Karl Jay Lewin is a force for good in Scottish dance. Based in Findhorn, an independent choreographer in both style and attitude, he founded Bodysurf in 2003 to bring dance artists further north and experience the pleasure of making and showing work in Findhorn bay. Yet, despite having one of the UK's most idyllic home bases, he is nipping down to the Fringe to reveal his reworking of I Think Not by Deborah Hay.
"Well, I didn't know the piece," he admits. "I was one of a group of 20 international dancers/choreographers that commissioned Deborah to make a new solo on us. It's an annual project that Deborah has been doing at Findhorn for the last 9 years, through Independent Dance (London)."
The process is quite strict. "We commission her to make the solo which we learn over 10 days," Lewin explains. "We then have an obilgation to practice the piece for a minimum of three months, every day, before performing it in public."
Contemporary dance often creates it work through a "score" - a series of suggestions that can be improvised and worked into a performance over time. Hay's challenge to each dancer was to take the score and define it through their own practice.
Lewin elaborates. "What we get is the choreography and a number of questions - tools for the dancer. These are often paradoxical questions and relate to our perception rather than a particular way of executing defined movements."
It is from here that Lewin's version evolved. "We each make our own individual adaptations of the choreography. I bring my own sensibility and aesthetic to the piece."
The joy of Lewin's particular sensibility is that he is far removed from the usual approaches to dance: "I am personally interested in ambiguity. scared and the profane, meaningfulness and meaninglessness," he notes. in person, he is generous and thoughtful - and always willing to think the best of others. Bearing this in mind, he hands me a copy of Hay's score, showing me far more respect than I deserve.
The score is elegantly written, encouraging the dancer through a series of movements and suggesting moods and attitudes. It does leave plenty of space, however, for the dancer to find their own meaning behind the surface description. And its meditative, almost spiritual tone suggests that the piece is something akin to a ritual.
"This score is actually a combination of two scores, on of which, At Once, I learnt in 2009. It gives an idea of what we are given to go away with," he explains. "The first two lines in the score of I Think Not pose questions: What if I Think Not is not about the repression of thought but rather about the expansion and perseverance of the dancer's sensibilities? What if the choreography of I Think Not combines material that supposes a correspondence between the dancer's aesthetics and her/his survival?"
Lewin then explains that aesthetics, in this case, mean more than just style: "Aesthetics as in my relationship with space, audience, time passing, my whole body et cetera." Appropriately for a creator, he adds that he is not "a fan of describing things in negative terms, but its useful as a beginning sometimes. It immediately sets up or plants reference points in mind that I am saying I am not."
Lewin's approach led him towards a tactic that is similar to the one used by the serialists in classical music at the start of the last century. "I am interested in making work that is democratic, in that one bit is no more important than another." There is also a hint of Buddhist philosophy in the score: "Deborah talks about 'here and gone' no attachment to anything," Lewin adds. "I like that and it appeals to my interest in the mundane and throw away. Which curiously is the opposite of day to day life (which of course includes and is not separate form my practice) in which I deplore the throw away culture!"
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