The End of Dramaturgy: Jack Webb @ Tramway

The End
Jack Webb
Tramway

Friday 10 and Saturday 11 June, 7.30pm

WORLD PREMIERE

Acclaimed Scottish choreographer Jack Webb and a company of three exceptional dancers confront and explore the dramatic notion of end points, the end of the world, the end of life as we know it, the end of good, bad and all in between. Extraordinary choreographic style and powerful soundscapes combine for a startlingly thoughtful and compelling experience that looks our very existence straight in the eye.


What was the inspiration for this performance?

THE END started life, mostly at night time, trying to fall asleep and yet being plagued by quite powerful yet irrational thoughts of self doubt and the contemplation of how might life be if I were to stop making work and dancing/performing. 

I think this is probably something that most people are thinking regularly as an artist, but somehow we are compelled to keep going, to keep making.

Rather than ignoring it it seemed right to take responsibility for it and to face it head on.

I started really with the words 'THE END'  and just wanted to see what could come from that. By facing it head on though, of course, it brought up many reasons to keep going, to keep trying,which was just brilliant. It gave birth to a whole new work and process. That was early on though and was a strong starting point, to consider the idea of dramatic endings and what they could be and since then the concepts within the work have developed, and transformed. 

Now THE END really is an invitation to consider our own mortality, our place in the world and how we contribute to it. The work wants to propose simply 'imagine that this is the end of life as you know it'. It is such a dramatic proposal that it forces us to consider what might be left behind and how can we do things differently.  At the core of THE END is a distinct need to address how disconnected we are and how slowly and systematically the fabric of our world is deteriorating whilst we simultaneously are made to  think that it is improving.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?
This project started in early 2015 when I had an Artists' Bursary from Creative Scotland. The dancers in the work were all new to me, quite on purpose, to allow me to try new things with new people and to take my work to different places. 

Since then the team have grown with a lighting designer, PR person and producer on board as well as various co-production partners. Some are people I've worked with before and some not. It has all happened quite organically, drawing on people who understand the vision of the work and who want to be part of it. 

How did you become interested in making performance?
My background is in contemporary dance but I've always been experimenting with how this can be 'performance' and not just dancing. Contemporary dance can get a bad rep sometimes so I want to keep finding ways in which to extend it outwards, finding new doorways in to it so that the mystery around it can be dispelled. 

I've also become interested in performance because of a sense of responsibility.  It is really all that I do so I want to be part of something that is crucial to all of our well-being and way of understanding our complex world. But in saying that, I'm interested in making performance because I also want to challenge things. 


Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
Sometimes yes and sometimes no. There is always a lot improvising happening. This just feels vital to me to ensure that there is constant inquiry, a constant aliveness. The process of making the work and the piece itself are pretty layered with many ideas and methodologies. I always work this way  to ensure that the people in the work are deep within a bigger picture and constantly pushing at it. 

There are 3 professional dancers in this work and an extended cast of six participants who have joined us for workshops in preparation for the performance. This is definitely new to me, to include people in the work who are not dancing or performing professionally necessarily but who are just really interested to come and experience the work, its concepts and what it can offer. 

This will happen at each venue the work tours to, allowing THE END to keep growing and for people to experience it from the inside as well as from the audience.


I want them to experience a sense of simplicity, a purity but also to have an experience that is startling and thought provoking. 

There is something pretty tough about my work generally, the same applies with THE END, I mean the piece is called THE END, it's startling, even frightening to me! And yet there are many moments of stillness, space, and gentle intimacy and connection/disconnection and a proposal for change and how to do things differently. I want the audience to feel like they can make positive change in the face of adversity.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
The work is in the round and is, at least for us, set in some sort of imaginary nightclub where connections and disconnections unfold. I see it a little like a holding pen of some sort in which the performers and the audience are encouraged to face the darker underbelly of things. I like this strategy for space. To bring everyone together, to see each other and almost be in the work physically and hopefully emotionally.

This work has also made me think about time a lot. With THE END I am asking the audience to slow down, look at tiny details and not be seduced by busy stage activity all of the time. I'm intrigued to see what will happen to the sense of time and place in the performance space and to see if we can look at things differently, patiently and keep re-evaluating what we see and how it relates to everyone.

The inclusion of an extended cast, sourced via an open call is important for me. Bringing   people in to work is a way in which I hope to encourage the audience to look at it differently and to not be afraid of it. 

