A Quiet Word with David Hughes

While people don't really believe a word a say, I do believe that Scotland could be on the cusp of a great dance revival. It's not so much the appointment of new artistic directors to the big two companies (Scottish Ballet and Scottish Dance Theatre) in the past year -but the diversity of companies knocking around the country. My own enthusiasm notwithstanding, and the efforts of the state to Get Scotkand Dancing, Scotland seems exceptionally  well-served with choreographers who are moving in distinctive, even unique directions,

David Hughes Dance is powered by the restless vitality of its artistic director, a former Rambert dancer and a man not given to resting on past glories. "After 26 years I've been around the block and am easily bored," Hughes admits. "So I am always trying to get something that excites me. If I have the right recipe this will come through to the audience."

In the past three years, Hughes has worked with Al Seed, the Big Man of Live Art and leader of Conflux, Glasgow's home for physical theatre, Christopher Bruce and Siobhan Davies (Bruce and Davies recreating work that they originally made on Hughes in his earlier career): and while the publicity and press around the company carefully avoids mentioning the C-word, Hughes' vision is contemporary in the sense of being modern, immediate and constantly evolving.

"The DHD vision is the performers," he continues. "We don’t provide choreographers with the kinds of performers they are used to working with." When Al Seed directed The Red Room, Hughes had him working with an Indian dancer: associate director Matt Foster comes from a b-boy background. For their latest project, The Chinaski Sessions, choreographer Kylie Walters was given five of Scotland's most dynamic male dancers. "These guys are a mixed bag of highly skilled performers from different disciplines." 

Yet Hughes' works are interested in more than just technique: from The Red Room through to Chinaski, dance has been put at the service of narrative - or, at the least, grand ideas. He explains that "Together with the right choreographer, the work transcends beyond technicality and performance: the movement becomes a vehicle for each person to come through. We all have our own different ways and we just get on with it."

The company's restlessness is reflected not just in the variety of ideas explored in their works - cannibalism, decadence, plague, sexual desire, masculinity - but the refusal to be contained by a simple definition. Hughes insists "I'm

random and spontaneous. We don’t set ourselves in any category but we exist in the periphery of dance and physical theatre." For Chinaski, "we are now returning to pure dance, but who can say what will happen next?"

"P.S." Hughes concludes. "Get ready for our next couple of years!"

Photography for Chinaski by Sally Cuthbert