DOWNTIME - interviews with dance artists & arts leaders, talking about dance & the arts – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Lloyd Newson OBE is a director, dancer and choreographer. He formed DV8 Physical Theatre in 1986, and the company went on to tour across the world for decades, winning 55 national and international awards including the Prix Italia, Rose d'Or and an International Emmy Award.

Shows include:, the hard hitting, physically combative, politically charged My Sex; Our Dance, Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men; poetic pieces with more of a  sense of narrative and/or design - Strange Fish, Enter Achilles and The Cost of Living; and the later shows where Lloyd combined his physical languages with verbatim text - To Be Straight With You, Can We Talk About This and John.

Lloyd retired in 2022 and DV8 was closed down. Some of  the work is archived through Digital Theatre and the company archives are now part of the Theatre Collection at Bristol University.  

Lloyd and Lou spoke late in 2022 about the journey of DV8’s work, the rage and sense of injustice that drove him, whether dance can bring about social change, and how Lloyd strove to make work that ‘did what it said on the tin’. He also spoke about what he looked for in a dancer, how it wasn’t till the end of his career that he understood the support he needed in the studio, the burnout that led to him to retire in 2022 and the pleasures he is finding in life now – fishing and spending time with family and friends. 

Lou talked with Italian choreographer and performer Silvia Gibraudi, sometimes referred to as ‘the prophet of the free body’, in December 2022.

Silvia talked about her journey of trying to find joy and grace, and bring them to people’s lives, to theatres and to people in the street. 

She explained how her show Graces explores questions like ‘what is beauty?’ and ‘what does it mean to be perfect?’ in a playful, pleasurable but political way, by placing Silvia, her clown-like character and her ‘curved body’ alongside the bodies of young male virtuosic dancers.

They spoke of clowning and the importance of having no fourth wall, of shame, of the joys of working with older and younger dancers, and of how, in her next show, Silvia will be exploring how to bring the inclusive feeling of a fete in a square to her audiences.

Silvia also explained how in some ways she is tired of these conversations about the body, but that it seems there is still a need for it to be addressed, so address it she shall!

Silvia Gribaudi is an Italian choreographer who also specialises in performing arts in general.

Since 2004 she has focused her research on the social impact of bodies, having set at the centre of her choreographic language the comic element and the relationship between audience and performers.

Award-winner of the Premio Giovane Danza D’Autore with her piece “A CORPO LIBERO”(2009), finalist at the Premio UBU for best dance show and finalist at the Premio Rete Critica award with R.OSA (2017), winner of the Premio CollaborAction#4 2018-2019, finalist at the Premio Rete Critica 2019, winner of the Premio DANZA&DANZA 2019 for best Italian production with the piece GRACES and Premio Histryo Corpo a Corpo 2021.

She has taken part in several artistic research projects, including:

CHOREOROAM (2011), TRIPTYCH (2013), ACT YOUR AGE (2014) – an EU project about active ageing through the art of dance, which inspired the performance WHAT AGE ARE YOU ACTING?, as well as the community project OVER 60; PERFORMING GENDER (2015); CORPO LINKS CLUSTER (2019/2020), where the connection of dance, the mountains, and the mountain community gave life to the site specific project TREKKING COREOGRAFICO (choreographic trekking) and to the piece MONJOUR (2021), produced by Torinodanza Festival in collaboration with Teatro Stabile del Veneto and Brussels’s Les Halles de Schaerbeek.

In 2021 she has been a guest choreographer at “Danser Encore, 30 solos pour 30 danseurs”, a project for the Opéra de Lyon and in June 2023 her new production will be premiered: WHERE DOES A BALLET END? (provisional title) a coproduction by MM Contemporary Dance Company (IT), La Biennale de Lyon (FR), Théâtre de la Ville (FR), Rum för Dans (SE), Torinodanza Festival (IT), International Dance Festival TANEC PRAHA (CZ), Zodiak – Side Step Festival (FIN) and the international network Big Pulse Dance Alliance.

Her shows have been featured in a number of national and international festivals and are the result of a creative process that focuses on dialogue and on the poetic encounter with other artists, dance companies, and communities.

In this episode of Downtime, Lou talks with Noel Jordan – Festival Director of Imaginate and Edinburgh International Children’s Festival. 

They talked about Noel’s approach to programming, Imaginate’s year round support for artists, the risks Noel can take in terms of programming difficult or sensitive material, and his observations about the quality and nature of work being made both in the UK and across Europe.

Noel has extensive experience as an award winning producer, director, actor-devisor and drama educator. Whilst working as a Drama Lecturer in Arts Education at the University of Melbourne, he also completed his Masters in Education.  

Imaginate is the national organisation in Scotland, which promotes, develops and celebrates theatre and dance for children and young people. 

Lou spoke to Annabelle while she was at Jacob’s Pillow, in June 2022. They spoke about where Annabelle’s passion for working across genres comes from, the detail of how she prepares and what she asks of her dancers in the studio, and how she and her dramaturg and long time collaborator Nancy Meckler work together. 

Annabelle also talked about what she thinks a female choreographer can bring to female roles, and what changes she’d like to see in the programming of major companies – one of which she plans to lead one day!