Some might call me naive but I do actually believe that the kind of work I'm making is for anyone. It's about being open and generous with it, to invite people in and to let them know that it's actually OK. 

I'm hoping the inclusion of an extended cast, who are brilliant by the way, will shape the experience in a way that encourages people to look at the work differently, more closely and to look at it without fear but with curiosity.   

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

I'm not sure any more, I've stopped thinking about that sort of thing recently. There is definitely something unconventional about the work, it does fit in to some sort of stranger box. I'm really just focusing on making the work and allowing it to be whatever it needs to be...

Three Versions of Dance

Critics do not provide useful consumer guides to art. Artists dislike being given a label. Baudrillard spotted the rise of the simulacra. These statements may be related. I'm rarely certain.

Only, when it was suggested to me that Robbie Synge's Douglas can be better understood as clown rather than dance, I immediately appreciated it more. 

Three shows on the stage, three cups on the table: Douglas, Void, 5 Soldiers. Beneath one cup, a pea. The pea is the definition. The definition is dance.

Move the cups, and try to keep your eye on 5 Soldiers. Lift the cup and reveal the definition. It's dance! What does dance mean in 5 Soldiers?

Five performers, all alike in ability, only arriving at the same place through different disciplines. Their training lends them diverse physical skills, but certain movements - the extension of leg, the comfort in the body, the range of expression through limbs - don't come from sitting and typing.

Sara Teresa (credit)

And Rosie Kay, choreographer, takes these bodies and applies a vocabulary of gesture. Either suggested by or sampled from military experience, the choreography evokes aspects of soldiering.

It starts in boot camp: tight, minimal, forceful and drilled. It goes on a night out, where the body is set free (the change of costume for the woman signifying her femininity in sharp and sometimes uncomfortable contrast to the four males), and the men camp it up like a body band on the piss. Then combat, then wounded, then mutilation, back in civilian life (and wouldn't it be good if the final scene was a metaphor for the soldier outside of the army? Disabled, struggling without help, not a physical loss but psychological?).

Isn't that what dance is: the representation through a series of gestures of psychological and/or emotional states?

Move the cups. Keep your eye on Void. Find the pea. This time a single dancer.

Void has the same visual business as 5 Soldiers: projections across walls and bodies, only this time, a tighter cage. Episodes, each one a version of alienation, the trained body battling against enclosure. Note the enhanced physicality. Trained, evidently. The tension between this body's expansive potential (when she hangs from the wall, or tries to climb the wires mesh) and the restricting environment... 

Move the cups. Lift the cup. Douglas.

Tries to balance, only to tumble. Moves props around the space. Music is present. As in all three: maybe that is important to dance. Maybe sound. Douglas makes himself, slowly. He is tentatively working out the movement vocabulary that builds his personality (he's more fun than soldiers or dwellers in the abyss, only he is vulnerable funny, not telling jokes). 

Trained body here less evident. Telegraphing meaning in flashes between long, attentive routines. He builds. It collapses. 

Faunographic Dramaturgy: Andy Black

Fresh from a stellar five-star debut at the Edinburgh Fringe, Follow The Faun is bringing its unique blend of ancient Bacchanalian rite and trippy participatory theatre to the West End.


Guided by swirling projections and a banging electronic soundtrack, the audience travel through new worlds and dimensions to experience catharsis, transformation, and a serious attack of the giggles. Dress to dance. Expect to sweat.


If we are talking rave - what era are you looking at? It sounds as if you are going for the early stages, the idealism: what attracts you to the environment it creates?

As far as I'm aware, people have been raving since the dawn of time. It's a big part of how we learnt to connect to and communicate with each other; it was something that unified a family and a tribe, ecstatic dance and drumming round a campfire – something that's been reinvented, rediscovered, reproduced with every generation. That's all we're doing here!


What about this word 'queer'? Can you tell me a little about what it means to you? I have a feeling it has been co-opted lately...

I consider myself an artist who's on the eccentric edge of the spectrum – and the queer community is one that values that kind of expression. It defines itself by resisting hegemony and conformity, but at heart has a creative culture and kind of hedonism that's mainly about finding and connecting to people. 

'Queers' have been the vanguard at the cutting edge of art, fashion, design, music, dance, and literature throughout the ages. The pioneers of the 'Alternative scene' have become the norm with each passing generation.

'It's time to bring this to a mainstream audience'. Why? It's not like the mainstream did anything other than try to get it banned...

