Nora and Martyrs (RISE and Southside Fringe)

Eleanor Sikorski and Flora Wellesley Wesley are Nora, a contemporary dance duo. They perform the work of invited choreographers, using their bodies and training as a starting point.

Gustav and Jacob are The Creative Martyrs, a cabaret team. They perform their original songs, using their musical skills and voices as a starting point.

Despite coming from different performance cultures, both couples set their relationship to each other at the centre of their work. Evoking the theatrical tradition of the double-act (and alluding to Laurel and Hardy, Vladimir and Estragon, Orville and Keith Harris, Plato and Aristotle, even if not literally), they perform the process of self-creation in the collaborative mode.

In Bloody Nora (choreographed by Liz Aggiss and, consequently, having more than a few references to old time London fun), Sikorski and Wesley battle each other like rappers, exaggerating and mocking each other's gestures and fumbling together identities that take in Max Wall and the techniques of Bausch's 'dance-theatre'.

In Funny Trap (written by The Martyrs but performed primarily by Jacob), a story of treachery and imprisonment provides a context for Jacob's paranoia: Gustav's only contribution is a voice from off-stage that reminds Jacob of his eternal sentence. Yet this single line is the spine of Jacob's character, a mixture of the fear-inspiring absent father and the threat of political power. 

Because of Aggiss' style, Bloody Nora is closer to The Martyrs' cabaret than most contemporary dance, and the sparring between the dancers parallels the arguments that run through many Martyr's routines. Beneath the content of specific works, the performance of both couples exposes the necessity of another in the building of personality.

Jo Strømgren and Victor Quijada @ Scottish Dance Theatre 2013

Over the past decade, Scottish Dance Theatre has become a national treasure. Under the direction of Janet Smith, it commissioned new works from emerging choreographers - including Hofesh Schechter, who has gone on to international acclaim - and through an annual appearance at Zoo Venues during Fringe helped to re-establish dance as a vital strand of Edinburgh's August overload.

The arrival of new artistic director Fleur Darkin has seen the company maintain the pace. Currently touring with two new commissions - and a work for children from Darkin herself - SDT take advantage of having a permanent company in a similar fashion to Scottish Ballet: they can afford an eclectic, broad programme. And the two commissions bring two of dance's more maverick minds to Scotland: Jo Strømgren and Victor Quijada. Their double bill is a sustained assault on notions of dance as dull or elitist, respectively tackling a well-worn subject with wit and irony and thoroughly deconstructing the expectation of what makes an evening's entertainment at the dance.

Strømgren's entry, Winter Again, is perhaps the most obviously

connected to classical modes of dance. It is evocative, performed immaculately and seriously by the company, using a stark set and a lilting classical score to evoke the coldest month. Flitting between the idea of winter as a metaphor for emotional darkness - the spoken interludes hint at all manner of savage antics - Strømgren even finds time for a brief object manipulation of a toy hare, old-fashioned hunting rifles and some awkwardly passionate pas de deux.

"One can do something new (which always means reinventing the wheel since everything has been done before somewhere) by theme and form and style et cetera," he says. "But I find it more interesting to always change my own way of working, as in always looking for new tools to tell a story or what can be associated into a story." Certainly, Winter bares scant relation to his most famous works which landed at the Fringe. While they invented new languages and often enjoyed a broad, physical humour, his choreography for SDT showcases the dancers' technique.

"The rehearsal period coincided with a knee injury of mine, and I thought why not – I’ll sit on a chair this time, and ask the dancers to provide shitloads of material," he recalls. "A refreshing flashback to earlier days for me, and hopefully a good process for them with a lot of personal investment. As for now, Winter Again is definitively a company piece, they have adapted my vision and made it their own."

Winter Again manages to be both emotionally tough and superficially stylish, with an undercurrent of pain and anguish never far from the surface. "But for the record," he insists. "No dancers were harmed in this production."

Victor Quijada, by contrast, comes not with a history of unclassifiable work but from the hip hop scene of Los Angeles. His piece has a great deal of fun playing with the audience - Quijada even insults himself early on, and his sense of humour allows the dancers to appear to be on the very edge of chaos. To even explain the central conceit is to give away the punchline, but when the crew throw down, they strut their stuff supremely.

"The work I make uses a movement vocabulary that is influenced by my past as a young b-boy and hip-hop freestyler, and very heavily informed by the contemporary ballet works I performed during my career," he says of his basic style. "I have developed a distinct style that (in my eyes) allows a dancer to be all things: explosive, acrobatic, sharp, fluid, gentle, introspective, honest." In addition to this, SDT have a great deal of fun as the piece cracks open expectations and slowly collapses in on apparent rivalries and ambitions within the company.

