PETER, dance with… podcast

Ep 35 PETER, dance with Martin Sonderkamp | [⤓]

Ep 34 PETER, dance with Agnieszka Sjökvist Dlugoszewska | [⤓]

Ep 33 PETER, dance with Caterina Daniela Mora Jara | [⤓]

Ep 32 PETER, dance with Andreas Berchtold | [⤓]

Ep31 PETER, dance with Emil Ertl | [⤓]

Ep30 PETER, dance with Cecilia Roos | [⤓]

Ep 29 PETER, dance with Zoë Poluch | [⤓]

Ep 28 PETER, dance with Frank Bock | [⤓]

Ep 27 PETER, dance with DISCOllective | [⤓]

Ep 26 PETER, dance with Yari Stilo Series 2 | [⤓]

Ep 25 PETER, dance with Klaudia Rychlik | [⤓]

Ep23 PETER, dance with Anna Asplind | [⤓]

Ep22 PETER, dance with Darya Efrat | [⤓]

Ep21 PETER, dance with Elise Mae Nuding | [⤓]

Ep20 PETER, dance with Laressa Dickey | [⤓]

Ep 19 PETER, dance with Gergő D Farkas | [⤓]

Ep18 PETER, dance with Simon Vincenzi | [⤓]

Ep17 PETER, dance with Hannah Krebs | [⤓]

Ep16 PETER, dance with Nelia Naumanen | [⤓]

Ep15 PETER, dance with Linda Wardal | [⤓]

Ep14 PETER, dance with Susan Sentler | [⤓]

Ep13 PETER, dance with Žak Valenta | [⤓]

Ep12 PETER, dance with Anna Pehrsson | [⤓]

Ep11 PETER, dance with Pontus Pettersson | [⤓]

Ep10 PETER, dance with Ekin Tunçeli | [⤓]

Ep09 PETER, dance with Ami Skånberg | [⤓]

Ep08 PETER, dance with Matilda Bilberg | [⤓]

Ep05 PETER, dance with Charlotta Ruth | [⤓]

Ep04 PETER, dance with Siriol Joyner | [⤓]

Ep03 PETER, dance with Benjamin Pohlig | [⤓]

Ep02 PETER, dance with Yari Stilo | [⤓]

Ep01 PETER, dance with Luusi Kateme | [⤓]

1. Choreographic Devices 4 https://www.ica.art/live/choreographic-devices-4
2. ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts, London) https://www.ica.art/
3. Rose Choreographic School https://rosechoreographicschool.com/
4. Martin Hargreaves (Head of the Rose Choreographic School) https://rosechoreographicschool.com/people
5. Sadler’s Wells East https://www.sadlerswells.com/your-visit/sadlers-wells-east/welcome-to-sadlers-wells-east/
6. O baby performance by PETER https://stillpeter.com/o/
7. Johnathon Burrows A Choreographer’s Handbook

PETER:

Hello. Today we are dancing with Lorea Burge.

Lorea Burge:

Burge

PETER:

I will write it down. So it’s in the description. Yeah, we met at the choreographic devices at the ICA. You’re in the Rose choreographic School. I reached out to Martin to see if anyone of you would want to dance with me, and I’m super grateful to dance with you. You’re working with sound and different things. We’ve movement and things that aim super curious about and like, have started an interest. I mean, I started in musical theater, so I know I’ve had singing and stuff with me, but, yeah, they seem more present, but you seem to have gone really deep and I’m super excited to see that and to join you in that. But how would you introduce yourself for people today, where you are, what you are?

Lorea Burge:

What am I? I would say that I’m a choreographer and dance artist, but I actually find that, for some reason, I find that term a bit difficult. Like to say that I’m a choreographer because actually I don’t make that much choreography. Yeah. um. So maybe I’m like engaged with choreography, but I don’t know that I’m a chore. No, I am a choreographer. I don’t. God, it’s hard to know.

PETER:

But But it is so common as well. Like, I think we should do a real research into exactly this thing of like, how do I define myself?

Lorea Burge:

claiming titles? Yeah,

PETER:

not choreographer, dancer, dance maker, things.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah, but one thing, yeah, the thing that I just looked at before we started was a term that came up in this interview that I did with Martin, as we were talking about my practice. and he, over the course of the conversation, and in response to a lot of things, I was saying, kept saying that the term like socially engaged practice. And that made a lot of sense to me, so I’m going to appropriate that term now and like use that as something to describe my practice and who I am as a person probably as well.

PETER:

Yeah.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah. I think with all of the work that I doing with sound and with activism, and outside of the art world, which is also very important to me to remain connected to things outside of the art bubble. There is a. I guess an interest in going following paths into sort of new or alternative ways of being. and with sound, I think that’s of kind of another element of bit of like putting our ears to the foreground.

PETER:

Yeah.

Lorea Burge:

and like, following our ears as a drive for creating material.

PETER:

It’s really beautiful. and really well, articulated. I mean, it’s almost on a utopian practice. I would say Yeah, socially engaged and also sort of reaching out and speculative. And I mean, and what I was describing with my own, like forays into sound, it really is a sense of discovering utopias and places to dance, which are somehow have been beyond my world. Like they are somehow a new world or a different world. Yeah.. So cool. Was there anything else that you wanted to add to your.

Lorea Burge:

To my introduction.. Yeah, maybe that, like, I’m. overall interested in sort of more DIY approaches to creating and exploring. Yeah. And that also feeds into my life more broadly as well. Yeah. Yeah, I’m sort of. interested in desire and curiosity over ability or skill. Yeah.

PETER:

I’m so glad I brought my high tech recording studio. Now I’m joking. We’re recording from an iPhone. if you’ve ever wondered. Cool. So let’s go straight into it. Like what do you like to do today? What are you busy with?

Lorea Burge:

So… Because as you said, like these spaces are very well insulated, Sonically, there’s actually been a bit of a problem for me in like in my research. Not necessarily a problem, but it, yeah. I had the thought just earlier that actually, maybe it would be nice to start but I just going for a little walk through the building, a silent walk. Oh, yeah, nice. for 10 minutes. we can go together but not speak and just like just listen listen to all of the sounds that we come across. And then I thought I could take you through some of the movement, sort of warm-up tuning exercises that I do with people to get into this world. Yeah, which are more with the body and movement.

PETER:

Nice. Yeah.

Lorea Burge:

Thinking of like the body as musical instrument. And then maybe it does take a lot. I have like all of my gear. Okay. here and like potentially we could have a little play with some microphones later. But let’s see how we get on with this.

PETER:

Yeah, that’s cool. So we can say, like, we’re at Sadler’s Wells East Studios, maybe.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.

PETER:

That’s why it’s so insulated. It’s a brand new studio, and it’s a brand new building. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s a lot of people here. It feels like quite a happening space.

Lorea Burge:

Now it’s starting to be, yeah.

PETER:

Okay. So when we walk around, we’re going to hear probably, yeah, the building and what it’s doing, and then and then we’re going to do sort of this tuning. You call it? It’s nice. Like, I think of the orchestra as it sort of begins to start to play or the guitarist twanging their strings and changing the tightness of the strings. So we’ll play with that, and then we’ll play with some of your technical gear, I guess that’s what you meant by stuff. Yeah. Microphones, loop pedals and stuff like that, is it?

Lorea Burge:

Yeah, and it all goes through Ableton as well.

PETER:

Ah, cool. Cool.

Lorea Burge:

It’s where it gets a bit more complex. Yes.

PETER:

Yeah. Great. I think that’s pretty clear. We’re going to go for a silent 10 minute walk. Tune up our bodies like they’re musical instrument, and then start to play as if we’re in a recording studio with all this equipment.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah, I guess like compose some sound live. Yeah.

PETER:

All we’re remembering the lo-fi nature of this book. Okay, cool. Then we’ll pause and we’ll come back and we will tell you about what happened.

Lorea Burge:

Great.

PAUSE

PETER:

Okay, so we’re back. Uh. Amazing. Like’s so many things. I think we should just, um try to unpack it all and then, like, go through, yeah, some of the experiences we’ve had today and like, what is brought up for me, what is brought up for you. Yeah. How was it like to do it today? Like, I mean, I guess it felt like giving a class in a way. Like you were like condensing a lot of material into like a short session. But we went for over an hour.

Lorea Burge:

Was it? I have no concept of time.

PETER:

That’s good. Right? No, I mean, I mean, and when we started, we said we were going to were doing the walk. We had the warm up tuning, and then we had the like electronic music. And now we even added a sort of last thing of like rhythms with different body parts. But let’s go through them then. one at a time. The walking for me was like extremely powerful, like there was this sense that you know, I mean, we also had like some social interactions. Where it was that thing of, should we break out or not? And then there was more subtle ones, like the person behind the desk. We clocked eye contact and I felt like. I felt like a ghost. Like she was there was a sense of like, what are you doing, walking around the canteen, sort of cafe area? Yeah, but the thing that really captured me was this sense of, like, these sounds are always happening. Like, even when we’re not there to hear them, like the sound of the stairwell and the air conditioning and then the kids in the street and the music playing and then disappearing and all these shifting landscapes er soundscapes around the place. How was it for you? What did you find?

Lorea Burge:

Yeah, I… It’s always really nice. I find it quite, like, meditative to do this. precisely because of what you say, that all of this is always there and it’s just about kind of offering offering the space for that to come to the foreground of your attention.

PETER:

Yeah.

Lorea Burge:

And. Yeah, I can get quite not existential but. It can feel quite vast. Sometimes if you start to really try and like hear as far away as you can. And like sometimes it’s quite amazing if you really like take the time to do that it’s it’s amazing how far you can hear. Yeah, yeah And it makes it makes me realize like how kind of how restrictive we are normally with what we listen to and what we hear. and our surroundings and it’s the kind of it’s a real, it opens up my ears and as a result, it opens up my body.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s really, that’s a really interesting movement. I mean, when we’re walking, it’s we’re not we’re not thinking about moving per se, but like, definitely where I put my body becomes like, super heightened. And that placement. And you continued in a way into the studio, like the two exercises sort of like blended into one, where exactly as you’re saying now, like we came into the studio and our way of tuning up the instrument was like to listen inward, like to the flesh, the liquids, the bone of the inside of the body, and then like the surface, the skin, and then the room, and then eventually the universe, like, we got really far away, right? Like, planets and everything. And, yeah, I lose my trail of thought, but there was something about place or something. that it’s all coming together, right, in a sort of like in that body, right, that positionional, even though it’s always happening. And am I right in understanding like, we have socialized ourselves to only hear certain things. So when we do these practices, we’re sort of undoing a lot of like social conditioning.

Lorea Burge:

Definitely. Yeah, definitely, I think, yeah, we we restrict ourselves to our immediate surroundings and this is asking a complete opposite and actually kind of inviting the idea that we are constantly in relation to everything in a way. And for me, like hearing and sound is really, it’s a really tangible way of understanding relation.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And in there is like this relation to one’s own body. Yeah. Because I keep connecting back to what you had said right in the intro of like, um social engaged.

Lorea Burge:

Socially engaged work.

PETER:

And like I was connecting it to sort of a utopia. And it is like, we’re always amongst a sort of like another world, which doesn’t prioritize the person speaking, but it prioritizes everything sort of equally. Like it’s it’s like it’s there and the body is always. like, touching with all the relations that it’s relating to, we just maybe don’t recognize it or we’re not conscious of it. Like we socialize ourselves into only being aware of certain parts of our body or certain parts of our experience, right?

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.

PETER:

In that way, like, it becomes socially engaged, like it becomes like a a utopian, a utopian, a utopia of a sort, like another world.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.

PETER:

Because I definitely felt like a ghost.

Lorea Burge:

That’s really interesting.

PETER:

Right? Like I was in a parallel universe wandering around the building and passing by people doing their lives and stuff, and allowing their sounds to infect my experience, so to speak.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah. I guess there was an in the walking as well, there’s an element that I didn’t really go into and we didn’t really do as much, but there’s. To be to let yourself be guided just by by sound as well. Yeah. Which kind of can go into that more as well. So where you go is just the drive is like what you’re hearing. And then going towards or moving away from a sound.

PETER:

Yeah. No, exactly, like, because once we were in the studio, you invited this continual movement thing. And at the first at first I thought it was just walking, because we had just continually walked, but then I quickly realized that no, it was continual movement of every part of our body, right?

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.

PETER:

And there is something, because we’re listening simultaneous to allowing, like, an automatic writing of the the flesh, that it starts to find its own pathways, and own directions and desires and positions and qualities and textures. It’s really, yeah, it’s a really nice space to sort of Miranda. No.

Lorea Burge:

meander

PETER:

meander., yeah. To wander about in, and what did we do after that? Like, did it did it then go straight into the three?

Lorea Burge:

After, yeah, after we went into the galaxy and brought it back, we. We went into the three of making moving to make sounds.

PETER:

Exactly.

Lorea Burge:

Moving, trying not to make sound and moving to make sound, but not making sound.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So it’s really clear and it’s like, well defined and you took us through them all together. And this is the part where we were warming opportuning, I guess as well still. That’s what I’m calling it. But yeah, like trying to make sound, and it wasn’t vocal sound, which was like really nice to separate from, because we’re so familiar with using our voice to sound ourselves into existence but to like. like, feel hear the sound of, like, the movement in and of the body, and then to try and do try and move, but not make a sound, which is after, like, hearing so much, it feels like, this is ridiculous. Like, it’s not possible. Even at that point, like, you hear that your sleeve just, like, slightly move if you move your arms in the air and then this last one, it for me, it had this really powerful invitation into how accidental sounds are. Like,. Yeah, because over the others, like, even, like, I tried to make a sound with my hand and it doesn’t come into I don’t want it to come almost. Like, there’s something very happen stance or, yeah.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.. For me, this is, like, you’re touching on something that is, like being a huge element to deal with. Like it wasn’t necessarily like something that I was started this research being like, I really want to think about this, but it’s it’s been very present from the very beginning, which is frustration around like the the kind of impossibility of of this task as well, sometimes, of like to think of, there is a kind of absurdity that I’m also that I find quite seductive in this idea of like thinking of the body as a musical instrument because it’s like really like realistically like the pitches and and tones that it can reach are not that vast, not that varied. And like, yeah, and as you say, like sometimes you think that you’re you kind of imagine that you’re body will make a sound when you do a certain movement and it doesn’t or it makes something completely different or you’re trying to do something and like nothing comes out or you’re trying not to do something and so much comes out and there’s this kind of um frustration of impossibility that it was like something that I’m constantly like dealing with.

PETER:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. It’s really at the heart. I mean, right from the beginning, actually, I wrote because I took a note after our walk, just how improbable and probable everything is, like, how, like, um we go outside and we hear sounds, which are so random, like, there was there’s no, like certainty that it would happen and yet, at the same time, there’s no other sound that should have happened at that time and exactly, like, I go to do something and it sounds completely different. And then, like, with the, maybe you can even, like, go to the last task where we’re making sounds for the other persons movement or trying to capture and amplify them. And that, like, sensation of like, I think I’m gonna make the sound with my mouth. And it comes out completely different to what I’m hearing, and this, like,. Yeah, just the remarkability, like, how remarkable it is that we are here and these sounds are here with us and we’re able to hear these sounds. Like, it’s for granted. We’re quite high up. And I had to think about, like, if this building hadn’t been built, we’re just above the floor, like, hovering, like, and the fact that we can stand here is, like, sort of improbable, like a very strange, like, and we’ve only just met and, like, that we can do these things, like, it’s really remarkable. It’s quite bewildering how relaxed we are with like the the sort of like. coincidental, like just happenstance chaos that we’re actually amongst, in a way.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s sort of. And these for me at least would be interesting to hear what you think, but like, these practices create a different temporality for me or like put me into a different temporality where, like, yeah, this thing like floating instead of floating. Yeah. It’s kind of. accurate to a way of the way that I often feel when I’m in these space. Like in studio, in like kind of choreographic processes generally, I think, in studio processes generally, there is there can be a feeling of like time kind of stopping. But I think when you’re in particularly in practices where you’re bringing your attention to another sense, it shifts something in like time and space for me. Which relates a lot to, I guess what I was saying I don’t imagining or testing alternative ways of being like this this for me is I guess to like link it in to kind of politics or values and like kind of anti-capitalist like approach. and slowing down time.

PETER:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s also super absurd.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.