I come from a culture of festivals, communities, celebration and participation that used to be the norm for the majority of regular people. In my generation, I've seen folk traditions and a sense of community disappear behind an entertainment industry where 'the mainstream' is just the culture that can afford big PR budgets! Bringing this to a mainstream audience means they don't need to go to a dingy, underground warehouse or spend four days tripping in a field to find the magic and transformative ecstasy on offer there.


Does the rave side of things offer any particular approaches in terms of dramaturgy?

Absolutely. The devices of bacchanalian rite and choral theatre inherent in raving are probably the oldest forms of dramaturgy there are. The act of moving and playing in unison rhythms is a powerful thing. That kind of ancient group storytelling is something we still do – we just have speakers and house DJs instead of a shaman on a drum, projections instead of shadow puppets.


Is catharsis part of dance culture?

We know that our own brains fire motor neurones when we see someone move or dance – our bodies respond on a subconscious level so witnessing dance has the potential to move us in a visceral, direct way. Getting an audience on their feet and dancing themselves moves them physically as well as psychologically, releasing tension and creating empathy on as many levels as possible.


Would you point to other theatrical works that The Faun relates to: people who have inspired, shows that you have loved?

My background is in musical theatre, but I mash together as many influences as I can find. Rocky Horror, Hair,  Artful Badger, Maria Abromovic, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The Passion of Lady Vendredi...  Punchdrunk or dance company DV8. Maybe every show ever???


My impression is that you have a strong 'Dionysian' vibe in the work: can this be contained within the Apollonian format of contemporary theatre?

I fucking hope so! I needed an Apollo in the show to keep the reins on me: we flew him in from 3000 miles away to make sure I show up to rehearsals on time after late night 'R&D'. But yes, I think that clash of passions, of community and love and losing yourself within a relatively sterile setting of a blackbox theatre – that's what makes it such a fascinating and exciting venture.

Andy Black trained at GSA Conservatoire, moving on to act in feature films and perform in Billy Elliot: The Musical in the West End before creating The Faun and performing at festivals across the UK, including Glastonbury, Secret Garden Party, Shambala and Morning Gloryville. He developed The Faun under the direction and mentorship of internationally renowned choreographer and dance teacher Molly Molloy.

Black is passionate about connecting these two worlds – the joyful energy of the rave scene, and the focus and narrative power of theatre – to create a transformative experience that cuts across traditional audience lines.

“I’m fascinated by the history of ecstatic music: tribal dance, spirituals,jazz, musical theatre, disco, right through to house music. Queer culture has often been at thecutting edge of these developments, particularly through the club scene – that hotbed of sweating bodies and hedonistic freedom provides a breeding ground for inspiring collaborations. Ecstatic music and culture has always been about the body/mind connection and celebrating through dance. It’s time to bring this to a mainstream audience.”

The production features original disco compositions by Richard Gallagher and a banging house soundtrack mixed exclusively for the show by DJ Mojo Filter (Ben Zaven Crane), who has worked with Fatboy Slim and BBC Radio 1’s Rob Da Bank, among many others.


Follow the Faun was originally produced as part of the Artful Badger’s Wild Worlds: Darksides, winning the “Spirit of the Festival Award” at The Vaults Festival 2015. The Faun has been consistently supported by his ever-growing ‘love tribe’ through crowdfunding and social media, garnering a strong following, selling out every show and amassing an army of supporters ready to join him in the dance as he showcases his work in the West End. After London, Black has his sights set on New York and San Francisco, as centres of progressive culture and cutting edge theatre.

#Trans @ Pitch

Despite being presented as a 'scratch' performance (that is, an early stage work-in-progress) as part of Conflux's Pitch evening, Emma Jayne Park's #Trans is remarkably polished, with a coherent format matching the content and a cheeky humour seasoning the serious issue of gender identity. Supported by a smart introduction by Eilidh MacAskill, which offered Judith Butler's meditation on gender as a thing performed rather than an essential nature, Park's choreography questioned how movements and facial expressions establish the gender of an individual. 

Her head shaved, her clothing loose, Park flickered between male and female posturing. The male more aggressive, clutching the penis, grinning at the audience; the female flirtatious, initially intruding onto the male display with rapid, flirtatious glances. Building from these simple stereotypes, Park's choreography then evolves, transforming her into an androgynous entity, balancing the genders into a fluid movement vocabulary that at once recalls extremes of male and female behaviour and moulds them into a singular presentation of desire.

