“Something Old, Something New...” DAVID HUGHES DANCE SCOTLAND

I'm always excited when David Hughes Dance announces a new tour: they have consistently pushed the boundaries of Scottish dance over the last few years, and tend to have a few treats held in reserve (I know that they've got Christopher Bruce's Hurricane in the repertoire, a solo that combines my father's favourite singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan, and my sister's favourite contemporary choreographer). 

When a company usually announce a mixed bill with iconic choreographers, it tends to be one piece by a well known name and three to make up the numbers. In truth, I have only read about the four choices from DHD, but all four do have my attention. 

Press release begins:

Spitfire (an advertisement divertissement) was Bourne’s first hit and something of a signature piece. It places Perrot’s famous pas de quatre, made as a kind of diva-off for the four leading ballerinas of the 19th Century, in the world of men’s underwear advertising and mail order catalogue photography.

It is both a celebration of male vanity and an affectionate comment on the preening grandeur of the danseur noble. Having developed the original role of the swan in Bourne’s Swan Lake, Hughes is delighted to have secured this work from one of the dance world’s biggest names. - Matthew Bourne’s Spitfire is presented under license by New Adventures.

So, there are four dancers, all male, and Bourne uses the stilted poses of catalogue models as a movement vocabulary. It's funny, and the men are all in their skidders. They don't so much dance together as fight for the attention of the audience. 

Adagietto, a traditional and dramatic Graham-based solo from the legendary Bob Cohan was originally performed by Hughes in his solo tour ‘MAP’ in the late 90s. It tells the story of the betrayal of Saint Sebastian, set against the dramatic Gustav Mahler Symphony Number 5 Adagietto for strings.

Following a period of working together in Lloyd Newson’s DV8, Hughes first commissioned Tanja Liedtke back in 2007. Having earned her stripes with Australian Dance Theatre, Liedtke was a rising star in dance and secured the position of Artistic Director of Sydney Dance Company. However, she tragically lost her life three months after her time in Scotland. Her work Imploded - Une Reverie Romantique is a quirky, athletic and tongue-in-cheek tribute to the first ever non-narrative ballet – Les Sylphides. With dancers assuming the cheeky and mischievous attributes of sylphs, there are more than a few references to this infamous ballet…although ballet, this certainly is not.


Finally, seminal choreographer Cathy Marston (BERN:Ballett) will present a new commission inspired by 'that Scottish play' - Shakespeare's Macbeth. Refraining from approaching the entire plot, Marston will take inspiration from the ‘sleepwalking scene’. Shakespeare's themes of ambition/power, guilt and the irreversible momentum of violence will also be explored through high-energy dance and arresting imagery.





The theme of “Something Old, Something New...” now sees the company cast a reflective look back to its roots in pure dance and re-engages with some of the key mentors and collaborators of David M Hughes the performer. The tour is a celebration of calibre and is a triumphant return to the world in which Hughes established himself as one of the best dancers of his generation.

In the tradition of his early solo tours ‘Map’ and ‘Maps’, this tour engages with revered dance makers with which Hughes has a personal connection. These people helped shape his career and, through these relationships, the early foundations of David Hughes Dance were born. Hughes embodies an era and a level of performance skill that few have achieved. By reflecting on the birth of the company this way, David Hughes Dance celebrates its inheritance while looking to the future with ‘Something Old, Something New’

‘…On its very first appearance in Pfalzbau, David Hughes Dance Company from Edinburgh gave a powerful, eclectic and enthralling performance...” - Die Rheinpfalz


‘…the stage overflowed with diversity…Hughes has struck gold!’ – The Scotsman on The Red Room


‘Well-crafted, resonates with wit & intelligence and the kind of cross-genre integration that so much dance-theatre fails to achieve. Catch it if you can.’ –The Herald on The Red Room