PETER:

Like you say, this… Yeah, this like. alternative ways of being sort of existing, but the absurdity only really exists because there’s this normative frame that suggests that we should be in a temporality and a, or mode or a sensorial relationship to the world of a specific type and yeah exactly when we go into the studio and we do these practices, we somehow, well, we break those things. And they’re so simple and almost stupid, like, they’re not smart in the way of like, as in they’re really close, like they’re. They’re not a technology, that is really delicate and hard to like configure for it to work. The happening all the time. It’s just a shift of attention and we’re able to be in that beings.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.

PETER:

Surely, yeah, crazy. But like, to bring it to the political, like, what are your thoughts of this place? Like, I mentioned at the beginning we’re in Sadler’s Wells. And we’re really dealing with the place and the sounds that it has and the people that have access to it and then we went outside and we see the people that are commuting past or transversing across and beyond. And then there was even like a child on his and their parent or guardian, sort of like I was assuming maybe the child had wet themselves and they were there, like trying to clean up and the bicycle was with them and there was this frustration, but on both sides, and yet clearly a sense of like patience and endearment and they were in a completely different tempo to other people, and there were these like masculine voices and these feminine voices, some, sometimes feeling as if they’re being reduced and there’s a lot a lot of different things. So, yeah, how do you feel about this place? Because you spoke about DIY and wanting to.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.. Yeah. It’s… It’s the first time. For me, it’s the first time that I’m like, in a kind of longer relationship with a big institution. Because, yeah, I’ve until now, I’ve done existed much more in kind of more DIY spaces. And it’s so different like for me it’s a.. It’s so complex. Like, it offers so much, and, like, I have thanks to this, I have like access to so many resources like this, you know, huge space to be in.. And Yeah. And like a network of people. But it’s. I find kind of working within an institution like this, like very can be very like restricting. Because there’s institutional processes, ways of doing things that you have to follow protocols that are there, that they’re just like don’t always align with a creative practice. And like, you know, even walking us walking around in silence, like within an arts institution, people were still kind of feeling a little bit on edge. It was like, because there was something we were doing something slightly slightly out of the norm. And like, it still kind of like looked at in a way that like maybe at other was sort of, DIY art spaces it would be more accepted yeah. So you’re also kind of still dealing with like what’s what’s what do we have permission for? And what do we not?

PETER:

And yet what can we create permission for as well. And the way this studio itself is so insulated, like we had to leave the room to hear more. Or like, just to give ourselves the opportunity to allow in those sounds.Cause I don’t know if I could have imagined them, ’cause when we started to expand the listening outside of our body and into the stadium and outside, into London, I don’t think I would have captured the resolution that we did by actually going outside. Cause in here, it’s so quiet. Like, it’s quite impressive, actually, how, like, insulated it is, and there’s a window open.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.

PETER:

So you can, like, walk towards a window and start to hear, but you come away from the window and it really fades away very quickly. Yeah. It’s. It’s a very interesting space to be in. And what does that permit, and what does it exclude?

Lorea Burge:

I was going to say, like, exclusive is a very, like important word in talking with this because I think you know, these there’s so much money that has been thrown into this place and I think there is from the people that create these spaces there’s maybe an idea that the more the more expensive it looks. Or like the more like the more money again, the more money they put into it to create the kind of most high tech window or da da da all of this stuff that better it will be for those that come in, but actually what that often negates is like what that does to the people that will not immediately be coming and like it creates I think it creates these more like hardline barriers and borders between inside of the space and outside and you know thinking of like even like where we are like this whole area has been like massively gentrified and like all of like the local community around here, there’s actually a lot of poverty and. Yeah, I think there’re like trying to find ways to like, they want. They have this idea that they want this space to be really, like porous and anyone can come in and stuff but I think just the facade can be offputting to many.

PETER:

Yeah. It’s like you can come in within a certain, like like code of what is accepted behavior in this space, which is so interesting because in a way what you’re practice is inviting is in a way like a code switching, like trying to allow for other codes to sort of like emerge that bring about new awarenesses and so on.cause if we could go back, like you brought up that word frustration. Yeah. Like, and I’m just curious, like. Did the practice come out of the frustration or are you finding frustration through doing the practice? Like, like Where does the frustration come from?

Lorea Burge:

I think the frustration was like. It’s not that I started with frustration and developed this practice. Because of it. But it’s it’s more that like it became it became very evident to me, like the second I started practicing with these ideas that I would be dealing with elements of like impossibility and frustration and like, and that kind of interests me. I think. So I also sit in those spaces and to like not run away, not run away being, oh, this doesn’t work. So I’m going to just do something that does work.

PETER:

Yeah.

Lorea Burge:

But actually, then what does it mean to stick in the things that don’t work? And like, how do we navigate that and deal with it and like find find a pass through it.

PETER:

Yeah, exactly. ‘Cause I think what capitalism has really tort us and like, like the codes that it promotes are ones of like finite conditions, even though it’s like a mechanism of infinite growth, it codifies and bureaucratizes everything into products that can be sold and exchanged and put on the market is brandable and so on, whereas and what it does it it means that it leaves out a sort of codification of things which are more porous and lack the ability to be a concise or captured in some way, and it’s so interesting, like the very first thing you brought up was, we’re gonna do this practice in the studio, but it’s really frustrating being in the studio because it’s so quiet and we have to go outside. So, like, already sort of recognizing the capture of those structures and the way they segregate and exclude and include different things. For a place which is more chaotic and more inclusive and more speculative and creative, one which I think I think that the struggle is like, how do we imagine that to exist? Like, how do we codify and believe in it when we’re so indoctrinated by capitalist logic of rationality almost like, how does it logically fit into our world and have a positionionality or like a name or a thing. And yet we know it, right?. And it’s omnipresent and I mean, maybe utopia’s the wrong word, because utopia right, it means something that is never achievable. Yeah. Whereas what we’re speaking about isn’t unachievable. It’s just repressed.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah, it’s like changing the logics.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah. And the frustration, I can imagine is that tension, right? That fight constantly with, like, legitimizing, staying longer, or being quieter, so you can listen, or allowing the noise and the rupture to sort of speak and enter into the Yeah.

Lorea Burge:

And for that to be another form of like, communication as well. It does not require us to then speak to it. like that we can receive. information just through listening.

PETER:

Yeah. I’ve always been interested in like the sharp inhale that, you know, like, when, when maybe it’s a big group of people and someone has something to say but all they have in terms of articulation within that context and that specific moment is that hhhhh. And if there isn’t, like, if there isn’t the conditions to hear the ends shot inhale of, like, the potential for articulation to start to find itself. That voice is lost.. And it’s those like subtle listening tours and staying longer. I mean, then you spoke about how you like to bring your working life outside, like a non-art spaced work into the studio. Like, there’s also a sense of frustration there. How can you marry art and life, in a way?

Lorea Burge:

Yeah, this is this is like something that I’m wondering. for a long time. And, like, some people I speak with, some artists that I speak with about this, they say that there is no distinction. their life is art. And everything they do is done through that lens. And I don’t exist in that way. I realized that like for me, there there is distinction and there is separation, and I find that separation really useful.

PETER:

Yeah.

Lorea Burge:

Because it. it grounds me, and I think. And, like. I think. I’m. The reason why I like, like to have jobs that have nothing to do with art or, like, and get, you know, social circles that are not with artists and is because it all of that information that I get there is what is what is how then I kind of expand my relationality to the world that then feeds itself back into my artistic practice and my art into the studio. But to see it as art for me is a kind of. I think there’s something about. Maybe this is not directly an answer to your question now, but, like,. I can find. Sometimes I find, like, the sort of labeling of, like, well, everything is art, quite pretentious. Or like it adds a level of pretension and sort of. almost snobbery to things that like. as if like everything needs to be seen as art in order to have value. Yeah. And like, actually, no, like, not everything. Like, things have value without them being attached to art and um Yeah. Sorry. I don’t. Now I’m kind of lost.

PETER:

No. No, I had to think of like how art has the ability as well to exploit the everyday, to exploit. And to extract, you know, from our lives. Like, if everything is art, we run the risk of becoming commodified and nothing we stop owning our own life because it becomes always something to give away or to share or to sell on the art market. I think it’s very hard to separate art and the art market when we simply speak about art, because what it sounds like you’re talking about is the possibility to be in these art institutions and in this art world brings and not to be there, and to have that separation, brings a sensitivity, right? Like a sensitivity to that relationality that you speak of. Because without. Yeah, but if we assume art is all good and it doesn’t have any flaws, we run the risk of it becoming dangerous.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.

PETER:

And by being skeptical and trying to hold onto something more ethical or something more integral to your experience, then we don’t allow art to somehow run away with our lives in a way. Yeah.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.

PETER:

Yeah. But yeah, that gets. Now we’re like. Would you said your work feels very existential, which is so beautiful as well. Like, then it has to, it doesn’t have to, but like, it ends up seeming to, at least for me, meet with these conditions of work and labor and

Lorea Burge:

Yeah, and labor like labor is a thing that I’m very like. interested in and busy with in my work generally, I think, as well. Like, when I when I view things and when I perform things, I’m interested in in the process of labor being quite explicit and visible. in a way for access, because for me, it’s kind of like remo removing the magic of art making and being like, these are the steps that I’m taking in order to get to this point. Yeah. Like, you can come along with me on that journey and then then go, do it yourself.

PETER:

Exactly. Exactly.

Lorea Burge:

And like, it’s sort of like taking it off its pedestal a little bit.

PETER:

Makes it egalitarian. Yeah. utilitarian, perhaps. Maybe we don’t want to go into that world, but, like, no, exactly. And too often art does the opposite, right? It becomes about skill and prestige and why why I deserve to be doing this rather than someone else, and promotion and cause.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah..

PETER:

It like, to be a good artist, and there’s such a paradox in it, because we know the material is extremely accessible and quite simple, I mean, in a lot of ways, yeah, the tasks you’re working with is listening and considering the sounds that the body makes, not just the voice that it has, but the sounds that it makes. And then considering, how would you amplify that and allowing that and that’s a very.. Yeah, beautiful. And of course, you’re extremely skilled and you’ve been working with this for many, many years, so, like, I don’t mean to belittle your work and your skill and your experience. But it does say something about how society treats those types of qualities and those types of people and bodies and experiences or even natures, right? Animals and creatures..

Lorea Burge:

Yeah. Actually, when I with this like listening practice, like, I always think of like animals, like dog, like dogs and other ones that have their hearing is astonishing. Like they can hear so far away. And so they are like connected to things so far away from them unaware and like I think it’s that openness that that um I strive for in this.

PETER:

Yeah. Yeah, it’s very cool, very cool. I think, I mean, hopefully we’re still recording, yeah. Was there any other things that you remember or that came up that you want to mention or talk about? Oh, I guess there was we haven’t really spoken about that after the the three stages we went into being more in relation, like to each of us instruments and thinking about live live composing.

PETER:

And we even I think, I said, we made a concert. Yeah. I always say this..

Lorea Burge:

Yeah, that was that was the first time that I’ve kind of done that leading on from leading on from there and without any amplific microphones in space are just doing it really no. So it was interesting for me to to test that out.

PETER:

Yeah. How did it feel? Like, what was it, as you expected? Did you want me to be more on the beat? Like, in your rhythm or.

Lorea Burge:

No, no. No, when I talk about rhythm, I think that doesn’t need to be. Yeah. One, there’s no one way, I think. It’s really nice to see like, how do like do people respond to So like, and different people sense or meaning of composition and sound. Yeah, how was it was it for you to do that?

PETER:

It was really generous. Of course, I mean, they had those little questions of like, am I doing it right? Would you like me to be more in sync?” But I got I got the vibe. You were very generous. And so I felt like I was in tune enough. But you really reminded me of, like, sometimes I think of art making and art consumption or watching as like this process of creative exchange, and that that the fact that to compose in this way, we were having to listen to each other, but we weren’t having to directly conform to each other. There’s such a beautiful sense of collectivity, which allows for an openness of conditions, like the rules are continually being negotiated and made between us. Like, I would make a sound and there’s no. There’s no sense of like, oh, wait, you didn’t go with my sound or things, right? It just adds to the tapestry and the complexity of the composition, which was really exciting. I mean, and even at some point, I think I was playing with the curtains, with the the slidy things at the top.

Lorea Burge:

Oh, yeah. The rail.

PETER:

What’s it called? The rail. And you were hitting the curtains on the other side or playing with the fabric and because mine was more mechanical, I was like, oh, shit, did I make an instrument? Am I now not using my body as the instrument? And I got really, like, lost in, like, where is the instrument? And where is the player of the musician?

Lorea Burge:

Yes.

PETER:

Which is such a beautiful question, because like, if you apply it to music, it’s really like, oh, yeah, what is the difference? Like, are the hands of the instrument player not also part of the instrument? Yeah, like, without them, the instrument doesn’t sound. But yeah, I was relating to your interpretation of the curtain and I was like, oh, and mine, but I felt like they had their own space. And it’s also, sorry, I had so many thoughts about that part. Like, also that thing of, like, being able to drop something and continue with something else whenever, it’s so, like, I I really love it. And at the same time, to continue with something and, like, allow repetition and play and so on. Yeah, it’s it’s it was a very rich playground to sort of be in relationship. Yeah. Because even though we weren’t composing for the previous things, I was still very aware of the sounds you were making, because

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.

PETER:

You can’t make a sound and not have it part of the collective, which is so powerful to sound. And why sometimes dance feels so individual,istic, right? Like, ‘Cause we you you could potentially do it and it doesn’t affect the room. Like, we could. But of course, if you really listen, it’s always affecting the room. Maybe that’s what you’re kind of like.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah. Yeah, and I also wonder where there’s like, in terms of like how we relate as instruments, like when, for example, like when you. you do just like a movement improvisation where you’re like, thinking about being in relation to the other, but that you’re just concerned with moving. Yeah. I’m just wondering now, like, what if it looks much different from what we did, which was like we were not thinking about, like, moving, but thinking about making sound. Exactly. But in order to do that, we have to move. So.. Yeah, I just I was like, when we were doing it, I I was thinking, I wonder what this looks like from the outside to do. Like, and if it’s if it’s very noticeable that there is a difference, like of attention and Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like also from a kind of viewer perspective, like, we are concerned with listening, but like, in order for that to come like, does that just like automatically translate to a viewer or does the viewer also need to be told to put their attention on the listening, you know?

PETER:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’ve started doing listening, sounding practice in a performance I do for babies. So, like, younger than 18 months old, and the reason it came out was because they make sounds all the time and I sort of had this sense, like, because their attention is 360 all over the place, wherever, at one time, like, they’re not looking at the dance. I was wanting to, like, do something which allows the performance to continue in their experience, regardless where we are.Cause they’re also very small and maybe the room is 10 meters, 15 meters and we’re really far apart, but that we can still be in relationship to each other. And so I had this I developed this sort of like sounding movement practice, and exactly as you say, like, at some point, I was like, less interested in the movement and more interested in the sound, but of course, I had to move to sound. And because the baby hasn’t yet started to like define things, like important, more important than others. Like they don’t have yet the same type of representation that we have around things. that they’re like a lot more inclusive of everything. So it doesn’t really answer your question around like, would an audience break the code of dance watching and listen to the dance, but I know with babies, they’re already kind of doing it, and that’s why I found them really exciting to do, because then they don’t have to be too concerned with trying to reed educate the audience, to’cause that also feels manipulative sometimes, like, if you want to just watch, then just watch. Or should should we have called this a concert rather than call it a dance performance? Right, like. And I think that’s sometimes our difficulty. I mean, I think, did I read on your website, you do call yourself a sound artist in some part, right?

Lorea Burge:

Yeah That’s a very recent. Is it? That’s a very recent term that I’ve Yeah, I still feel like I get major impost syndrome every time I say that, but yeah.

PETER:

But do you find the context help and like, how do, yeah, how does it yeah, how does it feel to be working as both sound artists and dance?

