave us feeling lighter. Both groups have subsequently been invited to be part of other performance events so, fingers crossed, we can really build on these successes in the next run.

Q: What has the reaction or feedback been when audiences watch the flash mob style performances?

A: Quite fabulous! Lots of passers-by stop to take part in the dance, lots of people filming and sharing the work on social media. It’s creating a sense of buzz and momentum around not only the participants but the wider community using the centres.

Q: What’s next for Moving Memory?

A: We’re at a really exciting time in our development. We are expanding our programme of work in various different localities, offering a comprehensive package which includes DamnitDanceit! groups and ‘Groovin Well’ groups which will take place in community settings run on similar principles to DamnitDanceit! but approaching the work at a slightly deeper level. The aim is to work towards creating an ongoing committed creative company which devises performances. These initiatives would be run by local facilitators who have been trained in Moving Memory practice, but who, in turn, would look to train others ensuring sustainability, led by locals, for locals.

We’re building partnerships with theatre venues in the localities to embed performances by older people in their programmes. This is kick started by our professional core company and their new piece, ‘The Devil’s Doorbell’ which goes into R&D this autumn. We hope to work with local groups to create ‘Openers’ for the venues’ shows.

And lastly, in collaboration with People Dancing, we’re in the process of creating an accredited Facilitator Training course which will be a mix of online and in person learning.

DamnIt!DanceIt! sessions run across Kent in Chatham: Pentagon Shopping Centre Wednesdays at 1.15-3.15pm until 26th October.

Tunbridge Wells: Royal Victoria Place Fridays at 1.15-3.15pm until 28th October.

kid subjunctive by Funsch Dance | Review

Words by Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Things began before beginning…dancers danced behind oblivious raised programs…house lights buzzed. Was the dance in the adjusting curtains and the diagonal warm-up jogs? Was the dance in the placement of the microphone or in its rendezvous with a dancer’s pair of lips? When folks finally muted their chitchat, hovering over the sound of bare feet brushing against marley…was it also the dance?

The words “don’t say anything” raised ears, as if directed outwards, eerily accusing us of daydreaming with the start of the dance. And suddenly the stage resembled an invisible jungle gym, its kid players taste-testing its structures in randomised motions. The movement of the four dancers (including choreographer Christy Funsch) appeared compartmentalised, like the organized rooms and hallways of a building but at times rogue, unexplained runaways.

The dance itself described creation, the incomprehensible blurbs of the performers bleeding into the mic – “me me me me” – a gestural glossary referenced by an occasional synchronisation but otherwise abandoned in roundabout, lackadaisical sequences.

As in an improvisational score, the dance demanded attention, to the body’s pathways with and without others, and its ticks front and back. Before beginning, things began. The dance, both in and outside itself, reminded me about how makers loop-de-loop through decisions like rollercoaster routes, unsure of which and whose take priority over another. A choreographer might string beads like they do dances, selecting and de-selecting, sorting and tossing, accepting what doesn’t make it in exchange for what does.

kid subjunctive twisted and turned, a piece to sit and wonder about the why and the what of it. Dancers in day-to-day clothes, constructing themselves through linear sets of gesture and into an organism with a mind of its own.

kid subjunctive premiered 08-10 September 2022 in a double bill with Nol Simonse and Jim Cave at CounterPulse in San Francisco, California.

Performance, conversation, movement and sound generation: Christy Funsch, Emily Hansel, Zoe Huey, Peiling Kao, Jenna Marie, and Phoenicia Pettyjohn

Music: Lou Reed

Lighting Design: Jim Cave.

Alexander Whitley Dance Company on new creation Anti-Body | interview

Words by Katie Hagan.

“I’m interested in the subject of the post-human or trans-human, which, in its most extreme form is the idea that we can download someone’s mind onto a computer chip. I find this both fascinating and completely absurd, but an example of digital technology’s tendency to dematerialise experience and pull us away from a reality grounded in the flesh. So Anti-Body asks questions and explores themes around what it means to exist in this hybrid, real/virtual world.” Alexander Whitley

Alexander Whitley Dance Company is no stranger to making innovative digital dance work. Exploring the symbiosis and possibility between dance and technology is embedded into the company’s DNA. Established in 2014 by artistic director Alexander Whitley, the company has created numerous works exploring dance through the lens of technology and the vice versa. Overflow confronts the dominance of tech and big data in our world, and Digital Body was made in response to the pandemic, when Alexander used technology as a way of connecting dancers during social isolation.