When asked about his style, Quijada is precise, if elusive. "I would probably describe it as a 'post-contemporary ballet-break dance-theatre' style," he replies: a description accurate but only comprehensible in the light of the performance. And while hip-hop dance can often be frustrating because of its insistence on authenticity and spectacle, Second Coming impresses through the way Quijada mocks pretension and arrogance. There is even a playful reveal - coming around half way through the performance - that challenges the choreographer's self-importance.

Both of these commissions are reminders of SDT's recent tradition of engaging with international trends in dance and playing with the audience's expectations. That the company so readily turn their skills to the demands of hip-hop and more classical styles suggest that Darkin's reign will capitalise on the advances made by Janet Smith.

Darkin herself is already presenting her debut choreography for SDT - Innocence - which was made for a younger audience. Pulled from her own back catalogue, it introduces the poetry of William Blake to children aged up to seven. mixing up the romantic mystic's words with the simple nursery rhymes that it sometimes imitates.

If the past decade has seen the two major Scottish dance companies, SDT and Scottish Ballet, develop their international reputation and presence, the appointment and arrival of new artistic directors insists that they are not ready to rest on their laurels. With Scottish Ballet offering an ambitious programme in the Edinburgh International Festival, SDT are competing with this triple offering. Darkin herself is a dynamic and original choreographer - although Innocence might keep the kids happy, she has more serious work for adults and her Disgo, which came to the Traverse a few years ago, is a bold breaking of the fourth wall that mashes up social and stage dance. And this double bill holds the promise of more imaginative work to follow.

A Cirque in the Park

Man Moue Rove Or 2 @ Traverse

http://www.traverse.co.uk/whats-on/event-detail/443/double-bill-squish--box-fresh.aspx

First thoughts on NDT2@ EFT

Hot @ Tramway

London Contemporary Dance School

Miss Hill, Making Dance Matter @ Art Screen

Martha Hill

Having grown up in a ballet school, I am very familiar with the energy, enthusiasm and (perhaps) mania that drives good dance teachers  - somewhere in Wessex, my mother is still urging young people to appreciate the glories of ballet. Martha Hill, admittedly working in a more contemporary choreographic context shared with Gypsy Booth a dedication to training, a determination not to be beaten by larger forces and a life-long passion for expression through the body.

Sentimental memories of my mum aside. Martha Hill comes across in the film Making Dance Matter as a champion of the avant-garde. Although she began her career as a dancer in Martha Graham's company, she soon discovered an aptitude for administration and pedagogy, which would lead to her long term role as Juiliard's director of dance (1952-1985).

Using old footage of her schools - including some spectacular sequences of many of the great American Modern Dance pioneers - and interviews with Hill and her friends - Making Dance Matter serves as  a fine testimony to someone who could be ferocious but also dedicated to her students' excellence. That her latter years were tangled by a conflict with New York Ballet over who got the best studios during the relocation of Juilliard only emphasises that here was a woman unwilling to bow to even the brightest names in the ballet firmament.

American Modern Dance - and its offshoots, such as the dance theatre developed by Pina Bausch - is one

My mum and my sister

of the most crucial theatrical movements of the twentieth century. Hill's personality - creative, dogged and lyrical - can be read in the work of the finest choreographers: indeed, Bausch herself was Hill's pupil. By pulling together talented creators into her school, Hill allowed collaboration and even found space for this pioneers to rehearse within Juilliard.

The film has the charm of a lovingly crafted obituary. It never baulks at showing Hill's ferocity, but dwells on her compassion and enthusiasm. Her pupils do remember her power, but also a more nurturing side, and the film operates both as an essay on her influence and as a marvellous archive of  contemporary dance vocabularies.

Of course, without Miss Hill, there would never have been the Sunday lunch arguments between Vile Jnr and his mother regarding the relative aesthetic worth of ballet against AMD. So, I can thank Hill for the long silences and my mother's continued campaign, a bit like Freddie Mercury, to bring ballet to the masses.

Robert and Maria @ Nottdance

Ever since Brecht banged on about the fourth wall - or perhaps when Aeschylus' chorus first entered and sung to the amphitheatre - the relationship between the audience and performer has been debated. The enthusiasm for You Me Bum Bum Train comes from a fascination with the sheer immersiveness of the production, and even a less controversial show, like Hotel Medea, can pose complex questions about who is the actor and who is the observer.