And desire is clearly on the mind of her character - swinging an

arm like a distended cock, or play humping the air, or flirting with the front-row, her creation is sensual and sexually predatory: even the props (a selection of mannequins) are not safe from their attention. While certain gestures evoke one gender or another - she presents her covered breasts at one point - her performance insists on how even those postures strongly associated with the male or the female are simply learnt manners.

Jumping Dramaturgy: Kally Lloyd Jones on Nijinsky

credit:Susan Hay

Nijinky’s Last Jump
Spring Tour – April/May 2016

Company Chordelia is delighted to announce that a tour of their theatre/dance production Nijinsky’s Last Jump is planned for Spring 2016. Premiering during Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2015, the show gained wide acclaim amongst critics.

Nijinsky’s Last Jump combines theatre and dance to evoke the legendary 20th Century dancer’s journey from global success to the desolate isolation of mental illness. 

As the passionate obsession of the young Nijinsky comes face to face with the searching inner life of the older Nijinsky, this sharp and tender show portrays a poignant intimacy of genius and madness, youth and age, both the performing and private self. Inspired by the rhythmic obsession of Nijinsky’s diaries, Young and Old Nijinsky consider their life together, on and off stage, trying to make sense of the loss of self.

What experiences drew you towards choreography?
I’ve been dancing since I was two years old (I was shy and too young for play group ...) and very lucky to have been taken to a wide variety of performances from around that age too. Looking back, I was very influenced at a very young age by, in particular, Peter Darrell and a bit later, Christopher Bruce. 

 Their work was narrative in different ways and I think that just seeped into me and is my natural mode of expression. I suppose being drawn to choreography was almost inevitable (though the route was circuitous!) but these days I think of myself equally as a director.

What was the inspiration for this particular work?
I won a school prize when I was a young teenager - and got given a book token which I spent on Richard Buckle’s biography of Nijinsky. I am not sure exactly why it made such an impression on me but I felt then, as I do now, an affinity or connection with him. I think I always felt that if I didn’t dance, or make work, I might have been a very different, possibly depressed, person. 

I suspect that I have had some kind of narrow escape and the flip side of this sense of what might have been is, I think, what I ended up wanting to show. There is always a funny alchemy of events which make me want to embark on making a piece, and on this occasion, meeting Michael Daviot, (who wrote the text) and his shared passion for, and knowledge about Nijinsky set the train in motion. And I was ready.


Did the process differ from your usual approach - did the subject matter make any surprising demands on you?
I am not sure I have a usual approach! I think my approach is determined largely by the subject, the demands of a particular show and what kind of performers I am working with. 

 Many of my decisions are made from a kind of instinctive feeling, or thoughts and images that arrive in my head and I have learned to trust those. I also work regularly with designer Janis Hart and this relationship has produced the work I am most proud of We have a communication which enriches my thought processes and she has a wonderful way of absorbing the things I say and the images I describe and turning them into exactly what I wanted without knowing it.



  Nijinsky's Last Jump Trailer from Company Chordelia on Vimeo.

In the case of Nijinsky’s Last Jump, it was necessary (and very enjoyable) to do quite an extensive amount of research during which I made notes about ideas, images, scenes and afterwards I began a storyboard. I wanted to focus in really tightly on Nijinsky’s mental state and so decided very early on to peel away everything else. I didn’t want to make a biographical show - it is not linear or narrative in that sense.

I always arrive in rehearsals with a storyboard and a very clear sense of the show, which might then change along the way. What probably doesn’t change is my sense that I am setting out to create something I can already taste.


What are you hoping that the audience will experience when they see the work?Well, I suppose I want the audience to experience something individual and personal. To ponder this man, his life and work, what might have been, and the nature of mental illness - its causes and treatment. I hope they will experience deep empathy or feel something which is about the need for people to be allowed to be not like everyone else.

Are there any particular strategies you use to put this across?There are two Nijinsky’s in the show - an old Nijinsky, nearing death, and a young Nijinsky at the peak of his career. Having these two Nijinsky’s allowed them to have different perspectives on his/their life and events and for them to have the opportunity to talk to each other. It’s as if the show helps them to work out what happened to them. 

Old Nijinsky is played by an actor, James Bryce and Young Nijinsky is played by dancer and actor Darren Brownlie. There is actually a third Puppet Nijinsky who represents the performing Nijinsky, who was treated like a puppet. The use of text, movement, dance, puppetry and music are all key elements in the way the show is woven together.