New work Anti-Body which comes to Sadler’s Wells on 6-8 October, continues the company’s orbit into the various ways dance and technology intersect, and the startling effects and implications they have on one another when they do.

As Alexander and I chat over Zoom (a coincidence which on reflection seems appropriate), we talk about where Anti-Body began. “I’d been reading about posthuman or transhuman theory for a while and had done a few R&D projects that draw on the theory. One book that I’d read was To be a Machine by Daniel O’Connell, which gives an overview of transhumanism and reveals some really absurd and disturbing lengths people will reach to live forever in a digital bliss, such as implanting sensors into their actual bodies…” Alexander says.

“There is always a critique in my work that looks at the effects technology is having on humans,” says Alexander. “Our starting aim with Anti-Body was to see what our relationship to technology is and the different direction it can take us in whether good, bad or something in-between. In Anti-Body we’re questioning the different ways humans are represented in the digital world and the tensions that arise when we investigate those representations and existences,” he continues.

Anti-Body is, then, a work exploring how we’re represented digitally, particularly through virtual counterparts and avatars. If, like me, you thought you were an exception and would never fall prey to this, perhaps consider that we are of course already representing ourselves in this way with the use of emojis and Apple Memojis.

Alexander Whitley Company has realised Anti-Body through adopting some pretty nifty approaches and software. To create the virtual representations, three dancers wear motion capture suits containing 17 sensors. Motion capture software linked to the sensors produces an avatar model of each dancer as they are moving. This avatar model is then put into an additional custom software that generates visuals, created by Uncharted Limbo Collective, that are then projected onto screens.

The screens play an essential role in bringing the virtual representation of the dancers’ movement to ‘life’. “There are six screens in total onstage, with each dancer performing with a screen in-front and behind them,” says Alexander. “They are wearing the motion capture suits, so their movement is feeding into the software in real time for the visuals to be screened.”

Alexander explains the dancers’ physical bodies and their virtual avatars on the screen mirror each other. The visuals created through the software then influence the dancers’ movement, in a kind of call and response.

The screens enable the dancers to experience the different ways their bodies exist virtually. Movement is manipulated, magnified and layered in this trippy, stratified virtual dance.

But all that glisters is not gold, as Anti-Body reveals. As well as the virtual being a way to magnify the dancers’ identity, it can also splinter it. “To highlight the different directions technology takes us, in Anti-Body each of the three dancers follows a path,” says Alexander. “In an act of defiance, one performer returns to the flesh and takes off the motion capture sensor suit. Another character is comfortable with the ways their body is transcending the physical. The third dancer completely disappears into the digital world, leaving their physical form,” explains Alexander.

Dance is so rooted in the gritty material reality of our fleshy bodies that it seems so at odds with the virtual, of which its existence is everywhere but nowhere at the same time. It’s this contrast and tension that Alexander is very much interested in.

Headshot of Alexander. Images by Sodium and Chris Nash MBE.

Following in the company’s trajectory, Anti-Body is an abstract work – and deliberately so. “There isn’t an intention to seek humanity here,” says Alexander. “This is because when working with tech, the more realistic you try to be in representing the human, the weirder it gets. This is called the Uncanny Valley effect.”

“Instead, I find it more interesting to look the other way,” he continues. “Rather than trying to recreate something that’s realistic, I want to see what it looks like to abstract the human body and not fall into our tendency to read human meaning into the world.”

Anti-Body will revel in these tensions between the human and virtual however, and that will be thrilling to witness. “Mercury Prize 2021 nominated composer Hannah Peel and producer Kincaid have created the music, which is designed to create tension between the virtual and human,” says Alexander. “It’ll be an interesting contrast for the audience to experience: the warmer, fleshy, electro-acoustic sound paralleled with the more dystopic, de-human virtual.”

Anti-Body runs at Sadler’s Wells 6-8 October, book here.

Revelling in the Reverie | interview with Georgia Tegou & Michalis Theophanous

Words by Giordana Patumi.

It was an unexpected bright summer morning in Switzerland when I got the chance to have a chat with Georgia Tegou & Michalis Theophanous – who even connected from Japan and showed us a beautiful sunrise moment during the interview – to talk about their upcoming work Reverie that will premiere at The Place as part of Dance Umbrella Festival on October 7 & 8, 2022.