The nineteenth century ideal of the artist is still common. The great individual makes their art and reveals their wisdom. The audience gets to admire it, or hate it, and their role is merely to be a witness to the art. Add in the spice of modern consumerism, and the audience is merely a passive receptacle for the genius's seed.

What the contemporary trend for immersive theatre suggests is that the audience has more responsibility for the creative process. Ontroerend Goed make a point of including their response in their performances. The belief that art takes place at a point of connection between audience and artist is more than a fanciful version of the Sistine Chapel's vision of Man and God touching. It is a vibrant tool for devising theatre.

Both Robert and Maria and Assembly (part of Dance4's Nottdance 2013) rely on this moment. While Robert and Maria provides tiny details, the most dramatic moments happen in the imagination of the audience as they try to make narratives to explain their meaning. Assembly is more literal, adjusting the number of dancers to audience members, and moving from one scene to the next on cues from the entry of new audience members.

Since Nottdance is based on a cheeky pun, it is unsurprising that Assembly and Robert and Maria take place at the very edges of what can be considered dance. Their interest in abstract movements that imply narratives but are applicable to multiple interpretations line them up with most contemporary dance - for all Martha Graham's efforts, choreography is not as precise a medium as verbal language. Yet the more expected distinctive features of dance - the technical skill, the choreographic vocabulary, the precision of movement - are absent.

Any festival concerned with experimental art is likely to have works like these, however, because it is the relationship between audience and performer that the most difficult questions of format are being asked. Debates about "what is dance?" have been largely fruitless since choreographers like Pina Bausch insisted on having doses of chat between the physical work-outs and slapping lapels onto performances is fun, but speaks nothing of the emotional impact of theatre. Questioning the assumed positions of audience and actor,  on the other hand, cuts to a fundamental characteristic of theatre.

If all that  Robert and Maria or Assembly had to say was in the  exposure of this relationship, they would be empty pieces: rather, they use the challenge of breaking the expected relationship to open up the ideas within their pieces. Robert and Maria offer a contemplation on  devotion: Assembly plays out the impact of new members joining a social group. If it can be difficult for the audience to accept their new role as co-creators, this strategy has the virtue of helping theatre become a more inclusive, and flexible, art.

Sideways Rain @NottDance

Minimalism in music and visual art has always been clearly defined, becoming a signature sound or look for certain artists and composers: in dance, it has retained the common meaning, suggesting a lack of  movement. Yet in Sideways Rain, Guilherme Botelho has found a choreographic analogue to the heady vitality of Reich or Glass. Although the thirteen dancers do little more than cross from stage left to right, occasionally pausing or addressing each other, the relentless energy of the performance, and the gradual shifts towards more complex crossings lends Alias' production a modernist purpose that is sometimes grim, sometime celebratory.

At first, they crawl. Each dancer has the same set of movements, but different speeds. A new sequence is introduced, and gradually becomes the dominant pattern - from  crawling to walking to  rolling to tumbling. Murcof's minimal electro music is used like a film soundtrack, adding emotion to the movements: at first it broods, then injects a jittering energy, before emerging triumphant. If a dancer drops out of the constant flow,  they are ignored, perhaps taking a moment to change the paths of the others or attempt to engage them. Then, suddenly, they are sucked back into the relentless running from side to side.

For once, the description of the performance in the programme is accurate: "they tirelessly walk, run, fall, rise, stop then start again, driven by an inexplicable desire... towards a fate that seems to slip through their fingers... they depict  the human condition, the evolution of Man... a  visual and physical metaphor of brute force that animates all life."

The constant running is mechanical - each dancer is reduced to a cog in a machine that cannot stop. Murcof's alienating electronica stresses that only an impersonal will governs this universe, and that the running is an end, without purpose.

When a dancer pauses, it is as if they have briefly noticed the meaningless and, surprised, try to find something more. They might essay a brief pas de deux. They might block the runners' paths. These moments of grace are rapidly integrated back into the running, at best suggesting a new pattern of crossing.

A subtle change of lighting can lift the mood -  the running takes on a more thoughtful, even spiritual mood. While the individuals may still pace and race, their is more agency in each step. A finale, where clothes are left behind and the stage is criss-crossed by lines of thread, seems a delicious exhibition of freedom. Meaninglessness is replaced by sudden joy.

It is in these subtle changes of mood that Bothelho most closely follows the path of Reich or Glass, demonstrating how the single repetition is capable of dramatic velocity and exposing different emotions despite the limited vocabulary.  This minimalism might follow the harsh clatter of contemporary mechanical life, the dull routine of the commuter or the unimaginative shudder of pop beats: but in all of that, the indefatigable human spirit continues to feel.