TOUR DATES


26th October – Dance Live @ The Lemon Tree (Aberdeen)
1st November – The Brunton (Musselburgh)
4th November – Gairloch Hall (West Coast Arts)
6th November – Mull Theatre (Druimfin - Isle of Mull)
7th November – Craignish Village Hall (Ardfern)
9th November – The Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh)
17th November – Beacon Arts Centre (Greenock)
19th November – Eden Court Theatre (Inverness)
20th November – The Macphail Centre (Ullapool)
23rd November – Aros Centre (Isle of Skye)

Man Dance

I've always been a little suspicious of choreographic attempts to define masculinity. They have become very popular in the last few years - the natural reaction, perhaps, of the dancer's ambiguity about their masculinity against more stereotypical male roles, like the sportsman. Personally, I got over any ideas that dancers weren't tough guys the first time I saw the Bolshoi Ballet, and read about Baryshinkov's sexual conquests.

There's inevitably plenty of fighting and peacocking, and the only reason that both The Chinaski Sessions and 12 Dancers don't annoy me beyond measure is that they both have good excuses for taking the male as subject. Between them, the two pieces employed most of the male dancers associated with Scotland and although there are those predictable play-fights (yes, you can lift each other. Well done), they manage to go a little deeper.

The Chinaski Sessions is choreographed by a woman, Kylie Walters, which at least means that this is an outsider's view of masculinity. It uses the avatar of Charles Bukowski to see whether all that pizza-eating, jockeying for position and showing off can be creative. The interaction between the five dancers, including Jack Webb, exhibiting a genuine charisma away from his solo pieces and pretend drunk lout Michael Sherin, and the band I Love Sarah is frequently boorish and thuggish but the climax, which pictures a lads' night out in hideous detail, reveals Walter's talent for exposing character through deft, precise movements.

12 Dancers is the result of Andy Howitt's campaign to bring together a gang of male dancers who represent the various stages of the dancer's career. He is not afraid to pull the older guys on stage - Ian Spink has been better known as a choreographer for the past thirty years, and Peter Royston, having once been with Scottish Ballet, has moved into dance development in Perth. The costumes - suits, these boys are a jury and in their court-room best - add to the cast's gravitas. It's a shock when Allan Irvine busts a few b-boy moves.

Despite the inevitable ruckus, which does look a bit like a primary school lunch-break, 12 Dancers does a good job of using the various scenes to illustrate conflict through dance without it turning into hand-bags at dawn. Telling the classic story about that one time the jury had its mind changed by one man, the narrative is simple and direct. The men argue, through dance, and eventually agree that the defendant is not guilty.

Howitt's ambitious choreography pulls together the various techniques of his 12 men. Daniel Aing brings Capoeira from Marseilles, Malcolm Shields seems to come from a more physical theatre place. Unsurprisingly, Matthew Hawkins is a constant presence, his balletic precision married to an arch enthusiasm. As the piece develops, the different techniques are thrust cheek by jowl and are merged into something approaching an integrated style. If the younger dancers tend to be more emphatic and showy, the seriousness of the older men lends the performance weight.

Masculinity is only half of the story - where Walters adds the idea of creativity, Howitt slams in justice. The narrative is simple enough not to get lost- despite it not always being clear who is arguing for what - and the spectacle of 12 skilled dancers piling around the stark set is frequently comic or impressive. Perhaps more than the content, or even the attempt to juxtapose different dance styles, 12 Dancers is a spectacle, and a one stop guide to Scotland's male dance community.

Except for Tony Mills, who is in Russia. And the cast of The Chinaski Sessions. And Tommy Small and Tom Pritchard, who are doing their show on Friday. There's quite a few male dancers in Scotland.

That might explain why masculinity tends to be a topic, but I haven't seen female choreographers feed a similar need to deconstruct the feminine. True, Curious Seed did have an entry in the Fringe called The Woman Who Wants To Be Funny but that was as much about comedy as it was about gender.

I did grow up around dancers, and the thing I remember most is not how they were compromised in their masculinity, but that they had loads of women flocking to them. I think I got picked on a bit at school, but that wasn't because I got caught wearing my ballet tights. I was an irritating egg-head who liked Latin.