Lorea Burge:

I mean, I think, like, one of the initial, like drives that for working with sound for me was thinking about access and like. There’s something in, like, seeing live music, that is, like, incredibly ex It’s like maybe, maybe one of the, if not the most like accessible art forms that we have because I think. Yeah, it’s just so many people experience music. And I really like the kind of low-key energy, atmosphere that you get at a gig where you can you can experience the art, so the music without having to be necessarily like fully present and focused on it. And that’s something that I’ve always really liked and I’ve been curious about like finding ways that I could do that within dance because one of the things that I mean, I love dance, like what I’ve chosen to do, but like, um one of the things that I don’t like about it is, but maybe this is more about theater context. Like often I think people feel, I think there is a kind of skepticism or like anxiety around going to see dance, that people feel like, I don’t know if I’m going to get it or like, and there is also kind of a lot of codes around the way that you watch it and that you have to kind of be focused fully on the thing and I’m, yeah, I’m curious about moving away from that. And that was what the initial thing that made me want to start playing with sound is to see if I could get some of that lowkeyness into this form.

PETER:

Yeah, I mean, I don’t have an answer. I don’t know why I’m still in the world of dance. If it’s just happen dance, you know, like, “Oh, this is where I found myself or if, it actually makes more sense to bring my work through that lens, but like the I feel as one thing that I fail dance offers me is that it often relates to the experiential. Even though you’re right, like music has such a rich tradition of allowing for an experiential witnessing or spectatorship, which dance has been captured by the sort of proscenium arch and forward facing stage, even though those codes are really fun as well, right? Like some people make amazing things in those. But most a lot of dancers I’ve met, like the reason they want to dance is because they enjoy dancing. It’s less, I rarely hear people saying that they want to. dance because they love watching it. Yeah. Like, I think Jonathan Borrows actually wrote it in his choreographic handbook, like, the guitarist learns to play the guitar because they enjoy listening to music. Whereas the dancer learns to dance because they enjoy dancing. And I do believe like some of the richest parts of dance are through experience and that’s why that feels like like a trope, maybe, or something, and that dance as an art form, then hopefully can lend itself to a more participatory spectatorship where listening is more included or readily available. It’s definitely a stage or a place. Dance is where the code can be super dramatically different, and you can invite an audience to listen to your dance sooner than not listening to it. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m now. wandering around in my talking. Yeah. But I also. I think what listening to you and doing your practices invites to me is and maybe it’s that frustration thing, is the sort of desire to sort of dream of like where dance could exist. Parallel or in other ways, or these practices, this relationality, the sensitivity, where they could sort of exist in the world, in other other amounts and so on.. It puts a question mark around art as a sort of industry and condition and label.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah.

PETER:

And that’s really powerful just to we can still be there in the studio. We can still go to art events and things. But to have a little bit of dupability, a little bit of doubt around it, for me, allows for an opening that maybe other parts of the world that maybe I haven’t even named and recognized as places to be in relationship with things. Can open up for me.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah. That’s really nice.

PETER:

A little bit waffly. Yeah. It’s but it’s I’m really. Yeah, really privileged to come into your practice and, like, get to noodle around a little bit with you.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah, it’s really fun. Yeah, as I said, like, I’ve been doing this, like, alone for the most part. So it’s only recently that and I’ve not done it much at all but have like invited other people in yeah and to start to think of because I think ultimately like want to be doing things more with others and in collective and Yeah. It’s just financially, that’s always difficult

PETER:

Yeah, yeah.

Lorea Burge:

But it’s been really nice for me to like, to test those and to test those ideas out with others and find ways to also articulate the things that I do kind of intuitively. Like, to put words to it to be able to out others to experience a version of it to.

PETER:

And hopefully this does that a little bit. Like that’s my intention is to sort of to have these opportunities, these exchanges, these collectivities, and then try to make it even a broader collective that this recording could stay on online for as long as I can afford, but that a larger collective can engage in some of this collectivity that we’re experiencing from doing the practice together, and that maybe it could continue as well into, yeah, further collaborations and stuff that people can reach out to you perhaps and things. I mean, especially just to before I ask you about how to get in touch and stuff. like, ’cause we we hadn’t talked about anything that we would really do today until we were recording. Yeah. And I think it’s, it’s important, or it’s not important, but it’s nice to recognize like these invitations through these episodes of the podcast is really to say and invite a collectivity that people can listen and imagine or even try and do some of these things and have their own relationship to our relationship to it. And yeah, perhaps even come and see you or talk to you or follow you somehow. So how would they do that?

Lorea Burge:

How would they do that? Um.. Um, I have a website.

PETER:

You do. It’s an amazing website. It is It’s actually a really nice website.

Lorea Burge:

Thank you, which is more kind of like a sort of portfolio or something. Which needs to be updated. But that’s just my name. loreaburge.com. And then also, I, the stuff that’s more up to date regretfully is Instagram. So that is actually a very easy way to see the things that I’m doing. Because I use that mostly for work stuff. yeah. Yeah. I don’t have any. shows of this coming up for now, I think. I’m doing I’ an improvised performance at an event called Roadhouse Next Friday in Leeds.

PETER:

You’re right. I’m not sure I’ll get it out at this time.

Lorea Burge:

I can be one for the past. I did a show in.. But yeah. No, I don’t have anything booked in.

PETER:

But I will I link it in like the description online and on the website and stuff. And also, we haven’t actually come up with many references during this. There’s a few things that we mentioned, of course, like Martin, Hardgreaves.

Lorea Burge:

The Rose Choreographic School.

PETER:

Exactly. Sadler Wells. And I will linked them, but maybe also if you have any references that come to mind that you would like to share, we can also

Lorea Burge:

Add those in

PETER:

link them those in great. Yeah, I’ll have a link. Just to enrich it and also, yeah, I’ll link to as much as your stuff as I can so that people can connect with you and relate to you.

Lorea Burge:

Great..

PETER:

Further. And maybe we do another one of these and we’ll see why your practice is in. Yeah. In the future.

Lorea Burge:

Yeah You can do it one with a little tech.

PETER:

Cool. Thank you so much.

Lorea Burge:

Thank you. It’s been really nice.

PETER:

Yeah. Bye, everyone.

Lorea Burge:

Bye.

1. Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary dance
2. Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre
3. Micheal Kegan Dolan https://teacdamsa.com/about/
4. Rite of Spring Fabulous Beast – https://youtu.be/jsRKugYT03c?si=aI0dO4iS4AjEmNn3
5. Agnes and Walter: A Little Love Story Created and Directed by Neil Paris
6. Laban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_von_Laban
7. Dartington college of arts
8. Steve Paxton ’Small Dance’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oWA1sWMlOk
9. Alejandro Mexican Sharman
10. Morris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_dance
11. The Corby group is Deep Roots Tall Trees Dancetheatre https://www.deeprootstalltrees.org/Activities/
12. The group in Brighton is led by Yael Flexer https://www.flexerandsandiland.com/brighton-classes
13. ‘Course E’ at Shawbrook 2007 summer school for aspiring dancers in Ireland led by Fabulous Beast (Micheal Kegan Dolan, Neil Paris, and Philip Feeney)
14. London Coliseum https://londoncoliseum.org/
15. Family Constellations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Constellations

PETER:

Hello, today I’m here with what do I say? Neil Paris or Neil Smith?

Neil Paris:

I think you’ve just said You’ve just said it both. I’m kind of both really, but I suppose, yeah, you know.

PETER:

Neil Paris is professional name.

Neil Paris:

Paris is the professional name yeah.

PETER:

When we know each other from the origin, like of my career, I was still at school when we met. I was still at Rambert. Wow. Learning to be a dancer and finding my feet in the world, and aspiring to be doing what you were doing, right then with fabulous Beast. And you became the. I don’t want to say father figure, but you were the person who took care of me throughout that period of my life, entering into a company, and performing on the biggest stage I’ve ever performed on in the West End with a full size orchestra, The right of spring, a massive, a massive production. And you had been there from the audition to the sort of summer schools that Michael Keegan Dolan had me come to and attend as we got to know each other. And then for the R&D, the research with the Mexican shaman, Ajandro, and then into the rehearsals and so on and we often shared a room, we shared a dressing room, we were there through it all. So 16 years later, I’m in Cambridge, you’re in Cromer. It made sense to reach out to you.

Neil Paris:

It’s lovely.

PETER:

And I mean, and also after Fabulous Beast, we did have some contact.. I got to work with you as you started to develop your own work.

Neil Paris:

Yes, yeah. You were right there at the beginning. Really, right at the very, very in section of that kind of first time it came out of my head and into a space and you and Julia came along and acted for me. which was. Which was wonderful. And also I was thinking it was a lovely kind of exchange the deal was you and Julia could also then have the space and it was, yeah, so it was it was instrumental

PETER:

yeah, because I mean I was finding my feet still after trying working as a dancer and then trying to figure out, okay, how do I relate to what is in me and what that means and what it means to be in in or with dance. But anyway, this is about you. So if people don’t know you, how do you how do you introduce yourself? We were talking a bit about this earlier, but maybe today, what would you how would you describe yourself for? what are some of the key points that you’d like people to know of you?

Neil Paris:

Gosh, it’s always so difficult. What’s my title? I suppose. What do you say, dance and movement artist? Or is it a movement and dance artist? I don’t know which one comes first. Most of my work now is with people who haven’t had formal training or it’s a long time since they’ve done formal training. So a lot of the people I’m working with now are certainly over 50, possibly over into the 60s, 70s. and a few younger now It’s little bit more intergenerational. And I’m really, I guess, concerned with giving them an opportunity to move, to really explore that side of themselves, that maybe as never really fully been explored, or has been in some cases is laying dormant for a little while, I give them the opportunity to express themselves through moving physically and as part of that, finding ways in which I can help them with more freedom, with ease of movement, with safety, with, and then building on solid solid skills. So that hopefully the skills enable the freedom, which enables the skills, which and to see themselves as dancers..

PETER:

And it’s still rooted in where you came from as a dancer and as a maker.

Neil Paris:

Yeah, I think so. I think because before Fabulous Beast, before I’d gone to Laban, I’d gone to Dartington college of arts, which was very much about, which was a theater ranking course. But it was theatre making in a social kind of in a always had that kind of social context, so it wasn’t really about being able to enter the industry and to get an agent. It was about how how do you have a stay with things, with people and create something? And I think that’s grounded me into into what I’ve done since really, I think about it. It’s. And the work with the intensity of the work with Fabulous Beast and being surrounded by such extraordinary performers and people. has, yeah, has kind of embedded itself. I think I’m really quite committed still to ensemble and group that specialness of what it’s like to be part of that group, that find that language of movement or they share that and you share the rhythm and you that’s still, I think it’s still quite an important part of what I do, yeah, and it’s all. It’s all still in there. you know.

PETER:

And so now what I ask is usually, what are you busy with? What are we going to do today? And we’ve already done what we’re going to do mainly, but maybe you could still introduce for the listeners before we open it up into how it felt and everything and our reflection. Just what it is that we did today. Okay. I have my opinions, of course, but I’d love that you.

Neil Paris:

Well, practically it’s an online class and it’s called No Big Idea, NBI, it’s become known as. And it started off 10 years as a in real life, in person class, which I kind of set up for myself as much as anything, so I would move regularly, and invited a few people I knew to say that you’t come and take part. And these were all, you know, essentially kind of non-dances. So we would meet every week. Sometimes we’d make pieces. and then in COVID, obviously it all stopped, but then we just tried putting it online. which meant that people from France could join in and people from London could join in and people from Corby. And it never went back. It’ never really gone back from being online because the group didn’t want to lose those new people. Yeah. So yeah, so today is an hour and a half of, you know, a fairly structured session or structured warm-up, but then it moves into an improvisation breakouts, a bit of a chat. improvisation 2.

PETER:

do you want to maybe just mention what was the focus for today? Because it’s quite specific, and maybe you could even mention some of the exercises we did.

Neil Paris:

So. kind of that the Yeah, there is this, if you think of what you mean, like thinking from, actually talk through the way it works.

PETER:

Yeah.

Neil Paris:

Okay, well, the way it works is that it normally have what we call a dance track. So it’s just a fun track for people to just begin to move. It’s also that and it’s also to like, it’s that threshold moment of like, okay, you’re leaving your I know you’re in your your bedroom, your lounge or wherever you are but this is the moment that you transition into your dance space.

PETER:

Yeah.

Neil Paris:

So we have that and then there’s a very comes from the Fabulous Beast days of kind of yoga-based warm-up. Which is really useful online because it means I can absolutely make sure that they I know that I’ve prepped them. Yeah, because when you’re not in the room with them, you can’t you can’t. And then that moved into four layers today, which was something I kind of, I’m not sure I think I made it up, but it’s just basically the idea of that very subtle impulses within the body. trying to get ourselves to listen in very carefully to what’s already happened to what’s already happening.. Saw a lovely video recently. Someone sent us to Steve Paxton just before he died doing what he called Tiny Dance.. And it was just him stood still in nature. But obviously, so it’s that thing of just acknowledging that you’ve got all of those things that are happening. and that develops into then connecting into the physical body, which is your muscles and your bones. Articulations, and then we look at moving into space and then we connect with each other. So it’s just those….

PETER:

Four layers,

Neil Paris:

yeah, and it’s called four layers.. So we kind of starts here and it moves out, out, out, out, out, out, out. But then as you were saying, how do you then main, but then it’s about what Kate, when we’re moving. Oh we want to stay connected to all of those bits. And part of it is hopefully, you never need to make a move up. If you’re there’s something. try to get people away from thinking about what their movement should look like, because I always found for me, if we were discussing, I said, I could cut my head off and not be intellectualizing. I what I think the move should look like, or what’s. How can I be more moving from the body?

PETER:

Yeah.

Neil Paris:

And then act more consciously, because unconscious movement. that’s limited. So how do you find little structures that you can then bring your consciousness to? So you can know that, oh, my arm’s my arm isn’t fully extended. Or I’m doing the same things all the time. So we use that and then we moved into a couple of tracks that we’ve been using where it’s now developed where I was like saying to them okay here’s your first improvisation. It’s a solo improvisation, so it’s just you on your own. for them to explore however they want, maybe. And I introduced the idea of imaginary partner today.

PETER:

Yes.

Neil Paris:

So sometimes I’ll add an idea into the first improv. Maybe there’ll be images with it. It depends on perhaps what has happened more recently. But today’s was, yeah, just imagine there is someone in the room with you and… how that can affect your. So you’re not alone, even though you are alone.. And then we go into a breakout. And essentially, I’m kind of looking from the moment we start to dancing to the moment we go to the breakout, there isn’t really a break. I’m interested in that kind of how do you not. Because the place that you get to after the rotations and the place that you get to after four layers, you’re kind of already how do we just continue that all the way through? So for them, it can be like 45 minutes of fairly concentrated movement. And the breakouts are really in their break. And the idea was they used to be like, now think about what you’ve just done. Make some notes. But now people just have a chat. And it’s just that they have the drink and some water in. And then we come back and then today those people that you were in the breakout room with, you have a duet with them.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah, that was nice.

Neil Paris:

Same tracks, but there may be something like for you and Helen you got into that discussion of sea, of coastal inland and that then informed informed your duet.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then we we had a dance at the end.

Neil Paris:

Yeah, and then another little breakout just to give people an opportunity to, because I think it was something you were saying earlier about how the difference was when someone is dancing on their own and when someone is actually working in a pair, that dialogue gets going and I think I’ve really found that. It’s not just a break, actually, it’s let them have that dialogue and also say, God, thank you, that and to say thank you, I really enjoyed dancing with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. thank you for that that was and for them also to realise that sometimes I think I’ve heard them think they haven’t got much to offer and oh, it’s so great watching you, Neil. It’s all right. I find like if I partner them.. I love working with them, because I’m like,Oh, my God, Sue, what is that that you do? Yeah. What is that? And I can’t. It’s not in my book, What is that? I love the way you do that. Yeah. And it’s genuine. Yeah. And so hopefully people get to really appreciate that. Actually, they are really good.

PETER:

And quite simple. Just arms in the air, but there’s something that we’ve what she’s doing,

Neil Paris:

yeah. And I think they’re and it’s that thing about, I think I’ve always talked about it. If you’re connected to your movement, if you’re connected to your image, if you’re connected to whatever you’ you’re connected somewhere to it, and it shows. Yeah, that you know that there’s something going on. So we had the breakout and then we have often have a couple of tracks just to kind of dance out, which is the opposite of that

PETER:

at the beginning.

Neil Paris:

You can leave all of this stuff we’ve just done now and get on for a day and a warm down to finish.

PETER:

No, it’s great.

Neil Paris:

That’s how it’s pretty much how we do a session.