Mill's Mortal Coil

December isn't a happy time for the critic of serious theatre. Of course, sitting next to Jim Davidson at The Pavilion pantomime will always be a fond memory and there are plenty of parties to grace with the critical presence. However, the real hardcore action seems to be, mostly, on holiday.

Fortunately, certain smart artists are using the quiet time to introduce next year's work. Ruth Mills, teacher and choreographer and dancer has announced her latest projects. Most excitingly, there's a lecture demonstration at the start of next month.

This Mortal Coil is a mash-up of performance and lectures. Dr Laura Gonzales, fresh back from Brooklyn, will be talking about the body of the hysteric - a matter of considerable concern to the critic who has one, while Lucy G Weir teams up with Mills to offer a history of contemporary dance from its roots in resistance to ballet through to the latest moves.

Mills is also fresh from working on the NTS' Jump project - an all-male community production. It's interesting to see that she is going to be working on an all-female piece, Girlfriend, for 2013. Mills has taught classes based on pop video moves, and Girlfriend is going to take a closer look at some of the misogynist subtexts behind the perfection of the female body-as-commodity.

She's still teaching all over the place too - and she was a poster woman for The Year of Creative Scotland.


This Mortal Coil

Thursday 3rd January 4:30pm
Sunday 6th January 4pm

Kylie Walters: Interview with the choreographer of The Chinaski Sessions (Full Text)

Much as I hate using a format like this - my stupid question, the artist's generous response - I do like to put out the complete version of interviews. Partially so that the artist doesn't think I have wasted their time - it's clear how much work goes into this - and partially so it is evident who much I adapt their answers to  follow my own insidious agenda. 

This is an interview with Kylie Walters. She choreographed The Chinaski Sessions  for David Hughes Dance. See it this weekend...

GKV:The most obvious question is why Bukowski? What attracted you to him as the foundation for the piece?

Bukowski's writing comes from a very masculine perspective, some would even say a misogynistic perspective. That interested me, firstly in the obvious sense that I was a woman working with an all male cast but also as a poetic analogy for the  phenomena that  heavy rock music often has a predominantly male audience and the dance world a predominately female following. 

That social cleavage already creates a tension. I'd read Women by Bukowski and was blown away by the way in which Bukowski draws you into his shambolic, alcohol fuelled and yet highly creative world. You are admirative, disgusted and fascinated in turns. The Chinaski Sessions plays on this. The band, their mates and hangers on are all male, there are no women in the room. This theatrical foundation provides the stamping ground for a range of male, and sometimes "cock rock" behaviour, be it testosterone fuelled spurts of energy, the simple joys of a bunch of guys hanging out together, the lethargy coupled with brewing aggression or the primitive urge to compete and egg one another on. 

Imagine a young, 7 headed Chinaski today, who has some funky moves and listens to rock rather than classical music. 

How far do you use the poetry or stories? From reading the release it appears that you are using chinaski more as a starting point to look at masculinity...

 I've taken the Chinaski reference merely as a springboard to explore masculine behaviour in a rock context. The piece is inspired more by the atmosphere of Chinaski's flat  rather than the poetry or stories of Bukowski per se. I do not see the point in "adapting" such a strong work. 

The name "Chinaski" in itself speaks to me on a musical level. It has a  percussive  and muscular ring to it,  which sits  with the emphasis I have put on the live rock music in the show by Belgian band I Love Sarah. 

How far is it possible to find new ground to discuss masculinity? Plenty has been said and danced...

Yes!  What interests me here is that  all this male energy is used and channelled to create something - rock. Something about the chemistry of hanging out and playing together spurs on a creative act. It's almost a ritualistic playing out of masculinity in order to access that creative territory. So I see it more through anthropological eyes  than it being pseudo psychological exploration of masculinity. 

Whether that is a fresh perspective or not it throws up questions for me in terms of creative process. How do men function and create in a group situation? Does a certain setting affect the style of what comes out in the end? This fascinates me. When a band locks themselves away in a cabin in the woods to record or decides to record in their bedroom, or in a castle it has to have an impact. If they eat pizza or macrobiotic food it has an impact. The flavours are going to be different.

How do you work with the band? At what point did they become part of the process?

I am a fan of I Love Sarah -  their music, their presence, their humour. I'd already worked with Jeroen Stevens (ILS drummer)  and something clicked and we knew we wanted to work  together again. I have pretty much based the piece on the band, so they were in the mix right from the beginning. We started out in a bar in Brussels, discussing what their place would be in the work and we all felt comfortable with that. 