A meeting of dance and visual art, Reverie blurs the distinctions between reality and fiction, inviting audiences into a surreal, dream-like world unbound from any sense of time.

To uncover more about Reverie, Giordana Patumi interviews Georgia Tegou and Michalis Theophanous ahead of its premiere.

Giordana (Question): Thank you for having a chat with DAJ. First, I would like to ask you both about your individual backgrounds.

Georgia: I am a choreographer, creative director and performer. I trained in dance in Greece and came to London to do an MFA in Choreography. I stayed in London afterwards making my own performances and working as a Lecturer in Dance at the University of Roehampton. I developed my practice dance-as-design, which we often share with Michalis, an expanded/interdisciplinary approach to choreography.

Michalis: From my side I am a trained dancer, but I like to call myself a performer these days to sound more intellectual! In the last few years, I’ve also experimented with my first attempts as choreographer.

Q: How did you meet and why were you interested in working together?

G: I’m going to start by adding to what Michalis said since he tends not to say things. He was awarded a Master of Research in Choreography & Performance in London, and he has been making work since 2018. His work also explores the intersection of different disciplines that revolve around dance and the visual arts and that is our meeting point. Therefore, we are working together because our interests and design views follow a similar interest. We have also been knowing each other for 15 years or even more, we separated paths after graduating from Athens, he went to perform with Dimitris Papaioannou and Bob Wilson, and I moved to the UK.

M: We met again in London, after many years, and we decided to try to make a new work together, moved by this similar interest and aesthetic vision. The other version now, is that everything started for fun; it was a fun idea that turned into a project.

After a couple of drinks – I even remembered the name of the bar – we were at Off Broadway in Broadway market, we were not entirely sure about the where and how, but we knew we had a common interest and a language that could work together.

Q: How was the Reverie creation process?

M: The mix of approaches found a coherence. I am more improvisation-based and Georgia more structured, but the work is also a mix and balance between the visual architecture and the movement elements; there is no one leading the other. In the actual piece, you will see the ‘marriage’ of these two persons – the two characters of Georgia and Michalis. She brings the logical experience of the academic field, the ability to guide dancers, and how to treat them. I always start with a blurry idea from which I then develop and work.

Q: Can you tell us more about how and why the use of archetypes in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Carl Jung’s theories on the subconscious were used in the creation?

M: It was the very first source of inspiration, the very first step to creating a mood board.

G: Initially we were fascinated by ideas and archetypes found in ‘Alice in Wonderland’. The work is very rich in metaphorical meanings but also in aesthetic and visual ideas. While working on the piece we realised we wanted to deviate from the actual story and keep some symbols found in it.

Through studying and looking at metaphors found in Alice we became interested in Carl Jung’s theory on the Collective Unconscious which is according to Jung common to all human beings, inherited from the past collective experience of humanity. A collection of knowledge and imagery common to all humankind and expressed through universal archetypes (signs, symbols, or patterns of thinking and behaving that are inherited from our ancestors). Through this manipulation and moulding of these ideas we ended up dealing with time, memories and the way they keep returning through our subconscious.

Q: Who is the team? Did it change over time?

G: Due to Covid-19 and Brexit, we had to re-cast all four dancers and the stop forced us to re-think and do some tweaks here and there. The main thing is still the same though.

We are excited to be introducing new and old exceptional collaborators, a new cast of performers Nathan Goodman, Synne Lundesgaard, William James and Virginia Poli and a collaboration with costume designer Justin Smith Esquire.

Justin is known as the artist of the millinery world and has been working in fashion and film for years, hand producing craft of millinery and costume design. His collaborations include names such as Stella McCartney, Angelina Jolie, Moschino, Emma Thomson, Robert Downey Jr. His work is exhibited in galleries as well as displayed and permanently held in museums like London’s V&A and New York’s FIT. The music score is originally composed by our long-term collaborator and awarded composer Jeph Vanger.

Our team is also composed by Dramaturg Xenia Aidonopoulou, lighting designer Michael Toon, creative producer Lia Prentaki and project coordinator Lia Garbola.

The biggest challenge was that we had to stop planned performances because of Covid-19. This at the same time turned out to be a bit refreshing because we also had the opportunity to relook at things and work on different elements while bringing onboard new members to the team.