Do the potential venues provide any challenges to your work?The work was created to be performed at Dance Base as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It’s a lovely big performing space and the audience is very close up so it is extremely intimate which worked well. In touring the work to venues of different scales, there will be some technical and practical challenges but the big challenge will be to make sure the work can meet and stand up to being done in a less intimate space. 

I will tour with the show so that I can tweak it a bit for every venue. Which is actually really enjoyable because the work stays very alive in this way.

Are there any questions you feel I ought to ask to understand your approach and work?
They were good questions! It’s quite hard because I just get on with it and don’t think that much about HOW I do it. I get immersed. Occasionally I have looked at something I made and wondered how it got there.

Editta Braun (Vile thinking... so avoid, eh?)

Previously at Manipulate...

Editta Braun Company presented the first two shows in their trilogy (Luvos and Planet Luvos). Braun's signature choreography stretches the human body into apparently impossible shapes, inverting the expected limitations of movement and conjuring other-worldly creatures and stories.

Meanwhile at The Vile Arts...

I have become obsessed with epistemology. I now think I know what it means: the theory of knowledge. And I think I know what that means too...

I'm imagining a pair of teachers. One of them cannot move, the other cannot speak. They both have a single piece of information to pass onto their student. Because of their limitations, however, they have to find different ways to communicate.

This isn't the whole story, but it suggests one aspect of epistemology. The silent teacher will most likely use some form of physical process to communicate. The immobile teacher will use words. 

Both of methods will communicate the same information, but filter it in different ways. 

Braun's choreography operates in a disruptive manner. The contortions of her dancers don't just challenge the every-day possibilities of movement: they challenge the standard physical presentation of the human body. The climax of Planet Luvos saw the arrival of what one of my students described as penis bum monsters. That really ought to attract an audience.

But this description does not quite grapple with the emotional experience of seeing Luvos. Okay, the trickery and acrobatics are cool, but something else happens. I think it is to do with muscle memory.

There is an epistemology of dance - as Fleur Darkin off Scottish Dance Theatre said in an interview with The List, dance can express feelings in a unique manner. It gets inside the body. Watching dance causes a different reaction to watching a play.

get connected with own feelings, own memories, own phantasies, own ideas - triggered by our performance.


Just let yourself go 

CLOSE UP Dramaturgy: editta braun company

The virtuoso concert pianist AyseDeniz performs hers and Thierry Zaboitzeffs compositions at the grand piano in in her peculiar, idiosyncratic way, inspired by Chopin and Rachmaninoff. 

Four dancers - bodies in concert - enter the stage, creating a physical dialogue with AyseDeniz's performance, thus embodying and externalising the interior sounds and texture of the music. 

Lemur-like creatures, distorted, constricted and oppressed, invade the concert pianist’s perfectly harmonic world. As if even the artificially encapsulated high culture, where the pursuit of perfection often doesn’t leave any room for doubts, could not escape from human thoughts and every day’s worries. 

Nightmarish realities and fears, but also a foreshadow of the desire for free moving appear as incarnated thoughts and feelings. 

Fantastical lemur-like creatures - distorted, constricted and oppressed - invade the concert pianist’s perfect harmonic world, so that even the artificially encapsulated world of high culture, where the pursuit of perfection doesn’t leave any room for doubts, cannot escape from the tension of everyday cares and worries. Nightmarish realities and fears, but also a shadow of the desire for freedom, appear as incarnated thoughts and feelings. 

The five dancers’ moving bodies - sometimes individually, sometimes in pairs, sometimes a seemingly inextricable agglomeration of extremities - constitute and articulate the physicality and motivations of strange, otherworldly creatures. Are they the pianist’s alter egos or dark suppressed aspects of her soul? While she is playing, these beings become her fellow antagonists and collaborators. They are suffused by the dense, mighty live music and then are driven or tortured, hunted or released, by the sounds around them. They resist – and they react. 

What was the inspiration for this performance?
Very simple: I heard the pianist in the frame of a music-festival in Portugal and had images of a dance-piece happing around a grand piano, representing somehow the inner world of the pianist. Creatures enter her bubble, her closed world of classical music and cause some disorder ...

How did you go about gathering the team for it?
I work with the composer Thierry Zaboitzeff and the dancers since many years - so I had just to convince AyseDeniz. And she was curious enough to dare the adventure.