I reassured them I would not make them dance! I'd already heard the band play live  so was familiar with their music and "stage style" which is informal, chatty and then BAMM. We selected songs which I felt served the work best and then together we tweaked them. They were very open to adding to and even changing the structure of some of their well known songs. A few songs in there are new material for them and one is created specially for the show. 

Time constraints dictated this approach. If we had 3 months to work on the piece I think we would have written all the music from scratch. The set order is not at all what they would normally play so it's a challenge for them to set up the loops in time and also to interact with some of the rhythms which the dancers add. 2 weeks into the process they came in and then spent 4 weeks in the studio with us.

 Apart from shaping the music for the piece and also integrating the presence of 5 other guys banging on their cymbals and destroying their cables, the band have quite a lot of text and stage activities to perform in the show. This is pretty new for them. They are an integral part of the show - not just the live musicians off on the side accompanying the action. I think this really pulls the show out of the realm of your standard rock gig or dance piece with live music. That took a lot of rehearsing - how to negotiate not only the music but also the physical, scenographic space for both the dancers and  musicians!

What was your route to becoming a choreographer and what keeps you doing it?

I have been choreographing ever since I can remember. I'm a very physical person. On the most basic level I guess I  see things choreographically. In the street, the cadence of people walking in time, the weird symmetry of a bus pulling up and a cloud passing by in the opposite direction, the movement of a crowd when they start head banging in unison at a concert. 

The way someone holds their drink and leans in to say something in a conversation. I've been involved  as a  dancer, actress and musician in many shows, most of which implied creating material rather than interpreting material. I  make pieces. I never think of making a "dance" piece, "theatre" piece or "music" piece. Choreography today is such a huge realm. You construct movement, you direct, you create a world.  That makes it exciting for me. I am often on the edge of what is considered dance. It's the ideas that keep me going,  and then finding the best means to express those ideas kicks in. 

Choreography is one of the tools I have in my bag to do that. If I think the idea will be better served by music or text - I will use it. Choreography has a lot to do with communicating your ideas well to a group of people, be they the lighting designer, the composer or the dancers. I really love the hands on reality of that.   

Arts Poker: What we saw last week...

15:30

Welcome to the first weekly Vile Arts Poker Contest. The rules are simple, because I am making them up as we go along,and fixing them so I win. Today's competitors are Gareth K Vile and Eric Karoulla - reigning champion and young pretender. Welcome Eric.

Why thank you for having me, Gareth. I'm not entirely sure about this competition, sir.

The rules are that you get to pick three arts events that you have seen in the past month. And we pit them against each other, to see who saw the best stuff and has the best taste.

Ooh, sounds like fun! However, you are a judge and a competitor, so how is this fair? Best taste is subjective - going back to your favourite argument about radical subjectivity - but isn't it always about what we can get tickets to?

Don't mention that. Anyway, you can go first. Tell me about something you've seen, and give a quick, spirited description...

Sonata For A Man and A Boy was quite exciting! Not only the exploration of the relationship between a music teacher and a student, but also an examination of what it is to be an adult - in this case, a grown man - and what it is to be a child.

Saw that at the Macrobert, in Stirling. I think it's heading to the Traverse next month.

Okay, so did this have music in it? The sonata suggests that there would be some... and what did you like about it, apart from it mirroring our friendship - with me as the music teacher, of course.

Yes, there was live music - the two played solos and duets on the cello. It was quite fascinating to see how they went from two separate instruments, to playing on the same one, when their 'voices' were in harmony with each other.

So what was it all about? And how did the music reflect the story?

Well, the narrative started off with a grown man - played by Greg Sinclair - playing with wooden figurines, and asking "Are you ready?". This phrase was used multiple times for various things, like the beginning of the 'class'. The story itself didn't really develop as a linear evolution - it essentially showed moments where a man behaves more like a boy, and a boy behaves more like a man. At some point, the boy puts on the man's blazer and takes over the role of teacher. 

As for the music, it was a sonata played over and over again - like a practice tune at a music lesson. It helped the story move along mainly through the role reversal, since both of them prove equally capable of playing the intricate melody.

Well, as far as music and performance goes, I'm raising you Marc Brew's Fusional Fragments... Brew's superb choreography allied with Dame Evelyn Glennie. The dancers took their cues from Glennie's wild live drumming - she paced the stage like a wild, matriarchal deity, provoking heads to nod in the audience and casting Brew's ballet-influenced movements as an atavistic, tribal ecstasy.