Q: What is something that inspires you?

M: Anything that doesn’t hurt my eyes can be an inspiration for something!! (Georgia laughs!)

G: I think it comes from many different things from multiple fields, from everyday life to art and sometimes even science, it might also come from an urgency inside of you, and also, it doesn’t very often come from dance.

Q: What can we expect on October 7 at The Place? What would you like to say to our readers?

M: I feel that whatever we say or any kind of description we might provide doesn’t really matter because everyone will come to watch a show depending on how their mood is on that day. We are just here to share our work and suggest something. We hope that the audience will make their own connections and take what they want. Our invitation is to come as they would enjoy a walk in a museum; don’t try to understand anything, just look if there is something that you like or not, that inspires, resonates, or remains with you at the end.

To secure your place at Reverie’s world premiere at The Place visit here.

A day at Dance City’s Creative Summer 2022 | interview

Words by Katie Hagan

“Dance will forever be a part of people’s lives,” expresses Anand Bhatt of Dance City, the organisation’s recent CEO who was also producer of Aakash Odedra Company when it became the fastest growing dance company from 2011-17. “It’s just dance organisations must respond to the big changes that have happened in the industry, to ask what the needs are right now?” he continues as we chat over a video call from a cloudy day in Edinburgh.

Located in north-east England, Dance City is a hive for presenting international dance work, education programmes and bringing together communities across its Newcastle home and beyond. It is a place where people from all walks of life can come to be in dialogue with dance whether that be through taking part in the 55+ years Boundless dance company, experiencing performances by award-winning dance companies including Rhiannon Faith, Aakash Odedra and VOXED, or enrolling on Dance City’s world-leading higher education courses.

For professional dance artists in particular, Dance City is pretty much the closest you can get to a support haven, offering various commissions and residencies that reflect the needs of practising dance makers today. “Dance City’s mission is asking the important question: How do dance artists make their best work?” says Anand, who was appointed CEO in the first few months of the bleary pandemic. “For Dance City, it’s about making sure that our resources, studio space and theatre are available to artists in a way that allows them to breathe, discover, explore, and to test, fail and stand up again,” he continues.

One of those opportunities is Creative Summer, an annual residency programme that gives a week’s space for free to artists to play and ask questions. As part of the programme they are also able to attend informal ‘get-to-know-you’ meetings and show their work at a sharing event attended by programmers and producers.

The Creative Summer experience, as I was able to pay witness to when I visited one week at the end of August, is one of warmth, joy, and experimentation. Creative spark and energy soar around the Dance City building; a construction imbued with light, quirk and openness thanks to its 2005 design by architects Malcolm Fraser and Calum Duncan. “It feels like the Dance City building is open purely for Creative Summer,” says Ellie Trow of Pelican Theatre, one of this year’s awardees. “Having this space for a week is pretty much unheard of!”

In studio 4, I watch Pelican Theatre swoop around the space as they spend their Creative Summer researching their project Tranquil, a dance experience for those in rural locations. Tranquil, created by co-founders Ellie and Pagan Hunt, in collaboration with Meta4 Dance Company, comprises a performance of Pelican Theatre’s existing piece Blue Mind, Meta4’s piece Confluence; workshops and an art installation.

Top left: still from Blue Mind. Top right: Studio four. Bottom: Ellie Trow (L) and Pagan Hunt (R) founders of Pelican Theatre.

On their decision to package together an experience rather than focus on touring a single performance, Ellie says: “We’re trying to break the barriers of having to travel into a city and go to a theatre to see dance. With Tranquil we want to bring dance to the people and make it as accessible as possible.” As well as developing the piece at Creative Summer, Ellie and Pagan are in a consultation period where they are inviting example groups to test days to request feedback on Tranquil.

Ellie and Pagan created Pelican Theatre after doing the MA Advanced Dance at Dance City together a few years ago. David Lloyd, who was a tutor on the course and has toured professionally with the likes of Jasmin Vardimon, was a massive influence, and the programme let them work with leading companies including Gecko and Lost Dog. Physical theatre is a big part of how they think about choreography.

But where did the concept of Tranquil come from? “Things really started with Blue Mind, the performance that we originally created that’s part of Tranquil,” begins Ellie. “I found inspiration for that piece when I read a book called ‘Blue Mind’ by Wallace J. Nichols, which explores the human race’s natural affinity with water, and how it helps with wellness and mental health. Science says that water relaxes you and I found that really affirming. There’s also evolutionary reasons behind why humans have always sought out water. I wanted to make a dance work that would share these benefits, and Pelican’s practice, with an audience,” she says.