How did you become interested in making performance?
I guess, something pushes me since I can stand on my legs, means, since my childhood.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
Yes. I always work with improvisation as starting point. But for CLOSE UP we had a special magic experience: After three days only we did an improvisation of 45 minutes, guided by me from outside, and not only the dancers improvised, but also AyseDeniz on themes of Thierry Zaboitzeff. This is very rare for a classical pianist.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?
To get connected with own feelings, own memories, own phantasies, own ideas - triggered by our performance.

Are there any other questions that might help me to understand the meaning of dramaturgy for you in your work?
Just let yourself go 

Ternary Patterns for Insomnia @ Tramway

I don't actually believe that applying the Bateson/Goffman parameters for play is an effective way to review an event. For that matter, I don't believe that Bateson's observations of otters at the zoo were of play in the first place. I think he was watching an educational process (the otters teaching other otters to fight, or at least rehearsing it -and with a pedagogical process that human teachers could well learn from).

But I am trying to get to grips with Goffman's idea of the frame (which I think is the way in which context is recognised by a performance). So buckle up, it's round two!

A great deal of repetitiveness occurs.

Throughout Ternary Patterns for Insomnia, certain musical forms are repeated throughout the Goldberg Variations (an arrangement for string ensemble provides the soundtrack to the dances). And there are repetitions of movements, some props are re-used, including a big tube and some rope. 

However, I can't accept this as a frame for play, performance or pedagogy. It might have been different in Bateson's day, but life is pretty repetitious these days...


When more than one participant is to be involved, all must be freely willing to play...

Again, I struggle with this... it needs so much clarification. I'm dumping it, calling bullshit. This is no help at all.

Frequent role switching occurs during play, resulting in a mixing up of the dominance order found among the players...

I'm cheating by ignoring a detail, but this does free me up to comment on Ternary. At various points in the production - notably during the Aria, the musicians dance about, taking on a new - and pretty often clearly unfamiliar role. There is even a dance solo by a viola player.

In that instance, a dominance order is broken. It's a relatively subtle order, but the viola tends to hold a supporting  position in an ensemble (not only and always, mind). But then there is another break, of the musician usually being defined by their instrument.

Throughout the evening, there is plenty of cavorting by the musicians - perhaps the dancers could have had a crack on the violins at some point. The contrast between the physicality of the dancers and musicians is very evident.

The play seems to be independent of any external needs of the participants, often continuing longer than would the actual behaviour it is patterned after.

Yeah, this is thin stuff now. Time for bed.  
  

Tears of the Dramaturgy: Cal Massari @ Edfringe 2015

TRISTISSIMO
C&C Company, Zoo Southside Main Hall, August 7/15, 12.20, £12/10

‘With your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue, the only thing I ever got from you was Sorrow…..Sorrow’ (Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, Richard Gottehrer)

Inspired by the love pains of Tristan and Isolde, TRISTISSIMO is the second part of C&C’s physical theatre triptych on pain begun with MARIA ADDOLORATA, brought to EdFringe 2014 to great media and public acclaim.   ★★★★ The Scotsman ★★★★ The Herald ★★★★ The List ★★★★★ The  Mumble ★★★★ The Edinburgh Guide ★★★★ TV Bomb 

WINNER OF CHOREOGRAPHY FIRST PRIZE Rome 2015

The two lovers recognise and love each other immediately, and immediately they get entangled in their love and a disproportionate amount of blonde hair braided in tresses that will bound them together, but impede real physical contact.

No real tragedy has a happy ending, no real war ends without a body count, but the journey will often draw out hearty belly-laughs.

The strong narrative, unexpected twists, impeccable technique and instantly recognisable body chemistry and shared language that make C&C stand out in the wide range of offerings by contemporary physical theatre are all present in TRISTISSIMO, a two-hander that shows the Company’s maturity through a series of daring and unexpected, yet perfectly accomplished, situations that will stay with you for a very long time. 


The Fringe

What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object? 
Carl Massari: This piece started with the idea to revisiting the concept of 'Tragedy'. Using as a starting point Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, we went on to elaborate the idea of 'tragedy' within a couple's personal story. There are going to be laughs too.

Why bring your work to Edinburgh?
After the last year's Fringe experience with MARIA ADDOLORATA, it seemed to us consistent and important for the second part of our triptych on pain, TRISTISSIMO, to be presented at the Fringe even with Sad . There is no better baptism by fire!

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
They should have no expectation, bar to be surprised.