For music, I will put in PSB - Public Service Broadcasting - who played in Nice 'n' Sleazy's last week. They were phenomenal. They didn't even speak! All and any sound was produced from either the synthesizer they had, or the assortment of instruments - including a banjo - they had brought along. 

Meanwhile, they didn't really have to perform anything aside from the music, since they had brought with them clips of films that matched to their War Room EP. Dark music, but it really sat well with its theme!

Also, do you actually know what 'atavistic' means, Vile?

It means a biological throwback - like the slight tail I have at the base of my spine. That's why i don't like performances that last more than an hour - it hurts if I sit on it...

If we are going pure music, I raise you Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers. Nearly three hours of loud, fast and rocking Japanese drumming. from the first professional Taiko group in the UK. They had their teacher over, so we got a few sips from the source - he pulled out this drum that was wired up to sound like a bass guitar, and got into a serious improvisation jam with his student.

That covers both of your shows I think - a student/teacher relationship played out in performance of music, some seriously heavy beats... and they explained a little about the music, too. Mugenkyo are beautifully tough, too: there is something almost military about their precision,and melodramatic in the way they switch drums and bang hell out of the beats. When the percussion starts to find a melody, it's astounding... I was transported to another place... tribal energy strikes again...

Meanwhile, I got to the Frock On Frock Off Sunday Bizarre, at the glue factory, which involved plenty of live art interaction, as well as screenings of three short films by Lock Up Your Daughters. It was quite a fun day, with varying tones, ranging from Foxy's (of Foxy & Husk) emotive miming to a chat about consent with Harry Giles. Also, present was Ian Nulty with his Sauna persona! 

Prior to the Olympiad, there was a Query Queery discussion, which allowed us to debate what it was to be a member of the LGBTQ society and whether or not the Q was relevant.

Interaction win!

I think you do win, and I regret missing that:Tranny and Roseannah were great fun on our show last week, and although I caught one night of the cabaret - with great acts - I had the feeling that it was part of a broader agenda.

It seems as if Frock Frock Off was uniting queer sexuality with what I would call "queer performance" - not in any sexual sense, but just in the sense of being other. It's an ambition project, and sending a day on it would be far more profitable than just one evening - when I reviewed the show, I felt that it was pointing to something. Whereas you went to the source.

Well, looks like I can't win even when I make up the rules. Your prize is... a delicious baked potato I made in the microwave.

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

Cab it Up!

There are many things that disappoint me - my own ability to cope with hot weather being the one most pressing at this moment. However, the opportunity to work with Michael Clark has always been high on my "to do" list. And now, there is that opportunity.

Only I can't do it, because I am going to be fringing it during August, and won't be able to commit to the rehearsals.

However, if any men are interested and, like me, they lack dance training, I'd rush to this site.

www.dancehouse.org/thebarrowlandsproject




Wiping away my tears, I have cut and pasted the information...

The iconic Scottish dancer and choreographer Michael Clark returns to Glasgow following the company’s remarkable four-week long residency at the Whitney Museum, New York. He will once again engage both professional and community dancers to generate choreography, expanding what our experience of movement can be. This will culminate in performances at the celebrated Glasgow Barrowlands on 8 & 9 September 2012, the final weekend of the London 2012 Festival and marking the shift in focus to Scotland and Glasgow 2014.

Michael Clark Company and Dance House invite local people to become performers alongside the Company dancers, accentuating the communal dance experience in this landmark event. The Barrowlands Project is supported by Creative Scotland and produced in partnership with Michael Clark Company, Glasgow Life and Dance House, Glasgow.

VOLUNTEER REQUIREMENTS
• Age 18 or over
• No previous formal dance training - (by formal dance training we mean vocational full time training, this does not exclude those who have attended regular dance classes, either recently or in the past).
• Able to participate in movement/dance for 2-3 hours a day.
• Available for ALL performance and rehearsal times, with flexibility to attend rehearsals on other days/times as needed.
• While applications from all over Scotland are welcomed, we anticipate this being of most interest to people in the Greater Glasgow area as participants need to commit to the intensive period of rehearsals in Glasgow.