During Creative Summer, and alongside dancers Lily and Maria, Ellie and Pagan have seen this concept translate from something artistic into how dance creates community. “We both want to say things in our work – work that people come away feeling a connection to,” says Pagan. “For that reason, I’ve stopped thinking of Tranquil as an artistic concept. Instead, I’m thinking about the audience and the experience we’re creating for them.”

This intersection between artists and community seems to be a running theme in Dance City’s annual Creative Summer, which is long to hopefully continue. “A dream for this programme would be to see how big it could get,” says Anand. This year Dance City has worked in partnership with Newcastle College to give more space to the Creative Summer 2022 cohort. “We want to continue and expand upon this legacy that Newcastle is a place where international and regional artists can come, share their practice and exchange cultures and experiences,” says Anand.

Artists are the inlet that brings waves of people from around the community to dance’s shores, as seen in the ambitions of Pelican Theatre’s Tranquil. Artists are bearers of beauty and energy, they dance with people and bring joy, nurturing bonds and belonging. And the possibilities that occur when any of these happen are truly life changing.

As a dance artist, David Klotz has journeyed from doting dad at his daughter’s dance shows; to community dance participant; to choreographer. His entry into dance was the many years spent watching his daughter Lizzie Klotz’s performances as a student at London Studio Centre and as a dancer performing across the world. Very recently ex-cop David worked with Lizzie to make the dance industry’s resident tear-jerker film, Dancing with my Dad.

David’s worked with Vanessa Grasse on the international project MESH, Chisato Minamimura, Deaf artist Chris Fonseca, Rendez-Vous dance and Society of Strays. In his sixties, David is now working with collaborators Carolyn and Joan – members of Dance City’s Boundless company – on a piece that he originally thought about in 2018. “I’m working with these two lovely people [gestures to Carolyn and Joan] to explore time, change and interactions between people,” begins David, as we chat in one of Dance City’s cool studios in the mid-to-late afternoon. “We’ve each taken one concept as a stimulus: Joan has ‘elastic’, I have ‘waves’ and Carolyn has ‘straight lines’, to explore the different pathways we can take together.”

“As this piece is improvisatory, it’s been really fantastic to use these concepts to think about movement,” says Joan.

Some explorations have been more successful than others, as Carolyn highlights. “In the studio I think it’s good to realise when things don’t work,” she says.

R-L: Image of Katie chatting to Joan, David and Carolyn.

“Didn’t you bring in those plastic sticks, or whatever they were, to explore your idea?” jokes David warmly.

“Ah yes, I wanted to make a noise. They were knitting needles, David, and I wanted to use them to experiment with noise and surface. They are straight in appearance and make a clicking noise when you beat on the walls with them,” says Carolyn gesturing like a conductor rat-a-tatting in mid-air. “Sadly, they broke,” laughs Joan.

“Equipment malfunction!” says David.

The bond between David, Carolyn and Joan is very special. As I speak to them in the studio, initially I feel like I’m disturbing their perfect chemistry, but it doesn’t take long before I quickly share in their joy. As a trio, they’re infectious to be around and there are plenty of belly laughs. “I have a background in engineering and have knowledge of the different types of ‘waves’,” says David. “It’s safe to say I definitely bored Joan and Carolyn to tears this week with all the details about the wavelengths of microwaves and ovens!”

“Didn’t I start waving goodbye at some point when we did a run through?” Carolyn quizzes.

“Oh yes,” says David, “During the movement task Joan and I were playing and bringing waves into our bodies and Carolyn just starts waving, and I thought what the hell is she doing!” David chuckles. “That’s where Carolyn’s lateral thinking comes in…”

David, Joan and Carolyn explain to me that their piece is always moving forward. “It never moves backways, which is much like our lives here on earth”, says David. “Sometimes we just stop moving. There’s no fixed routine or interval and things happen at random. That’s much like how life is really. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

Images of Penny Chivas performing her work Burnt Out at the Friday sharing before performances at Edinburgh Fringe.