Last Chance: David Hughes and Matt Foster talk The Chinaski Sessions

Scotland is particularly blessed with a cohort of companies and choreographers which is willing to take dance seriously: from Janis Claxton's bold use of simian movements through to Christine Devaney's  dance theatre, the past decade has been healthy and challenging. David Hughes Dance have been at the front of this trend, annually presenting a piece that pokes at predictable processes and concentrated on controversial content. At the start of the current tour, of The Chinsaki Sessions, Hughes and associate director Matt Foster talked about the company, their vision and how they can use a critic as a marketing promise...

GKV: It seems as if you are intent on challenging audiences to define what dance can be: your ever expanding repertoire of pieces, new choreographers, surprising content - last time it was eating people, this time it's masculine rock. Behind this, is there a David Hughes Dance vision that unites your output?

David Hughes: After 26 years I've been around the block and am easily bored, so am always trying to get something that excites me. If I have the right recipe this will come through to the audience.

The DHD vision is the performers: we don’t provide choreographers with the kinds of performers they are used to working with. These guys are a mixed bag of highly skilled performers from different disciplines, and 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.

Matt Foster: It’s simple really - the artistic vision of the company is to challenge and redefine the boundaries of dance and physical theatre. Every work we produce must in some way attempt to do this, to challenge notions of context, notions of what technique really means and certainly to challenge convention. We aim to try and push Scottish products beyond the conventional, to aspire to the ground-breaking work found in Europe/abroad - this is only possible if you’re willing to take risks and NOT play it safe as so many do.


GKV: What attracted you to Chinaski/Bukowski as a subject? Is it the chance to play with identity and autobiography or the detail of his stories? 

DH: It’s not the theme or the narrative that attracts me, it’s the choreographer, and although it’s not a conscious effort, we have a history of supporting strong female choreographers. There are really good choreographers out there who just happen to be women - ferocious women who kick arse at this. It speaks volumes that a female choreographer can take this bunch of male dancers and a rock band and whoop them into shape.

GKV: I am assuming there that you had a say in the content... Which suggests my next question... Once you've got the choreographers on board, do you get much say in what happens in the studio?

DH: I do now get a say in what happens in the studio and the work. I keep an eye on things; in commissioning works I am a client with a commitment to my audience; I want a good product. As a company that likes to take risks, we also have to be clever not to offend our audiences. I am there to support, and within reason there are rules in place to have constructive criticism without knocking the choreographer’s confidence.


MF: That is what we offer as a company - a blank canvas of talent and resources for a choreographer to fully realise their vision. However, we still have to have the last say as we have to protect the integrity of the organisation and the relationships we have forged with our partners and funders.

GKV: I know that you are one for strong narratives... What can we do about all this abstract dance that seems to be replacing choreography that might ... Communicate something? 

DH: I believe in the way we work, that you have to be at a phenomenal level to do a solely abstract work. But then some people do just like watching bodies, each to their own!

MF: Abstract dance has its place and certainly, those who obsess over technique advocate it but our journey has led us to realise that audiences enjoy narrative as they feel included - that they ‘get it’ and have something to follow. As a vehicle, narrative shines a light on an individual’s charisma as opposed to just the shapes and forms of that individual. Charisma, character, passion - these make us feel something and that is the strong point of DHD.



GKV: Another leading question there... Forgive me- but finally- what can an audience expect this time?" 
DH: Firstly, don’t apologise. This time an audience can expect a full on evening of in your face, relentless testosterone, you get to the end and go ‘what was that!’

If you don’t like the dance, you’ll love the music. If you don’t like the music, you’ll love the dance. If you hate it all Gareth Vile will run down the street nude- or, as a registered charity, we’ll accept donations for him not to!

I'm random and spontaneous, we don’t set ourselves in any category but we exist in the periphery of dance and physical theatre. We are now returning to pure dance, but who can say what will happen next? Get ready for our next couple of years!