HOW TO APPLY & REHEARSAL DATES
For rehearsal schedule please go to: www.dancehouse.org/thebarrowlandsproject
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• Deadline: 12 noon Friday 8 June 2012.
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Those Dogs Want More

Once I gave up on completing my article on Pavlova's Dogs - I like to think that sudden endings are charmingly reticent, rather than betraying my lack of motivation - I decided to find a few images to illustrate the piece. Unfortunately, I chanced about a few reviews of Pavlova's Dogs which were not exactly in disagreement with me, but seemed to think that giving the work a rating - or using phrases like "it's quite a lively ride" - is still the best way to write a critique. Puzzling over a choreography, poking around at the ideas, or having some smart-arse interpretation, is oddly unfashionable.

It only took a paragraph of venting for me to feel better. I accept that those reviews have a right to exist, and are probably quite helpful as part of the general discussion around dance.

No, no they are not. If Pavlova's Dogs has any worth, apart from keeping a dozen people off the streets and giving audiences cheap laughs at bunny ears, the critique has to engage with the ideas that the choreographer was addressing. So, rather than name and shame the reviewer who has so displeased me, I had better get back to writing.

Rachel Lopez de la Nieta is fascinated by the undercurrent of cruelty that exists in ballet. Her fairy tale - told by a man who might represent the patriarchy, or just be a rather bitchy type - echoes the romance of classical ballet's stories, but is explicitly unpleasant towards the heroines. Then the dancers are accused of being fat. They are dressed simply, and their dances are increasingly contorted as the fairy tale gets more vicious. One of them argues with the man who might represent the patriarchy. She is placated.

Add to this the brief programme notes that claim that it "is partly inspired by some of the early experiments in psychology" where certain ethics were questionable". Lopez de la Nieta is drawing a direct analogy between the torture of dogs to find out how instinct could be manipulated, and the training of ballet dancers.

Nipping back to my thoughts on Streetcar, which included an unease about the physical state of some dancers, I am inclined to think that the playful veneer of PDs is less interesting than the implied attack on ballet's ability to ruin lives and turn women into mere bodies. This is a long way from the post-modern dance of Trisha Brown, which focusses on breaking down existing possibilities of choreographic movement.

Revolving Pavlova

Scottish Dance Theatre's Drift (choreographed by James Wilton, starring a bruising track by Nine Inch Nails) is one of those pieces that gives "contemporary dance" a good name. It's a classic pas de deux format - sexy, bursts of technical brilliance, thumping yet emotive soundtrack - with a few added touches that separate it from ballet. Specifically, it is melancholic and the dancers play trust games - and the dancer's moves and gestures are spikier, more aggressive.

At only ten minutes, Drift can either stop the show or act as a juicy bonus. No wonder it has held its place alongside Kate Weare's Lay Me Down Safe on SDT's latest touring triple bill: and it acts as a comfort blanket before the finale of Rachel Lopez de la Nieta's experiment on Pavlova's Dogs.

At this point, I have a bad feeling I am about to shame myself by trying to use Big Theories. I am thinking post-modernism, contrasting popular ideas about what it is ("everything is relative, man"), a slightly more rigorous definition ("there is no central narrative, and everything is relative, human") and dance's specific movement (the Judson Memorial Church, buddy).

Because to call both Drift and Pavlova's Dogs "contemporary dance" seems absurd. I am not even sure if  PDs is even dance (not that that's a bad thing). It asks questions about the nature of dance - thankfully, it gets beyond "what is dance?" quickly and has a few pokes at ballet mythology. There's music and the two guys do a bit of "entertainment" (tops off, rocking out to Fleetwood Mac, or dressed as bunnies and camping it up to Flanagan and Allen). There are even four female dancers making shapes that would not disgrace the choreography of -well, Kate Weare or James Wilton.

Yet the main feature of PDs appears to be the chatter of two guys. It is their argument that creates the dramatic tension, their ideas that dictate the pace. Lopez de la Nieta works closely with a dramaturge, Henrietta Hale. Unlike Scottish Ballet's Streetcar, where the dramaturge seemed to just encourage the choreography's theatricality, it feels as if Pavlova's Dogs would be as comfortable as a theatre company's production.

None of these things are necessarily bad, unless I am trying to insist that rigid categories are more important than an art-form's flexibility in the face of an artist's vision. It's probably important to Lopez de la Nieta's intentions that the usual conventions of dance are so easily disassembled, and since her own training was in classical ballet (at least at first), it's as if she is working through both personal and public stereotypes of "the dancer".

It would probably be better to simply call it "performance", but that denies the importance of the dance conventions that the choreographer aims to deconstruct. And I can't call it post-modern dance: although it conforms to the more rigorous definition two above, it lacks, except in limited sequences, the precise strictures that came out of the Judson Memorial Church crew ("task-based" movement, fiddling about with the gaze of the dancer, rejection of virtuosity).