Creative Summer is a brilliant example of a dance programme that reflects the needs of artists working at different points in their career: Pelican Theatre is creating a full ‘experience’ package to tour to different rural venues, Penny Chivas (who we interviewed a few weeks ago) was there prepping for her show Burnt Out at the Fringe; and David, Joan and Carolyn were in the studio to play, without feeling the pressure to make a ‘product’.

As much as Creative Summer is about basic space and support, it also shows the possibilities that occur when dance and community are able to exist symbiotically. On the final day of my visit, we all watched each other’s sharings and took part in performances. The sense of togetherness at that moment was poignant, sincere and uplifting. “I think that’s a big future for Dance City,” ends Anand. “Where can art continue to meet community to find new meanings?”

All images by Fitzgerald Honger. Other members of Creative Summer cohort: Amanda Limtouch, Anthony Lo-Giudice, Beth Veitch, David Klotz, Dora Rubenstein, Gillian Hutton, Holly Irving, Toi Guy and Jesse Salaman, Marianna Minasova, Micheal Heatley, Nicole Watson, Pelican Theatre, Penny Chivas, Sarah Dobbs, Susan Moir

Taylor Han and Simone Seales on ‘With Catastrophic Consequences’ | interview

Words by Hannah Draper.

Both Glasgow based artists, Taylor Han and Simone Seales’ show With Catastrophic Consequences is performance which invites the audience into a space of collective warmth, using improvisation and storytelling, or story sharing, to build a performance of dance, music and dialogue that explores individual and communal moments of joy.

Han has a focus on improvisational practice, musicality and community work, while Seales’ seeks to create spaces of ‘radical joy’ as an ‘intersectional cellist’. The two artists’ practices have collided and culminated in With Catastrophic Consequences. They use audience prompts and memories to create improvised performances for the whole audience. The audience for instance collectively makes a song on a loop pedal, and Seales travels outside their comfort zone to perform a dance choreographed by audience suggestions. The result is warming and uplifting – with beautiful, poignant and humorous duets and solo moments from both performers.

Watching the performance unfold showed the potential of improvised performance to connect strangers and use risk to craft unpredictable moments. I spoke to Taylor after watching the show on Sunday at Pianodrome as part of Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2022.

Question: Could you talk a bit about the name of the piece – With Catastrophic Consequences?

Answer: It’s a bit tongue in cheek, obviously – it’s not, it’s not really ever going to be a catastrophe. When me and Alex, the first musician on this piece, were working together, we were just playing with ideas. He was reading a book and on the blurb there was a quote, and it was like, ‘fuelled by desire, she makes her move with catastrophic consequences’. And we were like, well, that kind of works. So we just kept it as a little reference to the potential uncertainty and catastrophe that could unfold.

Question: Could you tell me about the creation process and practice that you and Simone have together?

Answer: It’s been a bit of an unusual process in a way. I had initially been working with a different musician, and we had developed the structure together within the show; little episodes at moments, improvisations. And then basically, because of COVID, and of living in France at the time, he ended up not being able to work on the project anymore. So I did a call out, which was how I found someone, which was really scary and nerve wracking for me because it was a lot about our relationship. So, it was really important for me to find someone who I felt like I had a really good rapport with. So I was just very lucky to have met Simone. We worked on ideas made with the Alex, and also did a lot of learning about each other. We also work with a dramaturg/co-creator, Ramon Ayers who helped craft how the show’s peaks and troughs. Initially, we spent a lot of time just playing and moving and trying to attune to how one another creates.

I think a lot of that groundwork has helped when we use these quite abstract ideas from the audience members. Ramon helps us crafts it, and craft our own stories that we bring to the work. We worked together at the space in Dundee, and that was where we sort of honed in on the majority of the structure. Since then, we’ve honed in on things, tightened things up, played with things and suggested different ideas before a performance. We called the sections ‘building blocks’ which we can reorder for different performances. So, as long as we’re confident with the structure of each block and how they fall into each other, then we can kind of mess around a bit.

Some of our audiences couldn’t believe how short we’ve known each other. And we couldn’t believe how short we’d known each other. But I think it was just that sort of intense working process and like getting to know each other in that way that helped.

Question: The performance focuses around creating a joyful experience through dance and music; what was the motivation for making the piece?

Answer: Alex and I had both seen a lot of very serious contemporary dance, and really dark subjects. So we wanted to make an antidote to serious contemporary dance. We knew we wanted it to be light hearted, we wanted it to be joyful, maybe a bit funny, and the thread of it would be this connection between music and dance and dancer and musician.