PETER:

But that’s great. And so now, we’ll we’ll pause and there’ll be a break before we start reflecting. And it just gives people at home the opportunity to imagine a little bit what we did, perhaps even try something, maybe they have the opportunity to stand and to be with some of the words and the things that you’ve put into this room Yeah, so we’ll come back in a minute and see you there.

PAUSE

PETER:

OK, great we’re back and this is now I mean the problem is Neil we are reflecting all the time anyways.

Neil Paris:

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Always reflecting.

PETER:

But this was wonderful, to dance with you, to be in your practice and let you say, to remember those times and it was an intense year two years of dancing together and dealing with very big things, which I’m still dealing with. And so yeah, to have the opportunity to be back in the studio was really a special..

Neil Paris:

And. Likewise.

PETER:

I think. I mean, maybe you can say a little bit because, I mean, it’s your practice and you already described it in great detail. But maybe because it was me and you dancing, some of those things came up for me, so the sort of digging and peat. I want to say folk. So like what we did with Fabulous Beast, there was this sort of rural Irish of course. homage and paying attention to and privileging since it had been such a repressed and colonialized culture, for want to a bad word. And at the time, it wasn’t a really fully conscious of that. But being here now and having that time to rethink, having seen kneecap, you know, this summer and reengaging with some of those stories and remembering some of the things we were doing, which was about trying to get back to something more authentic, something that’s more ourselves. So I’m just curious a little bit of that experience because for me, images of farming, of toiling the field, and I have to think of my my mum’s father’s side was all farmers. Oh, really? sheep farming, crop farming. And there would have been laborers, of course. Yeah, yeah. At least what I know of my great grandfather. And so those traditions are in the family, I was just reading about how he moved away from that, and into engineering. And then you see how then my mum moved into nursing and became a professional and then how then I became an artist and a dancer, But there’s that lineage in that history and those types of that class struggle in a lot of ways. and being back in the UK, in the Fenlands, in Cambridgeshire for me but, coming over to the coast to Cromer, to see you. I am sort of thinking about of this place, of these people, these people that were overlooked and lost to time, to power struggles and so on. But what is that is there a folk nature to the work for you still or it is about the people as well.

Neil Paris:

I think so in as much as I suppose in as much as it is about the people that I’m working with. I don’t wouldn’t say there’s anything particularly linked to the folk scene or the folk dance structure that we have in this country as such, but I think in as much as it’s from it’s from the people, that I’m working with. I would say, yes, it is connected into their.. Because I suppose if I’m… Yeah, what is folk dance? I mean, dance, folk dance is dance with folk. It’s dance with people. Exactly, right. And you think, well, all dance is, folk dance, really, because it’s dance with people.. But I suppose it’s, you know, it’s got a kind of a genre that you imagine and not even Morris, but just even the particular rhythms that are used in the music with it and there’s that as we experience as a kind of intimate ground, there’s a kind of yeah, into the earth.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah.

Neil Paris:

Whereas I suppose, you know, contemporary ballet is up or ballet’s about leaving you. folk feels like it’s about getting into the earth, which is I think fed into where Michael was working and and his you know, especially thinking perhaps with his ballet training, I think it’s all about this. And he wanted to get down. Yeah. And the amount of time we are.

PETER:

From the up to the down.

Neil Paris:

We were either talking about rooting and getting down. But I just think it’s interesting to what you say because I grew up basically in a rural environment. out here in Norfolk, you know, 8, 10 miles outside the city. But actually, all my, I’ve got, I don’t know any lineage that’s linked to the land. All of my family are kind of urban in terms of they were working in factories, yeah. Shoe operatives.

PETER:

And your name, of course, Smith.

Neil Paris:

Smith is someone who makes. Yeah. And, you know, my dad was in factory and his father was a plasterer and all of his family. So they were very much an. although I know I’ve come to realise, I grew up rural, my background context is urban.

PETER:

I mean, when we’ve been talking, we talk a long walk, along the beach in Cromer, and it’s so weathered and a sense of nature and also Helen brought up the waves of the sea. But we were talking about, what do you call what we do? And you were saying how that struggle of calling it dance or what style of dance are we doing? And exactly me bringing in that sort of easy into a conversation, of course, by bringing in the word folk, but of course, exactly as you say, that’s a genre, almost or a style.

Neil Paris:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

PETER:

And yet, there’s something, maybe about the tradition of dance from the folk. Tradition, maybe. There seems to be really important. The fact that you’re gathering these people and it’s not a big idea. It’s not. It is just to dance.

Neil Paris:

But don’t now we’re talking about it, I think this is perhaps one of the shifts with. If we’re thinking about I’m gathering the people with no big idea, but I think from what I understand of the origins of some folk dance is there was a big idea to it because it was about this ritual element to it, ceremony and they were connected to seasons and acts. So there was a function, I think, a lot from my understanding of it is connected to the function of those dances in those days when. And I think in some cultures it still exist, but not so much now it’s become more of a decorative art form, but it had its root in, this is the dance that marks the end of the harvest. This is the dance that’s going to bring a dance for this, which used to exist so much more in our society and those kind of things of have gone and it has become a it’s not functionless, but the function, it’s not got a sign of a social function as such. And I think finding any kind of dance that still has that. social function. And that’s why I said what I would do is it hasn’t it hasn’t got a social function outside of the people that take part in it.

PETER:

Yeah. No, I get that. That’s. And it’s nice that you bring it up. And of course, I can pay homage to these ideas of toiling the soil and stuff. And of course, there was also those dances that would have been work dances, labouring dances, or labouring songs and rhythms and that sort of get borne out of the work of the machinic work or sort of the hammering or the marching or all these sort of associations with labor. But you’re right. Yeah, that element of for a purpose, for reason. And of course, when we did the rite, family and heritage was sort of the core central feature of the research we were doing. Looking back at our ancestors, looking back at our families. And of course, I’m already, it already comes up and I have to think of, you know, how we have like a family a family tree of dancers as well, people who have influenced us and I think what was really rich in that work was exactly how we being influenced and affected by who we are and where we’ve come from and and like so many ways, it truly affected the dance, for me at least. I mean, especially I had that solo, which came directly from the the family constellation work we did.. So it was so relatable to this idea of who we are and where we’re from. So I apologize for bringing that in placing it on the work. But that we were doing today, of course. But it’s. It’s still. There’s still echoes. I mean, you have the yoga practice in there and there. So it’s hard to get away from it really.

Neil Paris:

Yeah. And I think. I mean, partly of using that yoga practice it is so effective. Yeah. It’s just a I mean, I can’t. And yeah,. For all of you of the things that happened in that time and the things that took away, I think learning how that practice is really effective. And the people people that I do with, if I leave it out, they always want it back. And But yeah, I mean, you can’t not be influenced by that experience. Even some of the, you know, like most experiences, you learn things you don’t want to do. And I think we probably all learn that that’s not the way I want to do it. And I think that idea of, like when I left Fabulous Beast and I made Agnes and Walter, which you were part of that, really early, early thing. I was very much not wanting to repeat that create that environment that we eventually kind of found ourselves in which didn’t feel healthy, was intense, but I was interested in trying to. But also with Agnes and Walter, I was working with someone who was 69, someone who was 79. from the community. I thought, well, I can’t subject and there was something in me that’s like it doesn’t have to it doesn’t does it have to be this way Could you make a really lovely piece of work without what it felt like the pain? I think there was a certain amount of sense of, you have to suffer in order to make something. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there are elements of truth in that. Yeah. But whether it was. I was questioning that when I left. Yeah. And I think, amul, it seemed to me that you were mentioned, the history of the Ireland as colonised. They did suffer a lot. There was a lot of suffering in Ireland, and it was a lot of it was, as I was at the hands of England and you know, it colonized it, it punished it. And that felt like it was a bit kind of endemic in what we were doing, you know So I was interested in, could I not working in that way? And I think that working in opposition to what I’ve been through is still an influence that that carried me forward.

PETER:

And I mean, and it was such a powerful experience. I mean, and there’s so many things that clearly still are precious and lingering. But it was massive. It was such a big project and it was the pinnacle of all that work that fabulous beast had done until that period to sort of surmise almost and try to make this piece and it was a great hit. It really really made a mark, I think. So it’s sort of it’ss a strange relationship where we sort of find ourselves within the industry as well, like, and how it pushes certain agendas and certain needs. And one thing that I think is really remarkable, because you spoke a bit about how when we come in, we play the sort of get in track, just the song to start dancing. Yeah. And I don’t maybe you didn’t say that, but I had this sense of like. I’m a professional We know how to do this, so I should already be ready. But I felt the difference between what I was doing before then we did the the yoga mobilization and then the layers. By the time I’d gone through that, the world that I was available to was just vastly different. And it’s just astonishing how little is needed to dance and exactly as you were saying, you started doing these little classes and this practice in a way, for yourself to be able to dance. It’s really. It’s so little that it’s needed, but it’s so much that comes from it. It’s really powerful stuff. you know,

Neil Paris:

I’m now just thinking again, back to everything that you know, the training that we went through to create the right and the training that I’d been on with that company for the four or five years before that, you know, and the first thing in the morning was on your mat.. In silence, cross leg going forward. Now we start. So there was an intensity right from the beginning of the day, which. So what’s the other way is, well, we just bring it in, you know, the lightness that can so maybe maybe that is also a little bit of that element of play and lightness is really valuable as well. So let’s just start with a bit of that and then. Yeah. Because I’m really interested in that as well. When you, it’s like saying I was like my cousin’s 50th birthday and we’re all just up dancing, and I love those social party dance environments when everyone just kind of gets up and oh. and you look at it and everyone loves it. But virtually everyone gets up But you ask them to, do you want to come and do some stuff? They’ll Yeah. And I was talking to my uncle about this and he said, “Oh, he said, I remember, I remember it was a good party for grandma his mum, my grandmother. And he said, ” oh, it was down there all of a sudden he said, ” you got up. And you were doing some kind of surfboard type of thing. surfing thing. I said, what, I? And he said, he said, I remember going, “Is that Neil? He said, “Because normally, I was I wasn’t I didn’t get involved in anything like that. Yeah, yeah. But he said, ” that was the. And I was like, “W, you remember that?” So there must have been a moment, but all of a sudden I thought, i must has said, I want to I want to do that. And I guess that was how it I’d never heard that story before and I must have been quite young because he said he was still in the forces at the time. Okay. But I think that thing is something important of as professional dancers, it’s not always target focus, but you know you’ve got to get there’s a show that we’re making and in our case, there’s going to be steps and there’s gotta be learned and you’ve got to learn it but embody perform it. So there’s that whole thing that’s got to be. So the kind of thing that can come out of people having joy… And that is a creative tool. how do you do you create from a joyful place? Yeah, yeah. Which. And it brings a different energy into the room.

PETER:

Absolutely. And. No, no,

Neil Paris:

I’m I’m still trying to that question of how do I create something for you? Just from pure joy?

PETER:

V. Maybe also to think, I think what we are tip toeing around as well is very interesting or like, what dance is, especially since we’re coming from, I mean, fabulous Beast is a dance theatre company. it was. And or or you could say physical theatre or whatever you want to however you want to label it. But. dance does hold something different. Thinking about, I see you were saying, those folk ritualistic practices, where theatre tends to be about narrative as a way of reflecting, quite ordered and structured. And those things definitely exist in ritual and dance practices, but there’s also something beyond comprehension that sort of made available in those dance moments, in those moments where it’s too untangible to really nail, beat to beat, what is trying to be portrayed. Narrative wise. And that blend almost, that fight, that struggle to demonstrate, where those moments for pure joy, emotion beyond conclusion of a sort of story or something can sort of emerge. And I had to think about, yes, there’s, there isn’t that desperate struggle. And to think about what would are the dances have been, actually, would people have been able to have danced when they were fighting the British, fighting the English. Are people still able to dance in Gaza, for instance, right? In such strife, unimaginable strife. There’s something that seems so detached from what we’re doing. And yet, Helen, in the discussion, which I thought was really interesting, because you were saying, oh, they break out and they just get a break and chat, right? It’s nothing. But it wasn’t. She said to me, she says, “O, today, I have to go for a dentist appointment.” which is a form of strife. She said, “Oh, I’ve got figure this out, I’ve got to get to the dentist.” But then she mentioned how her cat came in the room and started doing the movements. And so, even though she was talking about her date, she was actually also talking about reflecting on the dance as well. And then we spoke, I spoke a little bit about the earth and things like. Images that had come up for me and she started to dig into this trauma was maybe too strong, but like, upset that she had around the erosion of the coast of a certain part of this coast because of a power plant or something like this. And her devastation to be losing that habitat and what that means. And it was not political. Does that makes sense? It’s emotional. She wasn’t she wasn’t really creating a sort of rational reading of this is what we need to do. We need to lobby this and this. It was really, I was with those waves and how they move and how the land is just being destroyed and changing. And I had to think, yeah, we start with joy, but also it allows for so much. That’s dance space.

Neil Paris:

Yes.. Yeah. And I think hopefully making sure that there is some enjoying or starting from a light place, does it set a time where if stuff does it emerge, which interests me work in physically working with dance and also I’ve experienced work working with voice. You can’t always predict when something is gonna touch. So maybe that’s that’s also also part of it. I’m also conscious that the people that I’m working with, they’re not professionals, they’re not.. I haven’t bought their time. Because from the industry side, the things, you know, we were paid, we were bought. We were supposed to be there at this particular time, and you were supposed to do your eight or nine hours of whatever we were doing, and you applied yourself as a. So there is a slightly different relationship there between someone who’s coming voluntarily, and they’re not signed a contract.

PETER:

No, no, no.

Neil Paris:

But if it’s interesting, yeah, the way suddenly, yeah, there was this thing for her, how.. She was. Yeah, she’s really angry about her.

PETER:

Yeah. You know? I mean, it’s quite the thought experiment, which we probably can’t get into to imagine if we had done everything for the right of spring that we did, but without contracts, what would have emerged? Actually, Without the. I mean, maybe there still would be a massive performance in the things. But to imagine that there wasn’t that tension of professionalism and contracts and owing and hierarchies and things and that, because some of those things we did were just spectacular. I mean, from the meditations to the yoga, to the sweat lodges, to the rehearsals. And exactly as you were saying just before we started, you know, so much talent, all in one room. It’s it’s it’s a phenomenal thing to sort of have paid witness to. One thing that I was thinking about, you were talking about the breakout rooms and I was thinking about, especially the last one, where we’d danced for our partner and got to watch them, and you were sort of touching on this, this quality that I think is so interesting we’ve dance, where it almost the experience gets heightened through conversation when when it meets a person and starts to find some articulation in the world, even though we know it’s never fully the words never fully capture the whole dance. Just like now, we’re trying to capture something that will never fully be able to do. We know that we would always have to go and dance again, but yet trying and giving word which sort of appreciate her, give time and strengthen and hold and believe it. It’s a very interesting relationship. But I’ve really felt like that, or I can imagine as well that that sharing after provides that space as well.

Neil Paris:

Yeah, it’s. I, yeah, I really agree with you on that. And I think it’s something that I’ve I’ve come to value a lot more over time. And I suppose also as the groups that I’ve been working with, because I’ve been lucky enough to work with two groups consistently over six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years. So I’ve seen them all develop. It is about, okay, so now how do you develop that verbal language to kind of articulate what you’ve seen and how that can really support and feed the other person and grow the dance the next time. Whereas I don’t think I would I would have probably just kept people moving. No, deliberately, I remember the earlier days I’d be like, yeah, I don’t worry about it. But then it’s like, okay, now, how do you describe as part of the sorts of part of their development as movers is that the more you can observe to see But it’s really valuable, because then. people feel when you say to someone else, I just love I loved the way you did that.” And they say, if I’m in the room with them, they say to me, “I just love that, you know, thanks.” You realise you still want that approval for all that approval, praise, affirmation, as a mover, and I think for some. Some perhaps someone like Helen, who you worked with, he’s probably in the latest to the group. Okay. She’s not been with us, well over a year now. And her movement ranges is expanded, but it’s restricted, it’s limited to some degree. So for her to then get back A to get that for us, but also for you to look at it and go, actually, the way you did that. It reminds me that it’s not all about.

PETER:

No, because her movement was just so beautiful. She had these I mean, and it was interesting because I was emphasizing on how the viscosity that sort of slowness of her waves gave me such more of a powerful understanding.