MF: As mentioned, this is a charismatic show. It doesn't fall into the conventional realm of dance and that is a conscious choice. This work was created to ‘stomp on the stale ground of contemporary dance’. What you will see is seven guys putting their guts and soul into 80 minutes of rock fuelled madness and only out-of-touch bun-heads with cobwebs in their ears/eyes could fail to appreciate it.

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.   

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

Sorry, Michael, but Rock is Dead ( late October)

Michael Clark said that Rock has been his rock. Last week, I interviewed my childhood hero, Michael Gira, who has released the most comprehensive, expansive and precise album of his career. Ben Frost is about to perform his album By The Throat at Glasgow's Fruitmarket.

These three events only emphasise how rock music is nothing more than a corpse, a decaying memory of a time when youth was more than a currency for marketing. Once a vibrant cultural movement, allied with fashion and often emerging from the art schools of London and Glasgow, rock music either trades on past glories - thank you, Public Image Limited for your recent tour that reminded us how good you were in the 1980s - dilutes its energy in pastiche of past styles - Amanda Palmer has abandoned the punk cabaret for a bloated, dated sound - or is energised by new alliances - Clark's use of Scritti Politti is far more interesting than their music, and Ben Frost wanders into neo-classical and electronica, despite his use of rock's iconic "loud guitar."

Gira's Swans, meanwhile, have very little connection to anything else within rock. Their ambition only highlights how mediocre most bands have become.

But how can rock revive itself? Luckily, Scotland has some shows that might give a clue to the future. Why attend a traditional gig - standing about in over-crowded rooms, battling the drunks to buy an over-priced orange juice and missing the last train home - when it's possible to get a musical fix and be entertained and educated at the same time?

Spreading my attention north, David Hughes Dance is taking The Chinaski Sessions to the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen. Starring  Belgian post-rock duo I Love Sarah and five male dancers with a little too much energy, choreographer Kylie Walters has fun cracking open the macho myth and peeking at the way that rock'n'roll is tied up with the sort of hard-drinking, boorish heroism that Charles Bukowski celebrated in his poetry and prose.

Unlike many attempts to respond to Bukowski, and most rock bands' attitudes towards women, world and work, Walters approach is neither uncritical nor savage: her approach involved finding an innate masculine energy and letting it dance.

I'm unlikely to shut up about The Sonica Festival for the next two months - it sits on the edge of at least three art forms, so will end up appearing in any top five I care to make - but that a musical festival contains so little rock is telling. One contribution from the world of pop culture is #Unravel, the installation-collaboration between Found and  Aidan Moffat. I sometimes wonder whether Found, a band who do proper gigs and everything, are more concerned with distancing themselves from rock and associating with a visual art community: #Unravel was a cheeky highlight of the Glasgow International Art Fest, and allows the audience to follow through Aidan Moffat's selection of short stories, set to Found's music. Plus this one is free.

I suppose that these events either contradict my assumption that rock is dead by demonstrating that it is re-inventing itself through careful collaboration, or prove it through the rock's need to collaborate with other, more inspired arts. I think I was pushing my luck in the first place: an album as forceful, brutal and occasionally poetic as Swans is unlikely to have become popular without an audience already familiar with punishing noise, extended jams and a taste for the psychedelic, and Michael Clark was pointing out how rock has continued to inspire him. Hell, I'd change the title if I didn't like it so much.

China. Ski. Tours

I had serious doubts about this production. I mean, I love David Hughes Dance - when they upset everyone else at the 2011 Fringe with Last Orders, I could not see what the fuss was all about. Didn't the critics know that Al Seed was likely to indulge his fascination with the dark side? Are dancers twitching like insects really that surprising? Wouldn't a degree of revulsion be expected in a piece about cannibalism? And unlike a great deal of dance, which aims for the "abstract and beautiful" vote, Hughes was making a stand for dance that, like, was actually about something. Last Orders was funny, even kitsch during the disco scene, intense and articulate.