How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
C&C always starts from a physical dramaturgy. From physical improvisation, and later the devising of the choreography, comes the real drama, the leitmotif of the piece.


Trailer TRISTISSIMO from C&C company on Vimeo.
What particular traditions and influences would you acknowledge on your work - have any particular artists, or genres inspired you and do you see yourself within their tradition?
Many companies have been of great inspirations to us: Balletto Civile, Peeping Tom, Need company, Fabulous Beast and many other ... In cinema: Sorrentino, Garrone, Salvatores, Terrence Malick, Wim Wenders ... We are very much inspired by the films.


Do you have a particular process of making that you could describe - where it begins, how you develop it, and whether there is any collaboration in the process?
The body is always the starting point

What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?
The audience has a vital role in providing "direct comparison". If

you present a any work, an opera, a performance immediately you have a human reaction, true, universal. You can't do without the confrontation with the audience, its opinions, reaction, criticism and suggestions to complete your piece.

Are there any questions that you feel I have missed out that would help me to understand?
In the past some reviewers, especially very young ones, have been disconcerted by the pact that works on pain can contain many funny passages, more mature journalists seem to get it, though. We would like to say that, in our often surreal way, we try to be true to a sublimated version of life.

T-Dramaturgy: Vera Tussing @ Edfringe 2015

The Place and Vera Tussing Projects present 

T-DANCE 

Summerhall (Venue 26) 5-30 August 

Vera Tussing’s T-Dance is a warm, gentle work that creates profound sensations.  Exploring touch and the cause and effect of tactility, the performers build a perceptible connection with the audience through subtle improvisation and spoken descriptions. 

“A fascinating journey to the way tactility moves our bodies.” 

Workspace Brussels

“..the sense of anticipation causes goose pimples, proving quite literally the effect

of words on physical senses.” 

London Dance

Four dancers explore the fragility and humour of touch. How are we connected even when separated by distance, time or context? How do we touch without touching?

What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?Vera Tussing: This piece grew fairly organically out of series of stage and gallery-based performance pieces we were working on, exploring perception and how the senses function in performance.

Why bring your work to Edinburgh?
Why not!!

Actually, this piece has a certain liveliness to it, and is built on a light-but-sensitive interaction with the audience that will be really fun to explore in the atmosphere of the Fringe. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with a crowd that has had a drink or two!

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
They will see us connecting through touch on stage, and then, with some luck, we’ll make an empathetic tactile connection with them as well.

The Dramaturgy Questions
How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
This is probably too massive a question to do justice to here. But, with specific regard to T-Dance, the piece is very much built in sections, each one building on and playing with the ideas developed before. The connections that are established onstage are gradually expanded to the point where they ask for some more imaginative leaps and possibly some physical from the audience.

What particular traditions and influences would you acknowledge on your work - have any particular artists, or genres inspired you and do you see yourself within their tradition?
The most important influences in my work are my collaborators and the audience. The responsive nature of this work means that it very much lives in performance.

Do you have a particular process of making that you could describe - where it begins, how you develop it, and whether there is any collaboration in the process?
The origin and formulation of the work usually happens in a solitary way, with a long research and thinking period. The creation itself is an intensely collaborative process - but with is a sense of direction. If I manage to convince my team, I get the final edit ;-)

What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?
The Audience is the crucial, but constantly missing collaborator - the one that only turns up on the show days.

Are there any questions that you feel I have missed out that would help me to understand how dramaturgy works for you?

The work itself functions very much as a question, or proposition or invitation, so I’d rather let that question ask itself.

Four dancers explore the fragility and humour of touch. How are we connected even when separated by distance, time or context? How do we touch without touching?

We question the limits of the body, and the mind’s connections. Without ever leaving your seat, you are called to inhabit the same imaginative space as us in an invitation to participate in an empathetic, exhilarating, imagined touch.

Commissioned by The Place Supported by The Place, STUK (Leuven), Workspace (Brussels), wp Zimmer (Antwerp), Graner (Barcelona) and the Flemish Authorities, (Belgium).

Eddie Nixon, Director of Theatre and Artist Development, The Place says about watching T-Dance, “all those moments when you have sat in the auditorium thinking ‘Please don’t pick on me’ are gently, lovingly ushered away. It’s like feeling the hand of an old friend touching your cheek.”