Neil Paris:

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

PETER:

Of the movement of the tides and of the waves, then my sort of explosive whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh interpretation of waves. And it just enriches that conversation that we’re having with this material, with this. And I mean, what’s really central in everything you’re doing? I mean, and also you’re working Corby and stuff, which we haven’t really even opened that you’ve been doing for so long. Is this sense of community and building a community and being together? And yeah, I know this is very much that, but it feels so important in your work. And even though, especially in the Corby work, if I understand it right, there is a performative element. The coming together and finding a commonality to sort of to do something together seems to be really rich and important for your work.

Neil Paris:

And I think it’s important for the people who come to do it. The social is for these people, the social, is as almost as important sometimes than. No, it’s not as important. It’s an important part of their whole coming on a Wednesday evening. Yeah. They know each other in a different way because they’re dancing with each other, they’ve moved with each other and they’re part of a group. You get that kind of they’re part of a like we call, we kind of call them a company now, but they’re a part of that group and I think it’s really important to them to be part of it. And so being part of that community, and now with with the Corby group, like we traveled down to Brighton earlier this year to work with Yale Flexes intergenerational group. And so they’re now hopefully beginning and Yale came up and did some work with them and they’ve worked with another artist. So introducing them to other dance artists and trying to get. They’ve been hoping to see themselves as part of a wider dance community, you know, you see that you’re part of this is part of a whole national thing. They know about the fact that there’s other groups, but how do you then get get them, give them the opportunity to see themselves as part of a much bigger community of people that are you’re not the only people who like to move in this way. Because Corby like a lot of towns surrounded by, you gig a chance class, you’ve got a step class, you’ve got a ballet classes. You know, you’ve got, you haven’t got anything, like. Look, we do. Yeah. You know, and like what you’re offering, there’s not really anything else like that. But there are more people doing it who are of a like mind. Yes, yeah. who understand or a like body, even. Yeah.. You physically. When we took them to Brighton, they went to Southeast Dance. She dances in a fairly new purpose built dance centre. So you go in and whereas we working over the chore, which is fabulous, because it’s big and we’ve got cold space, and it’s wonderful. You know, they’re going in there, and there’s a class already going on. we’re in there in 10 minutes and

PETER:

Yeah. Wow.

Neil Paris:

Here are your lockers. That experience of being.. So they went there, so very different, and then they met this other group, similar ages, but they and Bright, so. Some of them clearly already had a previous practice. Yeah. But they had. sounds really tough. But you know, they looked like they came from Brighton. They had a a whole cosmopolit and the kind of. But they came out and they went, “We did all right in there, didn’t we?” I thought we held our own..Cause you bloody dead. And they did, and now they’re like,Do you know what? We’re all right, aren’t You know, they’ve had that opportunity to look look at themselves against other people who’ve been dancing as long, if not longer. Well, I think we’re quite good up. Yeah. And that seems quite important for them now to see themselves. There’s part of a wider community that they can. conside they’ve only got me to keep saying, you’re doing really well. I really love what you doing. And of course, I do, but it’s just me. This class is in, I mean I don’t really have a style, but… Or I didn’t think I did. but I think I possibly have, and I think I’m encouraging people with the. I think I’m beginning with the exercises that I’m doing. I think basically, I’m trying to encourage you to experience what I’m experiencing. But you’ve only got one person to keep. At some point, you want to go, like, test yourself mainly. They’re doing that, you know, they And they’re wanting to perform and they’re wanting to share what they do. Yes. Not so much this group, but because I ask them, do you want to do performances? I’m like, yeah. Okay. They want to share what they’re doing. They’re proud of it and they value it. And even if they get small audiences, they still want and I think they also want to now they want that. They understand that there’s that different journey from your creation to the kind of choreographing or the collating to the editing. to the the rigor of their okay well. Yeah. We need to get this ready for performance. and I think they’ve they’re appreciating that journey now.

PETER:

And it’s I mean, and it’s it’s admirable, isn’t it? Because we know how difficult it is actually to move towards a public facing thing. Like, we struggled, as I said, like with, how do we call? what we’re doing? What is this? And exactly as you say, like, it’s my style, it’s what I enjoy. But yet we know dance history, we know all the words, and yet still, there’s a difficulty and it’s similar. It’s very similar to then putting that on a stage and sharing with society at large, a larger community, and hoping that they might join our community or share in some part of that what we’re going through, and so on, I have to think about how when there’s a crisis or when there is yeah, when there’s a crisis in oneself or in the world, we go to a place to get help. You know, we go to the doctors, we go to therapy, we go to There are places that are for crisis and our world isn’t about crisis, it’s separate. However, listening to the people talking during the class today, in the dancing today, it starts to make me think about how having a community that can also absorb crisis is also really important and how that that we can we can somehow be together through crisis as well. It doesn’t happen to be something that you disappear and come back to, and the fact that you’re working with people, you were talking about people needing hip replacements and stuff. and that you can be in that journey with them losing potentially range of movement or flexibility or possibility of certain access to types of activities and that as a group, and with the scores and the dances that you’re doing, it includes those changes and the shifts in a community. So when we get depressed, when we aren’t in mourning, when we have a loss, when the world hasn’t allowed for something that we’re there for each other. And so that’s why also I’m thinking the fact that your group wants to take that to a stage is really, it’s really brave because there’s something very precious about having a familiar space a place where you can trust that you can be together regardless of what you’re going through, or whilst you’re going through things, and that it’s not like work where if something tragic happens, you lose a loved one or something, you know, that’s common thing of, oh, go away and then come back when you’re better or when it when it’s and it’s as if as if it doesn’t matter, as if it’s somehow can’t be a part of that community. And as if it can be solved as well. Like the loss of a loved one could be just sort of resolved neatly in the therapist’ office and then you’re back to normal in six weeks or back to your…

Neil Paris:

Your productivity levels are not back. But you’re right, working in this way is ultimately hyper should be really flexible. It’s like you can work with work with what anybody brings. That’s really the all they can work with whatever they bring. And if someone is there they should always be a way of you know, adapting what we do, what they do. Yeah, because certainly some people do come and say, you know, this is really give me a problem. You know, physical thing, you said, well, okay, just don’t just. Just don’t do it. But I had someone a few weeks ago and they have got some, and I think they’ve got some fairly serious history of depression and. They are fairly new to the group as well. And they kind of had come and mentioned to be. I said, I think I’m like, I’m on on the bit of a slide again. Yeah. Is like, OK, well.. That’s fine. Yeah. But it was interested in Peter, ’cause, you know. I think not even so long ago I’d have been, okay, we’ll just do exactly what you want. You know, you want to sit down? Yeah. But I was actually more like Bullet. I encouraged you to do to take part, do take part. And I think before I’d been much more on cautious about that. But I said, just however you want, but. And she’ got through and she had a she said, I’m so glad I did it. Yeah. I didn’t stop the directory, but I think… That being part of that community, knowing you can still come to it, you can still take part in it, and you can be accepted and… Wherever you are when you or you can step away from it. That’s the other thing. It’s a bit like, well, if you want to step away, that’s fine. That’s okay. There’s no. I’m not, we’re not going to go. Yeah. Yeah. You don’t realise what you’ve. You know, we’re working to a performance. You trying and. I think you almost have to have that approach doing this kind of work because people have lives and they’re very unpredictable. And crisis comes at different times. and perhaps perhaps working with an older community, we’re noticing, like some people have got friends are real and that’s happening more regularly and you think of that’s I think that kind of openness also somehow breeds a.. I think it’s a kind of a reciprocal thing, whereas suddenly they almost are they are really committed to the group because they know they’ve got the community that the community will say, yeah you can. It’s okay, you can’t come. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Come back when you’re ready. Yeah. That’s fine. We’ll still be here. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, we can absorb your crisis without making any reference to it. We’re not suddenly going to turn this into some kind of therapeutic session.

PETER:

Yeah.

Neil Paris:

It will be therapeutic, but we’re not gonna gonna turn it into something. I’m not gonna turn it into something. It’s not mine. It’s not my skill set.

PETER:

No exactly, I was at Rambert teaching at the school I trained at, and so many students came up to me before class, which is good, so I’m aware, but we’ve sort of my knee, I’ve done some in my knee, my hip, I’ve done something. And the things I was teaching didn’t require anyone to do anything that would harm themselves. Everyone would be able to sort of adjust to what they needed, at least that was my intention. So I tried to explain that, but it really occurred to me, you know, if anyone has a physical, different abilities or struggles, there’s what place do they have within these context? How can they continue dancing and things? It’ And it’s really, it’s really important to Or maybe not important, but how do we appreciate those kind of coming together and dancing, which allows for that, in a way that’s why, for me, perhaps, when people are asked, oh, what’s your dance style or what’s your thing and and it’s frustrating because if I were to be prescriptive, then I wouldn’t be able to be so inclusive of different types of bodies, hopefully, and different types of physical ability. I think. too grand. And that’s not any shade on people who work with style, I think you can do that in very mindful ways as well.. But how how you create openings that remain open is very difficult thing. But when it happens, when you have a community that can give it a chance and stay there and keep on pushing themselves and be with the changes and the shifts and the things, and still, yeah. it’s quite something. But how was it to dance with me, Neil?

Neil Paris:

Oh.

PETER:

How How was it for us to be together? I mean, this was marvelously. Some of the stamping, and the sort of, the lunges and the shapes and the I it was so beautiful, and to be in relationships with that it was really fantastic. I was quite. I was quite surprised. I was really happily surprised to find those connections and stuff. But how was it for you?

Neil Paris:

I mean, it was it was great. It was slightly, it was. It’sdd, isn’t it? Because it’s like 16 and a long time has gone. And I think I’ve noticed this with other people that have worked with that suddenly your back to them as long as you’ve had a good relationship with them, it just feels like, well, yeah, no time at all as part of.

PETER:

Yes..

Neil Paris:

I think what I felt slightly restrictive was that I knew I was I was kind of still. I still had an eye on the the session. And I think if it hadn’t have been have been even numbers and you hadn’t had to work with Helen, I think our experience would have been very different. And at one point I was thinking, right, the two of us are going to be doing the same thing. So I kind of stuck in the background a little bit and allowed myself to. But they were flashes there when there were just moments I clashing, oh my God, there he is. There’s he’s training. There’s your frame and that took me right back to like when you were in the workshop, when you were in Course C, when you were in and just also. It was funny because at one point I got really inhibited because I was like, oh, it’s proper dancing.” That kind of, because that’s naturally in your body still.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Neil Paris:

And I hope it’s okay that it’s within your body.

PETER:

Yes,

Neil Paris:

in your fifth and everything that you naturally fall into Whereas that’s not part of my natural vocabulary. But, yeah, I don’t know, I was thinking, I’m actually. And I think I was reflecting on how I must have felt when I used when I was.. When we were working together, I was a fabulous beat. And I don’t I move better now than I did that.. And I’m, you know, 16 years older. Yeah, but I’m moving in. I think I’m moving in better now. And I had moments where I suddenly felt myself tighten up a little bit.. And getting square. Yeah, like,Ah, come on. And I think,Oh, this is really odd. Is it just because Pete’t annoying? And you’re suddenly in like, suddenly that strange dance hierarchy kicked in because you remember, you in favor Peter, I was coming in from the theater, the kind of theater who’s done some intens dance practice and I was amongst all these conservatives are trained. So I was always wanting to twice as long to learn the steps and always wanting.little flashes, little flashes of that came back. But yeah, I mean, and you’re and I didn’t remember you just that ability for you to flick. change, change, change, change. Yes, change, change. Which I’m much better at. But I still don’t have. And that was a That was his marvelous to watch that and go, Oh, look. Look at that, look at that. He’s gone from this to this to back to this, and it’s the legs and everything, and, it was Oh, that It was lovely to watch.

PETER:

so sweet for you to say it. I mean, and you’re right.

Neil Paris:

And also, actually, yeah, just going back to you. Now, have we been discussing how you were very young? Yeah, dancer when you came out when you had a lot of kind of energy that was in lots of different areas in terms of the questions that you had around and the questions you had around this. And there’s actually a maturity You’ve still got all the energy, but there is a maturity there now that wasn’t naturally there.. When you were coming out at what do you say?

PETER:

21, I think.

Neil Paris:

21 And you’d had that actually with Rambert that was. Your artist was there we all saw and then. And that had a kind of. I would never say it had a wildness to it, but it had a. used the term last night you were saying about radical. You had a radicalness in your movement as well. And that was less. It was less. Yeah, you’re older. And it was, oh, we’ we’re both older, aren’t we?

PETER:

It is nice. It is nice. I mean, and Michael actually said to me when we left, like, if you could just ground yourself. And I never fully understood what that meant, but it is a curse, what you’re talking about, the thing of having technical training, because there’s a beauty and a stylistic quality that you have. That, yeah,. It’s not that I’ve been ruined, but I’m.. I’m I’m puted for the same shapes, and they’s forward so readily into the body. And I can control it as well. And maybe that’s also hopefully that’s some of the maturity is that I can choose now when I allow it, when I don’t allow it, and that it’s not just, I am when I’m dancing, I am this. And I think that I’ve really, in a recent years, really started to enjoy is choosing whereabouts I’m going to dance. and play. And yeah, I can yeah, I can go from one world straight into another world. They’re all sort of there, and still, like I said, when I came in and we did that sort of quick warm up, and then going through your practices and getting into the improvisation, I felt like, yeah, a huge shift and opening into worlds, which weren’t there before. Definitely before we started dancing, but I’t always readily available. So for me, it was just so beautiful to sort of be in dialogue with all those things, all those different places. And it’s so kind of you to speak so nicely of my movement.

Neil Paris:

Oh, no. I mean, it’s. It’s.. Because they are the slight irony is, for those of us that don’t have that kind of body knowledge that you have, will, even now, we not searching for it, but I know even when I’m moving in here, I tend to like, you know, I tend to like fluid flow. But I know that I need, I know that also, I kind of sometimes the aesthetic bit comes in. and you’re like, well, straight, you know, where is or it? Where is that? extension? Where are the extensions? Where is where is your weight? And those, and I have a much greater appreciation. I think I always had an appreciation with technical. I always understood why it was necessary, like, you’re going to just..

PETER:

knocking me out.

Neil Paris:

You’re gonna, you mean, you can die. No but you’re gonna’re gonna get hurt, but the more it’s gone on, yeah, the more I have. I’ve also appreciated the feeling of it. Yeah. Yeah. The feeling of knowing I’m pretty much. This feels nice. It feels right. And I think at one point I was like, I’ll keeping up with him.

PETER:

You were.

Neil Paris:

I know. And so there was this, like, I felt there was a parity and evenness, which I guess if you look back again when we first met, there probably wasn’t a parity at all, technically movement wise. And also as you kind of said, I was this old member of a company who’d kind of been charged with,

PETER:

taking care.

Neil Paris:

Kind of taking care at one Yeah, I suppose.

PETER:

That’s how it. I mean, in a nice way, that’s how it

Neil Paris:

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And so there was the, but here, they felt like actually just that’s true. We just we just dance artists now in the same room. Yeah, true. And that was a really nice really nice kind of a little moment of going, yeah, there’s that’s yeah that’s this level now.

PETER:

When you come home and you start speaking to your father in the same the same level, this strangeness to that.

Neil Paris:

Yeah, because you know, you’ve done so much since then, you’ve got this whole other..stuff going on.

PETER:

Yeah yeah, But it and yet still it resonates with me so much that time. It’s still.. It’s so central. And it’s funny, isn’t it? You can’t really erase a past. And like technical training, you can’t just get rid of it and there’s I often find myself in so not arguments, but conversations around what is needed with technical training and stuff and I am such an advocate for like if you can find beauty and nuance and quality and texture within your range, that’s there’s no necessity for you to be a brilliant technical dancer with super range and possibility and virtuosity. And yet, I get it as well. Like you say, there is a joy to learning that step or to having the possibility to extend, to a certain degree. And like the cautious mature Peter is now sort of saying maybe there is a balance. There’ There’s a measure of those things. Even though I’d love to imagine dancers being this thing that is boundless, that has no commitment to a certain regime, that anyone has to potential to engage with in some way, regardless who they are, where they are, maybe even just the extent that dance is such a big phenomena in the world, you have a relationship to it and that in itself is already a paramount to what dance can be and how you are being creative with it. Even if it is that thing of “I could never do that.”

Neil Paris:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

PETER:

And it’s beyond what I could do. That’s too, whatever, and distanceant. But that’s that’s a relationship and sort of mediating those things. Anyway, now I’m trailing off.