So, it isn't some beef with the company that worried me: it was the subject. Charles Bukowski. Like most overly-intellectual boys who are scared of women, I had my Bukowski phase. I was in my twenties, got hold of a copy of Post Office and decided that the true writer would avoid the bohemian life. I got a job cleaning in a hospital, wrote HANK on my name tag and bemoaned my ugliness.

Only I stopped short when I saw him fighting his wife in a documentary, and realised that severe alcoholism might encourage a taut writing style but also ends up in writing the same bloody book for forty years. Bukowski was a thuggish man, and all that bullshit about the beauty of his soul (every time he gets a fuck, the woman seems to comment on it. And the size of his prick) could not disguise the savagery of his attitude to women.

Much as I enjoyed the quality of Grid Iron's take on the Bukowski legend - especially thanks to David Paul Jones' piano magic - an unfortunate programme note that suggested Bukowski loved women, really, soured me on the deal. In Barflies, he breaks a woman's arm. That isn't loving women in a special way.

I needed to be persuaded that David Hughes' Chinaski Sessions was not going to make the same mistakes. Luckily, and this is one of the reasons that I love David Hughes Dance, they set me up with the choreographer.

Kylie Walters had already written an essay on why she wanted to do this show, and I'll be ripping that off later. However, she was willing to clarify for me why Bukowski could be redeemed by dance.

"Bukowski's writing comes from a very masculine perspective, some would even say a misogynistic perspective," she admits. "That interested me, firstly in the obvious sense that I was a woman working with an all male cast." 

To be honest, that had struck me: Hughes had pulled together a fairly impressive gang of seven- especially given that twelve of Scotland's top male dancers has been recruited for Deliberance. Jack Webb, Rob Heaslip, Michael Sherrin, Matthew Foster and Martin Lindinger are all creators in their own right. 

"But it's also a poetic analogy for the phenomena that heavy rock music often has a predominately male audience," she continues. "And the dance world has a predominately female following. That social cleavage already creates a tension."

Chinaski was the name of the hero in Bukowski's various novels: a thinly veiled ersatz version of the author and deeply unpleasant human being. Using that name, rather than the novelist's, suggests that Walters is not interested in autobiography but something more theoretical. 

 "I've taken the Chinaski reference merely as a springboard to explore masculine behaviour in a rock context," she agrees. "The piece is inspired more by the atmosphere of Chinaski's flat rather than the poetry or stories of Bukowski."

."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."

This is intriguing me. Obviously, I don't spend that much time with other guys - at least not in large groups. That's partially because I am a loner who doesn't wash enough, but  like to say it is because I am not enamoured of how masculinity works in groups. It's how wars start, or something. However, Waters is using the male cast not to praise masculine swagger but examine it.

"What interests me here is that all this male energy is used and channelled to create something - rock," she continues. "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." 

Hmm. I've only managed to cut an paste bits from her first two replies, and I am already interested, and willing to throw away my doubts. I guess some people will see Chinaski in the title and think it's cool... but I feel that they might be getting a little more than they expected.

Now touring, and reaching The Arches in November

Dark Dancing Times

Since this year’s Big Lie is Financial Meltdown – notice how no-one can afford to pay their rent these days – it is unsurprising to see a revival of miserable theatre. Both Occasional Cabaret and David Hughes Dance are touring some bleak visions around Scotland – although only the OC are promising a free Apocalypse with every ticket.

Catching Hughes’ Last Orders at The Arches, following a grand fuss at The Fringe and a reworking that emphasises the Dance, was a surprisingly warm and witty pleasure. Of course, cannibalism and disco debauchery is not everyone’s delight, but the critical response to their Traverse run was hysterical. Somewhere between the calls for a funding cut – the National Theatre of Scotland had got behind this – and statements that made Last Orders sound like an updated version of The Rite of Spring, Al Seed’s retelling of the Sawney Bean legend tours BDSM, live art and disco duets with a sly irony.

There’s no grand narrative, more a series of vignettes of Bean, captured in his mundane monstrosity by Alex Rigg, and his family seducing and punishing each other. After an opening that shackles the glitch-physicality of  Seed’s distinctive insect contortions, the show follows Bean down the club and back to his dungeon, alluding to domestic violence and the horrible claustrophobia of the family that kills together, stays together.  