Carlo Massari interview

From the website: 

A perfect day , a perfect world, then at some point all becomes twisted.
It seems a tragedy , it seems the inspiration for a prologue, it seems a true story, it seems the end of a world, in the world.
Everything for the hand of man ... for proclamation of freedom, achievement, interest, and beauty. Do you love me or kill me?
We report here on a dreamlike past, yet contemporary, disturbed and inappropriate.
It seems the excitement of the strong things, it seems unique, it seems the only goal, it seems flesh, blood...Then BANG!
Just a shot and it all ends... Of what has been, in the writings traces remain of desperate lovers, tortured feelings of immense sadness and tears. We have not changed that much. Everything still revolves around love and in its eternal contrast.
Let the work root into the why and how of something powerful, strong, huge!
We analyze the nature of the restraint and the pursuit of absolute freedom, the current one, our daily one. We are inspired by the true facts of the crime, true.
In one way or another we try to have our say and not to leave a reaction-relationship unfinished , we are also part of this time, in the end.
What is left of the myth?
A first study on the work of Wagner, a source of inspiration to investigate on.
A careful listening to the song and its majesty. The discovery of the modernity of the Opera, a similar picture, but far from the Middle Ages.
The Wagnerian Opera instigates not only to make tragedies; it is a fact, a divine melody.
Take a head, an incipit, an unforgettable sample, forever... and then weigh it ... What was it? What's this? What will remain?

My experience of your work so far has been that it is spiritual, longing for meaning, sexy and rough: am I just being weird or is this a fair assessment?

Maybe we are weird...!

No, really, you actually got it quite right. We aim at finding rather a crude and straightforward language so that people can be shaken by it while recognising and acknowledging themselves as part of a humanity that belongs to them and that they belong to.

This time, you talk of Wagner - are you an enthusiast?
Maybe we are more depressed than enthusiastic.

What drew you to him in particular?
It is maybe the need to deal with such a feeling of sadness and melancholy that pushed us to looking at Wagner. Wagner is very emotional and tragically ended. As usual, we want to ironically approach the universal dichotomy good and evil.

From what you know of manipulate, is it a good fit for your work?
Considering the quality of the programme we are honoured to be part of this festival.

How do you approach making a new work - do you have a particular dramaturgy?

Our dramaturgy stems from the body. It is based on physical relations and actions aimed at codifying feelings and stories of life and within our society. Our new works are engendered by intuitions, by the desire to speak about something in particular like visions of today’s world, hope, or future pessimisms.

What does remain at the end of a performance?

Memory.


How do you understand the function of art? 

“Je suis liberté d'expression”. I am freedom of expression.

Blog Roll of Fame 2014: The Choreographers

Continuing my commentary on the past year of theatre (now with added dance), I move into more contentious territory. Now and again, the question emerges: what is dance?

And everybody disagrees with the definition. I can imagine my definition of choreography is going to annoy somebody.

I am wondering whether choreography ought to refer only to artists who work with a movement ensemble. I ponder this merely to remind everyone that I studied Greek once upon a time, and am making a smart-ass connection between the choregoi and modern dance.

Impressed? 

Credit: Brian Hartley

Let's dive in easy: Natasha Gilmore is hot, and her entry in The Commonwealth Games' jamboree was a splendid example of her specific skills. She works in the sweet spot between community engagement and contemporary dance - which are usually about as sympathetic to each other as Nigel Farage and... anyone on the left, politically. 

She's been working on this fusion for a while - both through her association with the Maryhill Integration Network and Barrowland Ballet (the latter name being a nice mash-up of the legendary venue where people went for 'the dancing' and the high art associations of the dance they do on tip-toes). She got some funding action for the Fringe, too, with the smart and sassy Tiger shows.

Louise Ahl
Since she turned up in Glasgow, Louise has been dynamic,

pursuing an integration of sharp humour, mystical tensions, postmodern allusion and an exploration of art's relationship to education, self and criticism. She is a regular down the Arches, comes up with the unexpected until it is expected to be unexpected...

Whether she defines herself as a choreographer is probably complicated: her ideas come from multiple disciplines and her eclecticism reflects the healthy edge of performance art. Sitting on the edge of many genres, she leaps between them with finesse and a sense of fun. Check out her concept for the NICE institute.

Christopher Hampson
Although I am not that excited about the revival of Nutcracker - I find Peter Darrell's choreography has not aged well, and harks back to a period of rather effete British ballet - I am very excited about a new version of Swan Lake in 2015. He also got Christopher Bruce's Ten Poems into the company's repertoire, and has seriously sorted out the precision of the corps de ballet. 

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.