Neil Paris:

No, I think I just want to the loo, actually a pause, but I was going to say, if something that just propped up to me when we just you were then talking about that, if you can find beauty and you can find this and find texture. And I think some of the things that I realized is what I’m doing now a big word. It’s really experiential.

PETER:

Yes. That’s lovely.

Neil Paris:

What we’re doing should feel good for you as these people that are working with my session is ultimately, it should feel great to do this. And I don’t mean great endorphing high pump. because that’s a whole other thing and that can be manipulated so that people can leave a session feeling like, wow. It should feel fantastic to be moving like in the first layer, when what you’re doing is just tuning in. If you can find, if that feels great then that feels great. And the fact that you find your extension, it should feel great, hopefully, before you’re worrying about when it looks like. And I think working with the people that I’m working with is I want you to. It should feel good to do. Ultimately, it should feel good to do. It might not feel so good when I’m nagging you about your elbow or your wrist. But you’ve asked me to do that, which is what they’re doing. Neil,

PETER:

could you look at that?

Neil Paris:

We really want you to.. We want some more corrections. Oh, really? I’m like yeah, yeah, I think we need to get back. Okay. So then it’s like, Jill wrists. Jill wrists. Roz, up. Stand up. Yeah. You know, but they seem as though they’ve got to the point where they’re like, yeah, I want. And you know, talking about that’s how’s the thing is, knowing how embodied your training has been, you know how long it takes to unpack it, to undo it. And for some of these people, they’re getting that they’re going, oh, yeah, wrist, wrist. But it’s their natural.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah

Neil Paris:

it’s their, But hopefully there’s interest and an experience and fascination with the fact that you’re becoming more aware of that. Just you, you know, and that bigger picture thing of, like, your body isn’t fixed. Our bodies aren’t fixed at any point in our life. Elements of it will be fixed, but you can change it. You can change it. And there’s an empowerment there. You can be empowered to change your body. And even if. Even if it is just that you learn that that is that’s extended and not that. In my grander scheme of thinking about what is the value of dance, what is it, the value of movement is like, well, you can change your body. It’s in your in your power to change it. And this is a way you can do it. It’s not necessarily going to the gym, but you can do it. But the way I think movement and dance works is it’s so holistic in terms of it should. It’s working on you’re the way I’m trying to work with the imagination, the power of your imagination, your body, and then also your ability to express the fact that you can express yourself. You don’t mean an audience to thank you for it. No. But hopefully there’s value in just expressing it in a room.

PETER:

No I’d love that.

Neil Paris:

And then, to a partner in the room. Yeah. And then to the group. And then when you’re ready to an audience. Because a part of me in my romantic thing is like, there’s a group of people out there who want to see this. Yeah. They will thank and I do say this to them. I said, they are going to thank you for this. We had to the thing we did a couple of weeks ago where, yeah, three hours together, cross arts, musicians, dancers, painters, poets, put something together, invite an audience. I only even like half a dozen people. But the point was really, that the group knew that they were going have to put something together, so we did. And it was one of the dancers’s neighbors that’d never been to anything like this before in their life. and it was just they did the slot of things. He said “I was really moved by that?”.. And, you kind of anyone says, “No, I don’t know why.”. I found that really moving. And that’s that thing that, you know, the romantic, it’s like, yes. That’s what kind of sound can do it as well. Yeah. But there’s no, there’s no, there’s no like lexicon. We’re not using words. We’re not trying to paint a picture. There is a group of people moving, and there’s sound, but in that someone is being affected physically. Yeah.

PETER:

And I love it because I’ve had such amazing experiences. I’ve loved dancing, beside you at Fabulous Beast. And intermittent time, all this time dancing with you and the memory of being in those places and those experiences and carrying those with me in every improvisation.

Neil Paris:

Yeah,.

PETER:

And then to do it again here, the experience is just, it’s overwhelming, it’s such a glorious thing to have and to have had. So thank you so much.’s

Neil Paris:

Peter its an absolute pleasure to be dancing with you and a girl guides up.

PETER:

It’s a beautiful girl guide hut.

Neil Paris:

So we’ve We’ve gone from the Coliseum stage. Yeah. There a girl guide hut.

PETER:

But then then before that, we were in yoga retreat.

Neil Paris:

Yeah But that’s also part of it is that this is the, you know, if you’ve got a reasonable space,

PETER:

yeah, you can do it.

Neil Paris:

It’s the connection with the movement and the music and the person that you’re with and it should hopefully, for these guys, their bedrooms isn’t there.

PETER:

And that’s also the purpose of the podcast is that I can come to Cromer and go to a girls’s guys hut and capture a little bit of that. And if not share it with thousands of people to have it as a memory that is sort of of this moment in this time. And if people do want to sort of reach out to you, is there How would they go about that? Where do they go?

Neil Paris:

probably have the email me because I don’t have anything out there online at the moment.

PETER:

Well, then I can put a contact. Yeah, put it on by all means,

Neil Paris:

yeah. Yeah, and Pete, it is amazing that you’re here at this particular time because I’m like a transitioning point from one role to another, and the fact that you we’re having this conversation and I’m having to try and articulate what it is, it’s really helpful that people helping me to articulate what it is that and to talk about these experiences, because they were. They were. They were fabulous.

PETER:

They’re fabulous, fabulous beasts, yeah.

Neil Paris:

They were, and… Yeah, to talk about them with you and to be in a position now are enough times are lapsed though. I can talk about them. Um. in a kind of moderated way, so much has been processed about them that I can talk about them with joy as much as I can with either regret or awe.. The things that that weren’t so good, but clouded a lot of that experience for quite a while. And I think that’s moved on. So to be able to connect back with you who was we all knew at the time. That’s why we were there to look after you, because we knew that a lot of people were coming into quite a difficult environment. So to be able to sit and laugh and yeah laugh about those times and really talk about the valuenesses. It was wonderful.

PETER:

If I can only return some of what you gave to me, yeah, like you say, it was fantastical. And there’s a sadness a sense of loss for me of what could have been of what was in a lot of ways. But more than anything, there’s a richness and that we can live with it together and continue to. That’s fantastic.

Neil Paris:

But you have to remember, you brought in an energy that you, there was this 21 year old, 22 year old, and I think most of us were in our 40s by then. And you brought this in and it’s like, oh, my God, look at that. Look at that, look at that exuberance, and that conviction that you had about,cause you had conviction in your feelings about… They were questions that you had, and it seemed like there was quite a lot of struggle in the questions about, what is dance? What is this? What am I? What kind of what kind of artist am I? And you seem like you were going through all of that, but to witness that like, there you go, that’s the future.

PETER:

Oh, thank you, you. And here we are in the future.

Neil Paris:

You brought all that, and you brought a lot of challenge to us in the old heads and it was yeah, if you remember, you remember that. And obviously, you know, what happened in the constellations and stuff was extraordinary and. yeah. Taking aside where it went, again, to have, when I think back about going through a process like that with Alejandro, and what happened in that constellation, and the context of it is still quite mind blowing from there.

PETER:

Yeah, phenomenal. Phenomenal.

Neil Paris:

And it’s. You know lot of the time, we can’t explain that. No. No, And it was because I think, as we were talking yesterday, but I think because of the kind of person that you were, you didn’t question what’s happening. No. You didn’t question the sudden of your body was starting to do this. You just allowed it, I guess, to happen. Yeah. You had no idea what was the context, whereas some of us did but then that’s. somebody else probably would have blocked it and stopped it. True, true. I think a different kind of person would have blocked that could have easily have. But you didn’t, because.. I mean.. Well, I don’t know. Maybe I’m projecting.

PETER:

I’m just glad you remembered it, because never forget for me, it was so crazy and I’ve tried to explain what happened in that room, in what I embodied or what what I felt like I embodied. And then you remembered that specific constellation, because there was, what, 30 of us all doing constellations. I was..

Neil Paris:

That was.. You know, that was also one of those moments where you’re thinking, “Why is this constellation? You know? And I was always very, very like, “Yep, great, we do it, but there’s God, I’ve never done this before.” And how does this work? And then all of a sudden that one was just like,…

PETER:

Yeah, this is crazy.

Neil Paris:

But then that’s also why you were there, not to the constellation, but, like, that whole process. There’s a reason. And for all this this kind of faults and difficulties. He saw something. He just couldn’t handle you.

PETER:

Oh, I thank you, Neil.

Neil Paris:

And that’ss what we were all worried about, because you knew some of us knew me, you can’t handle it in these two… These creative energy. He’s a creative energy. He’s questioning. There were similarities, you see, because he was a pusher. He pushed back against the system. That was a lot of his energy was about pushing back yeah. And there was a similarity that I felt that you were questioning the system that you were in. You’d have been through this Rambert training.

PETER:

And the childhood of dyslexia so yeah.

Neil Paris:

You both had this so maybe there was this kind of he saw something that he recognized. I don’t know. but it was just when I didn’t think he could handle it. I’m glad he took you on.

PETER:

Yeah, I’m I’ glad my contract lasted at the end. Thank you, Neil. You. And, yeah, we’ll continue.

Neil Paris:

Yeah, yeah. Dance again sometime.

1. Choreographic Devices 4 https://www.ica.art/live/choreographic-devices-4
2. ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts, London) https://www.ica.art/
3. Rose Choreographic School https://rosechoreographicschool.com/
4. Roehampton (University of Roehampton, London) https://pure.roehampton.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/hanna-gillgren
5. SKH fka DOCH (Stockholm university of the arts) https://www.uniarts.se/english/
6. H2 Dance (co-founded by Hanna Gillgren and Heidi Rustgaard) https://h2dance.com/25-2/
7. Heidi Rustgaard (co-founder of H2 Dance) https://h2dance.com/heidi-rustgaard-biography-and-cv/
8. Martin Hargreaves (Head of the Rose Choreographic School) https://rosechoreographicschool.com/people
9. Guy Dartnell https://www.choreographiclab.co.uk/guy-dartnell/
10. Jonathan Burrows and Jan Ritsema (Weak Dance Strong Questions) https://vimeo.com/383037271 (https://burrowsfargion.com/)
11. Fest en Fest (festival founded by H2 Dance) https://festenfest.info/fest-en-fest/

Sadler’s Wells East (London, overlooking the Olympic Park) https://www.sadlerswells.com/your-visit/sadlers-wells-east/welcome-to-sadlers-wells-east/

PETER:

hello. Today we are dancing with Hanna Gillgren, and we met in January.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes.

PETER:

at the choreographic devices, number four, at the ICA, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, where you were there as a part of the Rose Choreographic School, super exciting. But we didn’t really connect there, we connected more when I invited you to participate in this podcast. And it’s been really exciting, actually. dialoguing and learning a little bit about you already. We have this connection where I come from, the UK, and I’ve had my career in Sweden, and you’ve come from Sweden and you’ve had your career more or less here in the UK. And also, we have like, a lot of affinity, maybe around working at universities as well, you’re at Roehampton, and I’ve been at SKH in Stockholm. So a lot to get me interested and intrigued to know what you’re working with and from what I’ve already heard. It’s super exciting. But if people don’t know you, how do you introduce yourself? I’ve missed out H2Dance. Of course, you’re big.. The company, yes. Your big contribution.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes. Yeah, I um How do I introduce myself? Probably as a choreographer. Performer, which is how I started, which I’m doing less now and perhaps a little bit less interested in, but still very much part of my practice and practicing, and making a lecturer. And I really enjoy this idea of how education pedagogy you can feed into, choreographic process and the kind of collaborative learning, for everyone. I love that. And yeah, that maybe would be, and who am I? I’m yeah. People, like, my son would now say that I’m English, more English than Swedish, but I’m not sure. I’ sort of try and claim my Swedishness, even though I left when I was 18, and I’ve been here for, like, more than 30 years, but it’s an interesting one.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s a good summary, and people will find out more about you. Yeah. in the podcast and online and stuff.

Hanna Gillgren:

I mean, the company, perhaps I should mention an age to dance Heidi Rustgaard, a choreographer, a friend of mine from Norway, we set that up in 2000. So we worked sort of collaboratively for 20 years on touring production, community work, teaching, kind of duet work between us, and that really fed my practice and what I was doing and then we just now doing our sort of own practices separately at Rose Chorographic School, which is also something really. interesting to work together, but not making together, like, actually sitting.

PETER:

In the same studio.

Hanna Gillgren:

Together yeah in the same studio, but working on different practices, but still sort of similar, but and then. kind of supporting each other’s work in a different way, which is great.

PETER:

Yeah, I mean, when I I mean, because I saw that you were both in the Rose choreographic school, I assumed, actually, that you’d perhaps still be

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes.. And there was a choice, actually, Martin (Martin Hargreaves) said, you can both you can do it if you want to do it together, you also can. But I think we were at that stage where we were both interested in going off solo for a bit and see what that is.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hanna Gillgren:

Because, yeah, I think we have sort of our interest a little bit was dividing anyway and then yeah, there’s obviously there’s a different process, different the whole relationship behind working together and apart. And taking decisions or just how you want to be in a process. So that was really, it was great. And it’s great because I still feel we’re working together but not intermashed. We don’t have to agree.

PETER:

Yes.

Hanna Gillgren:

We don’t have to come to kind of compromise. We can just like, okay, you do that. I’ll do this. And it’s okay. We can still kind of feed in and.

PETER:

And like you say, how you describe your practice, like dance as a pedagogical and performative and practice, it’s so collaborative anyway. So it’s always funny. I tend to work alone, like as a solo author and stuff and yet all my pieces feel collaborative. And I think there’s an irony, actually, that’s why I tend to call myself PETER, and I call all my pieces, PETER, because I think it’s sort of absurd to imagine that I made this alone.

Hanna Gillgren:

Exactly.

PETER:

And that it actually is performed alone as well. Like the audience are even so much more so much a part of it. Anyway, what are we going to do today?

Hanna Gillgren:

So today we’re going to do a practice, which I call the voice circle. It’s a kind of voice and movement practice, where either the movement kind of instigates the voice or other way around voice goes with the movement, or instigates the movement, and it’s come from some work I did many, many years ago with Guy Dartnell. It’s a theater maker in the UK. Now lives in Spain, I believe. and basically one, it’s usually done with several people, but it’s just the two of us today, which is also great. And one person will start generating any any movement, really that comes with with a vocal sound. Then when that person is ready to give, transmit, it does, and we kind of jam together for a little while, kind of find it as a duo, when then the person that initiated sort of moves away and today we’re also going to play with recordings. So I will then, if I start, I will record the vocal sign in a loop machine. So I’m sort of interesting at the moment in looping repetition, insisting, staying with something, and see what that does. And then you would then carry on, transforming the sun and the movement, and when you feel ready to give back to me, you give it back to me, with g together, you record the sound, so we’re layering vocal sounds. in the loop machine, creating a sort of sound score, I guess, or some sort of sound sound for us us to then, maybe when we’re done kind of a few each, maybe five each, we will go off and sort of jam ready and transform and stay with whatever the last thing was, and then kind of work on staying with and see when transformation happened, but also what happens between the two of us in that kind of negotiation moving together. Yeah, and the sound. So, yeah.

PETER:

Yeah, it’s really nice. I’m so sound has become really important to me at the moment, so I’m so excited to do it. But I think it’s relatively clear, like, so your start or someone starts, and they start to feel movement and whatever sound comes with that, and then we start jamming, and then at some point, it gets passed onto the other person. And for us, we’re gonna put that you’re gonna put that into the loop, or the person who started or put it into the loop. And then you return and you take over, take back the thing as it is, so it can transform. It’s no strictness of it has to be maintained. Even though there is an interest, obviously, around like what is what is the center maybe or the thing that holds? Yeah, it seems really beautiful and we just go for as long as we feel as.

Hanna Gillgren:

We go for as long as we feel. Yeah. Yeah.

PETER:

Do you ever do this alone, but with the loop machine?

Hanna Gillgren:

Yeah, I have tried it alone, yes, just as a tester, never, like, engaged. I’ve tested, I’ve tested it in 2003. I’m thinking about it whether how you can compose what you’re making. But I haven’t got to that place yet. It becomes quite cacophonic, often, like. But I’m thinking, like what types of sounds could one to engage with? Yeah, you know Or do we make a song? Do we make a minimalist soundscape? Do we make? Yeah. But I haven’t yet.

PETER:

Or is it just a dance and that’s the music.