The shocks are gradual: Bean’s final rant, before he is led away either to justice or some more bondage play, is surreal and stoned; the erotic flirtations of the dance floor give way to more sinister choreography and the company revels in their diverse skills. BBoying, ballet and a splash of dry, precise technique that hints at Cunningham are seamlessly meshed, and Seed’s can of Beans suggests a horror that is hidden inside everyone’s carnal desires.

Apocalypse, meanwhile, is a cabaret that goes for the political throat. As the cabaret revival gets its own Scottish Festival, Occasional Cabaret recall leftist agit-prop theatre through turns that concentrate on moral evils rather than spiritual possibilities. There is a strong sense of good and evil throughout the evening, giving a secular reading of various religious virtues and, most directly, mocking the arrogance of a ruling class that wants to punish the ruled for their own profligacy.

If the Apocalypse never quite materialises, the two female performers sing and skit their way through all Four Horsemen easily, drawing loose connections between Third World poverty and First World Greed, racism and sin, middle-class guilt and millennial paranoia. The cabaret format is ideal for this kind of satire: ironically, the structure of song, on-stage banter and monologue could have done with a little more variety.

It is a sign, not of the end times but our latest turn of the economic cycle that there is a space for clearly political theatre like this. There’s a confidence in its targeting of military, economic and social evil that flows oddly within the fluid uncertainty of much neo-cabaret: recalling the 1980s, it struggles to connect with more contemporary understandings that implicate us all.

Nevertheless, these works are a quick snapshot of theatre in 2011: dark, anxious and immediate. DHD has a more modern sensibility – we are all Sawney Bean – but as long as the government keeps reminding us how poor we are going to be, the nights will be drawing in earlier.

Coming Soon: David Hughes and Last Orders

"I feel the company has an openness to the distortions and corruptions of dance to creative ends."
Alex Rigg, performer and poster boy for Last Orders


When David Hughes Dance hit the Traverse with The Red Room at Fringe 2009, the enthusiasm of the critics was contagious. Not only did he recruit the dark lord of clowning, Al Seed, he presented a version of The Masque of the Red Death that incorporated Indian dance, a disorientating light scheme and even a joke about ballet at the French court. Perhaps taking his cue from continental companies like Les Ballet C de la B, Hughes recruited a diverse cast, and placed their technical skill and traditions at the service of Seed's fiendish vision.

Come 2011, and expectations were running high for the "sequel": Al Seed taking on the legend of Sawney Bean, Scotland's most famous cannibal. Yet the result divided critics. Some delighted in the savagery of Seed's vision; others attacked it as predictable and distasteful. It was even accused of bulletin boards of "not being theatre" - an accolade usually afforded to the most challenging work that settles down in subsequent years to become an establishment favourite, like The Rite of Spring.

Hughes' career has included time in Ballet Rambert - when, under choreographer Christopher Bruce, they were are their creative peak - and DV8, who were crucial during the introduction of physical theatre to wider audiences. His subsequent work has included solo pieces from some of the UK's finest choreographers - especially the challenging Bruce's Hurricane, set to the music of Bob Dylan and retelling the story of the unjustly imprisoned boxer in a powerfully mimetic style.

Yet unlike many other companies - including Rambert, who have remained stuck in ballet-based technique - David Hughes Dance have followed up on the promise of  freedom within "contemporary" choreography. While much so-called contemporary dance is ballet with a few ungainly additions, DHD reached out to other forms. The Red Room was an expression of confident mutation: Last Orders has taken that confidence further. Refusing to tame Bean's story for the stage, it has been accused of reveling in ugliness.

Of course, that is entirely appropriate for the story that Last Orders tells.That the show has met such harsh criticism does not reflect so much on the quality - no-one suggests that the company can't hack it - but the challenges made to the accepted ideas of what dance ought to cover. It's also a question of taste...