Question: What was it about improvisation, that you were drawn towards?

Answer: It’s funny because when Simone and I are rehearsing I’m like, we’ve made this really hard on ourselves. I’ve always just really enjoyed improvisations and playing with the sort of intricacies of music.

When I watch contemporary dance, I really like to feel included as an audience member, I like to feel like I’m there with them. So, I think that was a nice way for me to tie my love for improvisational music, but also to sort of include the audience in that way.

Question: A lot of the pieces includes storytelling, either from the performers or the audience, and sometimes translating stories to movement. What is it about movement that you think is particularly good to be able to sort of make an experience?

Answer: I hope I’m not saying to this audience member: okay, well, now I’m going to dance your life. Instead I’m like: thanks for sharing this little segment of your joy, I’m gonna see if I can make something that translates into joy for me and someone which can then pass on to the audience. So it’s more like a stimulus or something. It’s really exciting, and also really difficult because we have no idea what people are gonna say. We can work around it and we can always ask different questions or, you know, dig into things a little bit more, if it’s something that we aren’t sure of how to approach.

Question: How did you test audience interaction in the creation process?

Answer: In the creation process it was still COVID time. So for our audience we had three or four people in our audience. At our residency at The Space, we tested it on all the students at the space. There, we could perform for them, stop, and then ask them questions about their experience. That was really fundamental, because it’s quite a difficult piece to rehearse without an audience.

Question: The audience participation fosters a sense of collectivity in the audience. What creative tasks did you experiment with to create this?

Answer: There’s been lots of different iterations. Most of the structure is similar, but it’s the subtlety of how we interact that’s changed. We were very conscious of audience participation often being uncomfortable for people; we didn’t want to single people out. We found that when we just asked an open question and waited for a response it was actually harder for people to participate. But when you make eye contact with people, and you sense that someone might be interested, it’s easier to ask them a direct question. So that was a big learning curve for us. We also had to do a lot of changing and testing when making the song with the audience. Because of COVID there were times we couldn’t even go near the participants. So we had to listen to their music, then repeat it ourselves on the loop pedal.

Question: Have you ever done it with younger audiences?

Answer: Yeah, it was really fun. They loved the section where we made someone dance and they were so creative with their suggestions. The kids were like ‘so someone, you’re going to be being pulled apart by two ropes, and then those ropes are going to be cut. And then you’re going to be picked up like a puppet.’ On a residency at Dundee Rep we got the chance to work with lots of different community groups; young people age 11 to 13, older men who are recovering from addiction, we’ve worked with people in a mental health and wellbeing group. This really helped grow the show.

Question: And how did this sort of almost like meditation imagery at the end?

Answer: So that was our collaborator Romane. He said ‘this might sound really cheesy, but just go with it.’ So we got the audience to imagine a dance, and we thought it worked and added in. And because of COVID nobody could touch each other. So, we were thinking about how we could get people to dance together without actually being together.

We’re very careful about our language and how to bring people into and out of the meditation safely. I’m very conscious that when you ask people to imagine a favourite person, they might imagine someone that’s not here or it could be a dark experience. So, we’ve tried to use grounding techniques to make it as safe as possible for people.

Question: And what do you think that you learn from working with a musician? And what do you think? Maybe they’ve learned from you?

Answer: Simone is very good at remaining calm and remaining relaxed. I think musicians are much better at spontaneity and limited rehearsal time. Whereas, I feel like dancers are a lot more primed to be making everything perfect within a hair. So it’s been really nice to capture Simone’s energy, especially when we’re like backstage and I’m freaking out. Maybe it’s nothing to do with the fact that they’re a musician. But that’s been something I’ve definitely learned; to keep calm and to take my time to listen. Simone is really good at listening. If I’m ever unsure on being anchored by a concept, or an idea that an audience member has suggested, I can anchor myself to Simone’s music. They’re a super talented performer and musician, and that was always really important for the show; it wasn’t going to be a musician who sits in the corner. It’s been really enjoyable to find that collaborative voice on stage.

With Catastrophic Consequences was performed at the Pianodrome as part of Edinburgh Fringe on August 27th and 28th 2022. All images by Genevieve Reeves.

For more information about the artists:

Simone Seales | Intersectional Cellist

Taylor Han Dance Artist