Hanna Gillgren:

Exactly. Or is it just the movement? Absolutely. Yeah.

PETER:

And so it’s called The Voice Circle and so normally it would be in a circle so we can imagine that kind of composition, in fact.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes. Normally it’s transmitted around the circle. or the person engaged in the doing could also move in and sort of solo inside and come out.

PETER:

A sort of cipher.. Great.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yeah.

PETER:

Then let’s do it. Cool. See you in a bit.

Hanna Gillgren:

See you.

PAUSE

PETER:

OK. That was amazing.

Hanna Gillgren:

It was so fun.

PETER:

We were just joking that it’s a show, or I was joking. It’s a show. But I think now, I mean, we can do whatever we want, but we can just recall what happened, what we remember. yeah, and see what comes up.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yeah, nice. Yeah, I was really struck by… One was the sort of sonicness or how I let go of the body and the listening of both the loop that we created together, and your sounds and my own sounds in relation to this space and how that. I was thinking, yeah. how that shifted throughout and really subtly, and I was very. I kind of mesmerized and busy with that. Yeah for some time. in it.

PETER:

So it’s as though that it disappears?

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes. Yeah. Sometimes a loop disappears while we record it, sometimes you disappear, sometimes I disappear, sometimes you appear, since the disappearing and appearing of the Sonic world, which is super interesting and the the choreography of that, I guess it was the first time I’ve I encountered that feeling. doing this exercise.

PETER:

Yeah, no, it’s super strong. Like, I I was thinking about at some point, I wasn’t sure if I’m following you or if I’m following the loop, or if I’m leading or following, like in a sort of like already philosophical way, I don’t like to think about it, but it’s like the closest I’ll talk about it because I don’t feel like I know enough, but I think it’s the closest thing to like point towards the experience, but it gives me a strange sense of free will, where, like, I’m unsure if I’m choosing, what I’m doing..Cause it’s interesting to think of it, like, it’s not quite improvisation in the traditional sense, because I’m not. I’m not sort of making choices. I have a real concrete thing that I’m to copy and follow.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes.

PETER:

But at the same time, it’s emergent and generative. It takes me places, which I unexpected. And so I kind of see that disappearing in there, like you say, like, I lose, I lose myself. The will part of me. So it starts to disappear and it becomes communal. Like, it’s. I think it really taps into a quality that exists in all dance or all dance I’ve done, where you’re with the room and the body and the circumstances just as much as you’re doing something.

Hanna Gillgren:

Interesting. Super interesting. Yeah, I’ve never thought about it like that, but I think. for me, also, it’s this pleasure of letting go of deciding or letting go of controlling, letting go which I think I often. I often interrupt, like that’s I like that, but in this, I’m really like, I’m not even trying not to. I’m just not busy with that. idea of.. I guess predeciding change or predeciding interruption, or predeciding anything, just allowing things to come. There’s something so liberating, or just letting go of, you know, having a plan.

PETER:

Yes.

Hanna Gillgren:

Or like a calendar or a. You know, having stuff, a list.

PETER:

No, exactly. It’s very sociological. Yes. I don’t have to. I don’t have to.. Yeah, I don’t have to be this political, social, political being in the world navigating all these choices and stuff. But in that thing of, yeah, like, not making decisions and choices, for me, it felt like it so much comes up. So it feels like there’s not much need actually. to generate or to intervene, like you say, and interrupt because already it’s a lot.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes,

PETER:

right?

Hanna Gillgren:

It’s a lot is true.

PETER:

Which, in a way, sort of ties into the difficulty you had.

Hanna Gillgren:

You said at the beginning of like, how do you compose this, or should it be composed? It’s exactly that. And I’m a little bit busy with that while doing also, like, what would it woodions make, you know, out of this and And yeah, where exactly where does one. Yeah, where does one go with it? Do you compos it? Do you not? Where? Yeah, and what type of composing does one do then? In order to not lose this sense of of letting go and hack and an audience perhaps be part of the letting go. I don’t know, like how I’ve had the last couple of weeks, I’ve tried to compose a little bit. And of course, that just brings up tons of questions and inquiries and like, Ooh, and and you start to sort of leak things and, yeah, I mean, it’s it’s a very.. And then are you into this? Is it just just for the doer? Like, is it the doing of that’s.

PETER:

Yeah.

Hanna Gillgren:

actually the interest here rather than observing or how do you encounter it? Is it something that goes on for a day or two and then you pop in and out? And then how, what are you know, what is the score or what could they ingredients be then in order to Fine. Because it was interesting today with you, because it was more i’ve done it when everyone is really busy with their own. thing. But we were quite, we kind of followed. There was a sense of being together, like a union, which was great. And then there sort of also the loot machine and the amp in the middle there being some sort of centering kind of totem or something like that we were like kind of circling or having as a kind of magnet to anchor and different things come up each time, obviously, I do it with people. So it’s really. I think that’s nice. And I thought to myself at some point, I should have told you, you can go off on your own.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah.

Hanna Gillgren:

But actually, it was really quite in interesting. The fact that we were like, and then slowly, of course, by doing, you can of also went like, okay, I’m going to go on my own and see him.

PETER:

Yes. No, I mean, actually, like, it’s mirrors a little bit what you’re describing, of like, how would this translate to like a sharing sort of situation, like are you sharing the experience and how do you how does it how does it get communicated or felt by the audience? And I had the similar thing of like, the way the podcast is structured, like, I’m learning your composition and there’s a sense of, like, whatever I however I interpret it, usually is the version that we end up talking about. And so it really is a sense of what is it today here? If I was your dancer, we’d have this type of conversation, perhaps, and then you would say, but then try going off on your own.,

Hanna Gillgren:

yeah. Let’s it again, do you remember last week? Yeah,

PETER:

yeah. And for yet at the same time, there’s something like is its own thing. Like we’ve sort of captured it and we’re allowing ourselves to say, well, that was that was what it was meant to be, and that was what it is. And we’re not going to repeat it or and it sort of later to me actually to think about how. Because this figure of like the social political came up, but that also seems to be that place of thinking about like, how do I compose it? How do I communicate it? How does it then enter into the world? exactly, like, which sounds represent the experience the best? And there’s.. It’s like almost impossible to sort of to name or to condense ’cause it is the speculative, the dream, like, the unknown, the the possible that is what it is. Which really is really interesting when you think of it as as like in the realm of politics because so much of politics is about like, we need to do this and this and this. But what happens then of the the dance, sort of the going anywhere? the allowing whatever it is to be included.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes.

PETER:

And yet, it is choreographed. It’s a clear score. Yeah. So we’re sort of like… Something is named. However.. I know exactly what you mean when you say that fight between, like… Okay, how do I compose this? How do I share this?

Hanna Gillgren:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Martin came in last week to observe a little bit and just in terms of sitting through this You know, of course, you will zoom in and out, probably as an audience, like you do in there also a little bit, like, oh, I mean,. I’m a bit bored or like, all of this feelings and thoughts. But there’s all which I felt today with you was this idea of most hypnosis. I was getting into a sort of trial, almost like a trance where things kept the repetition of the loop and the movement was there, but I sort of lost, like lost the sound a little, lost the rhythm of it or the patterning of it, which I thought was super interesting in the doing. And I was also have been thinking a bit about a sort of emotive state, like, could you bring this to some sort of extremely recognizable emotions or characters or attitudes or states. how far do you go that route? And back in Yeah, I sort of been playing a little bit with that. Also thinking in how we can meet each other in it, sort of how what are the potentials of negotiation and.. Yeah, transmitting.. Yeah.

PETER:

There’s so many elements, right? Like, I had to think of flocking.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes.

PETER:

as like a method, maybe, or even just the fact that it’s like, I can’t see you now. So how am I actually being with that or continuing with that? Yes. I was like, are we doing that traditional thing of when I’m facing a way and you now following me and if I turn around and I following you? And it’s all more or less. And you also introduced this word insistent, which just before we started, you said, you’re very interested in insisting. And I had to think. Yeah, in what way, right? There’s so many elements to that. For sure. But I think one thing that I could say that I was insisting on, or maybe you can answer, like to insist on those emotion or emotive states. Because it makes me. There’s something very primal.. The rhythm, the bodily connection, some of the sounds, ’cause they weren’t all, like, harmonious.. They were really a guttural. Right. They really had a physicality. Even some of them. Yeah, you had to move to do them. Like. And it was interesting as well. Then, now I’m bringing up two different things, but then trying to bring that to the microphone as well. Because then, of course, it shifts, you know, Ooh! But there’s some, yeah, very. Yeah, primal. For want of a better word.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes, it’s true. Now, it’s really interesting when you find yourself in that place. where you, I guess where you go, “Oh, yeah, I can feel this as something that I’ve been through or that I felt at that time sounded like, and I recognized it and then how you kind of get there and also sit on how you kind of move out of that. And then, like you say, they’re bringing to the microphone is somehow letting go of the body part of it and just sounding it is a very. It’s it’s a very other place to be in and other feeling to be in. So. Yeah, it’s almost like you’ve become all of a sudden in a sort of recording studio space where you’re just occupied by laying down that sound in relation to other sounds there are and then back in to the doing all the bodily thing. Yeah. It’s a lot of bits, a lot of states.

PETER:

Yes, yes, exactly.

Hanna Gillgren:

We have done this with three. So three amplifiers, three loop machines. It’s quite mental. Like, you have to usually do a little bit of a longer loop, just not to crowd it, but. Yeah. Yeah, also the sound coming from different, I guess, places in the room. is an interesting choreography to go through,

PETER:

but I mean, it makes you think of knowledge, right? Like the beginning of the exercise is this blank slate type, or at least we have contracts really agreed that it’s a little bit blank, and then we keep adding into a moment where you can’t distinguish between what has been added, what is being added, what is being sounded, like it’s such a loud noise. I somehow imagine, like, it has it has a a similarity to how we’re amongst so much information, so many voices and instructions and knowledges and truths, perhaps, in our world. How do you distill or make distinct those. Yeah, those. It makes something of it, right? Somehow..

Hanna Gillgren:

That’s a lovely way of looking at it. I’m very different truths. Yeah, or I’m treats. Yeah, exactly.

PETER:

Exactly. Exactly.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yeah. Yeah, I was mentioning this idea of doubt, just..

PETER:

Yeah, that’s true.

Hanna Gillgren:

Just before we started this idea of. Are you sure, you sure we’ve been been playing with this sentence and kind of deconstructing words and sort of chopping up with the loop machine and finding kind of being a bit busy with also finding this idea of what truth and what am I doing, what am I sure of? What am I Where am I going? and finding the, I guess the doubt some doubt in performativity because it’s performing often is such a. re showing somehow certainty that we know what we’re doing here. But finding a way of embodying doubt. Yeah. Yeah. For the not knowing or the Yeah. I’m curious about this place. And I will remember this work with Jonathan Burrows and Jan Ritsema. Is it Young War? They did. They did 10, 15 years ago. Weak dance, strong questions.. Do you remember that?

PETER:

I know of it, yeah, but I don’t think I. I don’t know who it was with. I will look it up and put it in the show notes. I have a feeling they were sort of doing this exercise with two hours of just inquiring what the sort of body performative things is. So.

Hanna Gillgren:

Almost moving as if each movement was a question rather than a statement, right?

PETER:

Yes. Yes. I mean, absolutely. I’ve often thought there’s something in exactly the performative gesture or the apparatus of the stage, which produces a sense of argument, like whatever I put in front of you, this is a statement. This should exist, at least.. Right? Like, I’ve chosen these steps, these bodies or I’ve chosen to be here in this way, because I believe in it or I’m standing up for it. And exactly, this. How do how do you meet with actually conditions or knowledges or truths that don’t have a an argument. It’s a little bit the difficulty we have like between what’s the story? What’s the meaning of what you’re doing? And it’s like, well. can we stage doubt or can we stage meaninglessness?

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes.

PETER:

Or abstraction, of course, is the classic one? Or even can we just. Can we just give something a chance regardless of knowing what it is?

Hanna Gillgren:

Yeah, yeah.

PETER:

Even in its ambiguity. Yeah. be with it regardless. I have to think of sort of asymmetrical relationships with like, you know with the environment, for example, or plants. We don’t know how they feel if they feel, even. And yet we’re more and more recognize the importance of being ethically in relationship to them regardless, if we will ever yet know what it needs or what it’s saying.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That’s super interesting. Yeah, this is, I’m ready curious about exploring this.. this question, because the older I get, also, the more, of course, like with the cliche, the less you feel you know and the more complex, like. And yeah, the more complex, I guess, the world is complex, everything is complex, but also you kind of. I feel like and it’s for me, youth had such a sort of assured kind of yes. Of course, this needs to be shown. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I will now, you know, exactly like you say. And then you’re like, but does it really need to be shown, or do you really what? And part of me also, you know, an older woman in dance is this kind of idea of, yeah, that needs to actually be there. Yeah. And often sort of invisibility of older or women my age. So I think yeah, there’s something in that where I’m thinking, yes, that that should be somehow in the world or you,

PETER:

of course,

Hanna Gillgren:

performativ Arena or whatever.. So, yeah, all of those things are super interesting to think about and also often, I guess, working with a younger generation or people in their 30s or 40s and It’s. It’s super interesting. I really like that. How what we’ve been through in different times of training, what was the focus of the training? What was the discourse, what are our references? And bringing all that in is really lovely. And I’m learning so much, like I’m working with. This is great. I’m appreciative of that. So whenever I do this exercise, also the different people is yeah, I get so many ideas and thoughts that I jot down, because amazing. But yeah, interesting.

PETER:

I mean,

Hanna Gillgren:

perform not to perform. Yeah.

PETER:

But also, that I can’t imagine and I’ve already feeling it with certain things in my life being older than other people. A sense of jadedness or sort of guardedness or, like the privilege or that space of not knowing what it will feel like? to do something. is. is really valuable. I’m curious how this. It’s funny, it’s interesting, you speak about the performativity. Again, it’s a very political thing as well, right? The Can we have space for older female bodies? Yeah, yeah. But how does it feel with what you described as well, I think I gave a word to it of like disappearing or these losing the sound, losing the body, losing the partner, losing the loop. How does that feel, especially in relationship to actually this recognition that it should be allowed that mature women should be on stage as well, or in the dance world as well.. Like, it’s a dissimilar disappearance? Or is other things that get brought up, that disappear? Are they somehow of a world which doesn’t have a place on stage?

Hanna Gillgren:

Right, interesting, yeah.. Yeah, there’s, I guess, like you say, there is also a sense of freedom to being older and to being also having the privilege to still do this. And having the also.. somehow feeling that I’m not.. There’s a sense from me personally, also a sense of kind of pleasure in the invisibility or sense of freedom in that I think for me being young, a lot of performing was about being seen and being good and being looking good and all of that stuff and now, of course, well, not of course, but for me anyway, that somehow much more diluted and not less interesting. So it’s finding like, so what’s interesting now?

PETER:

Yeah.

Hanna Gillgren:

Where is the interest now and also trying, maybe trying to be honest with yourself and really staying with that? What is the pleasure in moving or exposing or not exposing? Yeah, so I’m saying older women, I think it’s really, I love watching difference on stage anyway. I’m very interested in that. But Yeah. I’m not sure that’s necessarily perhaps me.

PETER:

No, sorry.

Hanna Gillgren:

But yes, I know what you mean, though. I think the precious of going on stage also, like the expectations on myself, along all those things are just like, do I like do I really want that? or should I be I be doing this because all the things with discussed.. So, yes, and I think it’s really beautiful how you put the disappearing and the disappearing of things and people and, you know, kids grow like my son growing up, disappearing up. You know, he’s moving from home, he’s not an adult. Things kind of you know, of course, parents getting older, their parents passing, d la, la, la, people. So it’s an interesting time of disappearing and disappearance… Which is actually I’ve never thought about that’s..

PETER:

It’s a real conceptual space as well I like to experience and to be in.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yeah.