Colombian-Belgian, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa is an award-winning choreographer that has created around 100 works for 71 dance companies around the world. A versatile choreographer, she creates regularly within the dance field but also for theatre, opera, and musical theatre. 

Her wide-ranging body of work includes short conceptual pieces, full-length narratives and dance films. She  completed her dance education at the Royal Ballet School of Antwerp and  after a 12-year long career in a number of European dance companies, Annabelle decided in 2003 to focus solely on choreography.

Jonzi D is the founder and Artistic Director of Jonzi D Projects and Breakin’ Convention the international Hip Hop festival he founded in 2004 with Sadlers Wells. A dancer, spoken word artist and director, he is the foremost advocate for hiphop theatre who has changed the profile and influenced the development of the UK British hip-hop dance and theatre scene over the last two decades. He has been actively involved in British hip hop culture, rapping and b-boying since its genesis.

As well as making his own work, with shows such as The Letter in 2013, which he made about his decision to turn down an MBE, and TAg … Just writing in my name 2006, and the more recent film We Want Our Bodies Back he is passionate, as we will hear, about supporting the work of other artists, and the development of Hip Hop theatre as a whole.

In fact his most recent role is as Artistic Director of The brand new Hip Hop Theatre Academy – which opens at the new Sadlers Wells East venue in 2023.

Lou spoke to Jonzi in May 2022, and they talked about the changes he has seen across the years of Breakin Convention; his hopes for the new Sadler's Wells Hip Hop Academy and the philosophy of 'Each one teach one' – that informs his own life, and the Hip Hop sector more widely.

New York based Katy Pyle is a genderqueer lesbian dancer and choreographer who founded their dance company Ballez in 2011 to explore their complicated relationship to the cis-hetero patriarchal form of ballet, and to make space for their own, and their communities’, presence within it. The mission is to reimagine ballet through collaborative, community-minded, and antihierarchical approaches.

 Katy is working to insert the herstory and lineage of lesbian, queer and transgender people into the ballet canon through the creation of large-scale story ballets, open classes, and public engagement. Major works include “The Firebird, a Ballez,” which has a lesbian princess and a “tranimal”—part bird, part prince), “Sleeping Beauty & the Beast,”which you’ll hear all about later in the episode, and most recently "Giselle of Loneliness," staged in  2021.

 As a dancer Katy has appeared in the works of Ivy Baldwin, Faye Driscoll, Xavier Le Roy, Karinne Keithley Syers, Jennifer Monson, StinaNyberg and many others.

 Lou spoke to Katy when they were in New York in May 2022. Wetalked about Katy’s journey in, out and back in to ballet, their refusal to bow to the traumatic oppression and limitations of the ballet world, and their realisation that they didn’t have to change themselves – they could change ballet instead.

https://www.ballez.org

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/ballez-katy-pyle-giselle-of-loneliness/2021/06/01/23f9897c-bfd0-11eb-b26e-53663e6be6ff_story.html

 Joseph Toonga is from East London. He makes and performs dance productions that tell stories of the under-represented, relevant to the here and now which are embedded in the languages of contemporary dance and Hip Hop. Joseph is Artistic Director of Just Us Dance Theatre, has created work for Edge; National Youth Ballet of Germany;  Richard Alston Dance Company and Junior Ballet Madrid.  He is also co-founder of Artists 4 Artists and recently became The Royal Ballet’s first Emerging Choreographer.

Lou talked to Joseph in April 2022 about his commitment to finding, making and sharing space; his desire to create dance in numerous contexts in order to tell the real stories of the under-represented; and the challenges of forging a path in new contexts that don’t yet feel like home.

http://www.justusdancetheatre.com

Born in Havana in 1973, Carlos Acosta trained at the National Ballet School of Havana in Cuba. After winning a succession of awards, including the Prix de Lausanne in 1990, he went on to dance professionally with the world’s most prestigious ballet companies, including The Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Houston Ballet and Cuban National Ballet company. Carlos retired from classical ballet in 2016, after 28 years, having performed almost every classical role from Spartacus to Romeo.

He is the Artistic Director of his own company in Cuba- Acosta Danza, he runs the Carlos Acosta International Dance Foundation, has written a novel and an autobiography, of which the movie Yuli was made.

He received a CBE in 2014, the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award from the Royal Academy of Dance in 2018, and in 2019 the Critics’ Circle Annual Award for Outstanding Services to the Arts.

in January 2020 Carlos Acosta became Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, and in February 2021 – he spoke to me.

Michael Keegan-Dolan founded Teaċ Daṁsa in 2016 as a means to forge stronger connections with the native traditions, language and music of Ireland, as exemplified by the company’s first two productions, Swan Lake / Loch na hEala (2016) and MÁM (2019). Previously Michael was AD of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre creating three Olivier Award-nominated productions: Giselle, The Bull, and The Rite of Spring. Giselle won an Irish Times Theatre Award and The Bull won a UK National Dance Award. 
 
In this really entertaining conversation, Lou spoke to Michael about his resistance to many of the expectations and models of the entertainment industry, and how his belief that ‘what will be will be’ has led him not only to live the life he wants to live and make the work he wants to make in the way he wants to make it – but also to cope with this period of uncertainty with a philosophical shrug, a laugh and a willingness to accept whatever life throws at him.