Here's the real post-modern magic of Pavlova's Dogs: it is never fixed, and any attempt at definition causes the definition to slip away, like the last pea on the plate, chased by the critical fork.

Tony Mills Breaks Convention

I once called Tony Mills the hardest working man in Scottish dance - mainly because he splits his time between being a hip-hop maestro and a contemporary choreography power-house. Given that his Room 2 Manoeuvre incarnation has been supported by Made in Scotland to rock the Fringe at Zoo Venues, and that he is making an appearance at Breakin' Convention 12 when it reaches Scotland, this might be an example of my cheeky catch-phrases being vaguely accurate. 

Skills aside, Mills is always a convivial interviewee. His enthusiasm for both b-boy action and more traditional forms is infectious, and his costume at BC is always a talking point. I bothered him for a Skinny article last month, but he was so entertaining and informative, I thought I would pop the transcript up here...

Are you hosting or performing at Breakin' Convention  this year?

I am hosting along side an equally big personality in the shape of Breakin' Convention mastermind Jonzi D. This year BC goes to Eden court to show the highlanders how they get down. 

My banter is seen as a worthy addition to the mix so i'll be joining them on this road trip via a dip in loch ness. I won't be getting my groove on with the local acts as much of my time is spent checking on their progress and organising foyer activities and the all important after party. 

I will, however, be performing at part of the improvised freestyle funk forum for Breakin' Convention in London from the 5-7th May and Room 2 Manoeuvre is hatching big plans for the summer...watch this space!

Which outfits are you most looking forward to this year? And I don't mean your outfit, I mean crews - and why?

Without being too much of a cop out i would have to say all of them. Every time BC comes to Scotland it is a huge catalyst for local groups to get in the studio and start creating. It makes a huge difference when you have something to aim for with regards to a performance and even more so when it is such a huge platform as BC. 

Stalwarts of the scene, Random Aspekts are teaming up with new kids on the block, Heavy Smokers, to present a mix of smooth moves, suits and soul singing. All girl B-Girl outfit, Ready Ready Sauce are using social issues that concern their daily lives as the source of inspiration for their new piece. Edinburgh based Jackin' The Box choreographer Ashley Jack was recently part of BC's Back to the Lab programme. This was set up to develope the skills of emmerging choreographers working in the hip hop genre. I'm keen to see what she will bring to the stage after being part of such an experience. Audiences will get a taste of what is possibly a more minority form of hip hop/funk dance styles from locking group, Rockabeat. 

And this time it's not an all Scottish affair as Sana Crew's Rice 'n' Peas and place prize nominees Bad Taste Cru take to the festival theatre stage. Both of these groups reside in Newcastle. The international acts are going to be really exciting and will showcase highly technical hip hop/breaking from current Battle of the Year champions, Vagabonds, with a more conceptual take from Clash 66. Both companies are an example of how hip hop dance in the theatre is not just a novelty but that these artists bring a world class level of skill, commitment and creativity to the genre. 

I might be obsessed with the performances on the stage, but BC is about a great deal more than that - how can people get more into the groove when BC hits the EFT?

From Day 1 BC has always been about trying to take the vibe from the street into the theatre. With this in mind foyer activity is given just as much importance as that which happens on stage. As soon as the doors open people can expect local DJs spinning and drummers drumming for dancers on the open floor. If you want to learn how to top rock, drop, footwork into freeze there will be workshops on offer from local dancers. 

Or if art on paper is more your thing, we'll also have graffiti artists in the house to show how to bag your tag. And don't forget to look out for free giveaways throughout the evening. We'll also have live performances from fife hip hop crews UNIK and WOTT crew. 

The reach of hip hop is now global - what nations are starting to come to the fore these days?

In terms of the battle scene really the level is pretty high across the board. There are more competitions these days and also it's easier to travel internationally. The internet allows footage to blaze around the world and all this helps to push the scene and the dancers. On the theatre front, i still think France leads the way. They have been producing work in this genre for many years and have a good infrastructure in place to support such artists. 

At home, the scene is definitely moving forward. Even in terms of perception by the industry. This year companies such as BC, Champloo, Avant Garde and Room 2 Manoeuvre (ahem!) appeared on the British Dance Edition programme. So it's encouraging that work within this genre is seen as part of the dance fabric of the UK. BC is also doing their bit to develope choreographic talent through their back to the lab programme and supporting collaborations involving UK artists. 

And why aren't Flawless on the bill, then?

Too busy milking the commercial industry for all it's worth...quite right too.