PETER:

I had my first big injury of my career this year. Okay. I got a sort of like fatigued in the troncantanta. So trcites, I think it’s great great, yeah. And so, you know, when it gets bad, it can barely walk. And I was dancing in a research project, this summer and I really had this moment where it happened and I was in so much pain, I couldn’t could barely walk like I say, and just a realization of like and sadness and like loss of like, what can I do now? What’s available to me and and it’s so complex and we know of its existence as young people, like. And yet to experience it, to experience the disappearance. the fading away of like a certain access or visibility is really interesting. I was thinking it’s really interesting we’re here, so we’re at Saddle Wells East. I don’t think we’ve said that. in one of the beautiful studios looking out on the Olympic park in London. and I have to think of how amazing that in a world which feels like it doesn’t care about this kind of practice, for example. It is existing, and there are these buildings and there are these institutions and stages. And yet, at the same time, I feel as though trying to squeeze or what we’re talking about a little bit. It’s like trying to squeeze some of this diversity, some of this nuance and texture and ambiguity onto one stage. Because there is a monopoly around where dance can get shown and how and what that means. And as much as there’s a desire for plurality of different dances and people in those dances. I feel like also I’d like to see more stages so that there are different. And I mean very conceptual as well, like different ways in which the dance can be met and entered. And that’s not to say that we should keep Sadlers well to white, for example. But to sort of like, yeah, to imagine. Yeah, it’s really it’s really difficult, though, because Yeah, that’s the economy and it is sort of towards productivity and.

Hanna Gillgren:

For sure. Slick work, slick ready. Yeah. And accessible all yeah. It’s an interesting one. I think. Yeah, this idea of dance’s being encountered in the in various different types of spaces and different types of context. and that being a value of this is yeah, because I guess that’s a little bit where we set up our festival Fest En Fest Heidi I to have to find somehow a space where we can meet each other, we can share work, we can watch work, we can talk about work, we can sort of hang out and have a drink or something to eat.. And it can be presented in the way that the artist would be interested in presenting their practice or their work rather than kind of kind of actively looking for different spaces that could host work, which, you know, it felt a real need for that in London. and I think there still is a need for that, because a lot of the smaller, or the more experimental stages of spaces have closed.

PETER:

Yeah.

Hanna Gillgren:

But yeah, I mean, that this is here is extraordinary, you’re right.

PETER:

Yeah, it is,

Hanna Gillgren:

yeah. That we are here and school is here. I think Martin understand that biant job initiating it, and Alister, obviously. You know,reed to this and it was this really beautiful. I’m hoping that it will ripple..

PETER:

Yes, exactly. Is it?

Hanna Gillgren:

Ripple in the field.

PETER:

That’s sort of ripple effect. Yeah. I mean, actually, one thing that I had to think about with age and with stories and histories is actually in the in the exercise, in the practice, I felt histories were actually really present.. Like, the I don’t think I’m describing it so well, but like, the sense of the loop is of it’s like an echo chamber of what’s already there, and of course, our techniques or our dances or where we’ve been, what we think is loud and possible in the space, the social contracts, the spatial contracts, the histories, what we do in a studio, how we talk, how we think, how we move, and then also, yeah, the histories of the building and even just traveling here. We even started with histories. I historicized your origin and my own origin. And they sort of like. they come up and they become insisted upon, maybe but they also show their complexity and their, like, breadth, like that are very generative. There wasn’t a moment where I was like, okay, now I’m doing that ballet class from when I was five, you know?

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes, this is interesting. Yeah. There’s moments where I. It’s a real flesh not like, there’s moments where I recognize like I know, like, okay, yeah, I do this a lot. And I do this a lot because my neck is really stiff. I would now just keep going with that horror bit. But, yes, and then there are a moments where I’m absolutely also not aware of what is going on. So that, yeah, it’s a really, there’s a lovely way of putting it that history are present on also the kind of past of the vocal work is kind of being looped.

PETER:

I guess I noticed it very strong because I know if I do some movements now and I’m having to teach myself that it’s not in my body, that I know, if I do that, I’m gonna get a lot of pain.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yeah, yeah. That’s interesting.

PETER:

So I’m really having to like sort of. And because I think the experience I’ve had with my body is that it has it will show me where the limit is. My arm will only go so far type thing. However, now it’s like, on my leg, if I send my leg there, I could be in a lot of pain for doing it. But like you say, like just like, I like to do this because my neck, right? Like this story, this history, this saga with our conditions is a really beautiful one. Yeah. And that’s why why this is dance. I mean, we very literally using sound and voice. Yes. Like in one could sort of, or when I started working with it earlier this year, I started to ask myself, like, am I still dancing because I’m the focus was so much on the voicing. And yet, this really demonstrates how.. at least, you know, in one way, D is about being with those historical stories and conditions that the body… carries with us.. But this has been beautiful.

Hanna Gillgren:

Yes so nice.

PETER:

I feels so inspired and so, so lucky. I don’t know if I feel inspired, because it’s sort of assumes that we should do something more or go somewhere else.. And actually, I’d rather think that I feel so… a grateful, actually. that I can that this happen. This dance.Cause it was weird and unique. Yeah, yeah, right? Like,.

Hanna Gillgren:

It was great. What an amazing way of starting a day, just movingly new, was super. And it’s also nice that I’ve never met you. You, exactly. And then we go off and do this. That’s great.

PETER:

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I mean in a way, those stories, actually, of like, what I presume, what I think expectation wise, like, how to like honor what you’ve invited as much as I can. Like, all those dancery learning things, right? like, they were definitely there as well. But, yeah, we don’t We didn’t know each other, but now I feel like we know each other and within this 30 minutes of dancing. That’s really special. Yeah. Thank you so much. If people want to get in contact with you or check you out,

Hanna Gillgren:

I guess the website? H2dance.com. would be a good place. And I think, yeah, my email is there.

PETER:

Yes, yeah, yeah, that’s good.

Hanna Gillgren:

Or a festival, also a festive fest website. Yeah, they can read about the festival and the program.

PETER:

And also attend.

Hanna Gillgren:

And attend March. March is next year, 2026. Yeah.

PETER:

Yeah. And you’re also on Instagram. Instagram,

Hanna Gillgren:

H2hanna. I’m on Facebook, but Instagram more actively. Yeah, it’s the’s the place. One of the places, yeah. You sort of have to be. No, but it’s such a pleasure to meet you and your work.

PETER:

And also, if people are interested, you’re teaching it Roehampton as well, so there’s so many opportunities to interact with you your experience and the dancers you’re doing and things and Exactly. Also, the learning, you’re continuing to do is so beautiful, how you put the put it like that. It gives me great hope and inspiration. I feel very grateful. Thank you.

Hanna Gillgren:

Thank you.

1. Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre
2. National Theatre Public Acts – https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/about-us/theatre-nation-partnerships/public-acts/
3. Public Record – https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/whats-on/public-record/
4. Marina Abramović & Ulay (Great Wall of China walk)
5. Rite of Spring Fabulous Beast – https://youtu.be/jsRKugYT03c?si=aI0dO4iS4AjEmNn3
6. Cèilidh – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A8ilidh
7. Olivier Theatre – https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/your-visit/venues-at-the-national-theatre/olivier-theatre/
8. Peter Carter (traditional eel catcher in the Fens)
9. Dance is life, Hudson River Park’s Pier 76 – https://www.danceislife.love/locations
10. Restoke – http://restoke.org.uk
11. Paul Rogerson director at restoke – https://www.restoke.org.uk/people
12. ROSALÍA & Travis Scott – https://youtu.be/q5xIoeG4uVI?si=kOMydrTFuzKVTXMv
13. Public Works New York – https://publictheater.org/artistic-programs/public-works/
14. Dahlia Lopez Ramsay – https://magnettheater.com/people/dahlia-ramsay/
15. Emily Lim – https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/artists/emily-lim/

Closing event for Bradford City of Culture 2025, Winter Solstice 20th and 21st of December in Myrtle Park – https://bradford2025.co.uk/event/brighter-still/

PETER:

Alright, so, hello. Today I’m with Dan Canham.

Dan Canham:

Yeah, that’s it. Canham?

PETER:

Yeah. And we are, well, we could say we’re in the fens and we’re going to dance together. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I really appreciated dancing with you all those years ago and 201 yeah, 2018 or 2019, somewhere around there with Fabulous Beast. You were always such a kind and caring soul. It’s. It was such a joy. So when I had this opportunity to reconnect, of course, it made sense to sort of reach out. And I know now you’re doing many things. I mean, in the intermittent phase, you’ve done a lot of things. But if you could say maybe for people who don’t know who you are and maybe for me, because I don’t fully know who you are yet. Just a brief sort of thing.

Dan Canham:

Yes. Yes, because it’s been 17 years since we danced together. It feels like another life to me. I stopped performing. I stopped performing in 2016. and I got to the point where I was performing in my own work because I was fed up with performing for other people. Yeah. But that also becomes kind of exhausting, and I was always probably more interested in choreographing and directing. I just didn’t know how. So I had to learn what to do and what not to do from other people. But now, yes, at this point, this new revolution of activity for me involves choreographing and directing, a lot of, like, large scale, theater and dance shows that might involve like 150, 200 people, most of whom will be members of the community. And so I’ve been doing a lot of work with the National Theatre Public Acts. We just made a show in Sunderland called Public Record, which was like an original devised piece of dance music theater, with a cast of 100, featuring loads of music legends from Sunderland and that was great. And I would say the thing I love most and the thing that I get the biggest kick out of is just taking those people on a journey, I would say, I feel like I’m a bit of a specialist in relatively quickly, allowing people to access dance who might not feel like it was ever for them.

PETER:

Yeah.

Dan Canham:

For whatever reason. And suddenly collectively they’re feeling this collective power and we’re grooving and we’re we’re dancing freely. However, you know, any steps are just used as a little springboard and suddenly people have got smiles on their faces and they’re saying to me, “Dan, I didn’t realize dance was for me” and there’d be really good dancers. And I love that. I get such a high off it. So that’s a lot of the work that I do, and then on top of that, I do a lot of camera work. And sometimes they overlap.

PETER:

Yeah. Yeah. Filming, filming dance. But, I mean, what it speaks to, for me is a little bit like dance is just always so close and so present. And it really, I mean, and I experience it myself. Like, it’s not 20 years of professional training that brings you to dance. Like, it’s just a shift of perspective, which actually maybe is a nice link into like where we are. Maybe you could just say a little bit about where we are and what we’re going to do.

Dan Canham:

Yes. So we’ve come, we just met just met in a Tesco car park after 17 years. And I’ve driven you out to the fen edge. I won’t give a full account of the fens, but what we’re looking at now is like 360 degrees of flat land. and in any one direction, we can probably see for at least two or three miles. And in some cases a lot further. And we’re looking at sort of wheat fields that have been harvested, just stubbly wheat fields, which are quite a nice color, actually. We’ve got some lovely greens. It’s been very dry here, you can see, so there’s a lot of beige and yellows. It’s overcast day, but there’s a bit of blue around.

PETER:

Yeah, you can really see the clouds rolling off into the horizon..

Dan Canham:

And we’re on an old drove, like just an old farm track that has been concreted a single track again in the middle of nowhere. I don’t imagine we’ll see anyone for if we sat here for a couple of hours, we might see a jogger or a farmer or a cyclist. That might be it. Which is odd because we’re quite close to Cambridge, quite close to a big city, and I just love how so out here on the fens, I I feel at home because I grew up around here on the edge of the fens, and I feel a simultaneous sense of comfort with all of this space and of ownership, because you’re not going to be disturbed and also slight paranoia. because if someone had some binoculars or a scope, they could be miles away and see us. And in fact, there was one time where for some research for a project in the fens at night, I drove out to one of these droves out near near March, near Doddington, and I put my headlights on and I just started filming myself dancing. And it was, I don’t know, maybe nine o’clock at night, and there was no one around for miles. It’s amazing feeling, and you feel so free. But then literally within half an hour, someone drove up to me and said, “What are you doing?” And I was like, I can’t remember what I said. I think I said something that did enough to just put them off. I was like, I’m just doing some research or something. Usually you say you’re a student or something. and they don’t bother. But yeah, so. Oh, there’s a car car did pass. Oh, and there’s another car look after I said we have to watch out. But we’ve come here because it’s a really straight drove and I thought it would be nice as a kind of reunion of sorts for us to be either ends of this road, maybe like a mile apart, and just slowly, with the wind blowing across us and all of this space, slowly meet in the middle. Feels like something Marina Abramović and Ulay would do.

PETER:

Oh, yeah.

Dan Canham:

They did it on the Great Wall of China. I think that’s the inspiration. They did it on the Great Wall of China. We’re doing it for over a mile on a fen drove. But that is it, then. And we’re going to dance it as a way of the recipe as we get closer and then we have some kind of point of connection.

PETER:

Yeah. I mean, it is. We’re meeting across time and space. Yeah, this is wonderful. And I mean, and I’m now living here, so it’s also apt, right? So we somehow meeting in this place where you’re from and you’re anchored and that I’m finding myself anchoring and encountering. This sounds great. So we’re going to walk along this straight road, turn around, and move towards each others in some way. Yeah. Great. Sounds simple.. All right, then we’ll pause now and we’ll be back in a bit. Lovely.

Pause

PETER:

All right. Okay. So, we’re back in the car. Yeah.

Dan Canham:

At the Midway point. Yeah.

PETER:

At the the rendezvous. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow. I was really impressive. I think we just, yeah, we say what we found and what came up for us. I mean, firstly, you found a snake.

Dan Canham:

Yeah, I found a snake, snake skin yeah. Yeah. Or maybe two. I can’t tell. Which, yeah, I had to be careful not to just get carried away with dancing for the snake skin and abandoning you. But yeah, like, just about noticing, I guess. Yeah. And what you notice. Yeah. And I had the feeling like this could be a practice. Yeah. And the more we do it, the more we’d notice. Yeah. And the more we’d slow. I feel like if we did it 100 times, it would just get slower and slower and slower until we were just walking. And it would get longer and longer. And so, yeah, when I started noticing things, then I saw like a snake skin or. the buzzard calling or felt that wind in the grass or yeah, details.

PETER:

Yeah, I mean, I mean, even to the extent, so at the beginning we walked away from each other and we didn’t really discuss how and when we would turn back. But I got to the bend in the road and then I felt like, okay, that makes sense. But there was definitely an urge of like, how much of a dance do I want? And like, how much do I want to include? Like, there was very interesting quality of like wanting to, yeah, like you say, notice more and be with more like throughout, not just the walking away, but also coming back to towards each other. I really, yeah, beautiful sort of. Yeah, quality of inclusion. Mm, mm mm. Definitely the buzzard. At some point, I didn’t realize there were crickets, and then I heard the cricketets. And this is sort of the tractor across the way. And even just the details in the sky and then, for me, it also there was like the relationship between us and it differed so much. Yeah, how much I could see you or not.

Dan Canham:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because you’re not sure. like. can you see what I’m doing? Is it having an effect on you at what point? There was one point where I felt like we had a first proper connection, which I don’t know, maybe 50 meters apart, where you were low, and then I got low, and it kind of slowed down. It felt quite animal. Yeah. And it was like, “Oh, he can see me now.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those stages of intimacy, Yeah. proximity, on a big scale, like Yeah. There’s no rehearsal room, this big.

PETER:

No, no, no. No, no. Absolutely. And I have so much input as well. But on a very fine level as well. Like it’s not loud music or something.

Dan Canham:

It’s Which was weird for me because I almost, I almost exclusively danced to music. Yeah, yeah. And it will almost exclusively be like mining for grooves and repetitive, like things I can like teach and like that’s almost exclusions to be what I do. So having the space to just drop in and out of, yeah. freer stuff was freeing and also just like, what do I do? have music in my head sometimes.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly, But yeah. But for me there was such a number of rhythms, actually.

Dan Canham:

Yeah, sure, sure.

PETER:

And the rhythmicality was so explicit and strong. Just because I know that I’m somehow to get closer to you. So there’s the rhythm of just having to walk, right? I mean walking is such a rhythmical activity. But then the wind through the grass and the sort of stop and change and shift in direction. And you’re kind of getting closer to the rhythms of the space. At some point, like I was vocalizing some of the breath and some of the sounds of the things. But also, yeah, having an intimacy with that and definitely like the animal came out from me as well. I’m on the ground and I feel like a hare peering up off the grass.

Dan Canham:

Well, there is a hare. You’ve just said it and I’ve just spotted one. That’s crazy. Can you see it?

PETER:

Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Canham:

Literally. You just said it and we hadn’t seen one. And I haven’t seen one in the last three days out here. And there it is.

PETER:

You summon and it will come.

Dan Canham:

That’s crazy. Because also obviously we had hares in right of spring. That’s crazy. It’s right there. Yeah. Yeah. That’s. What else do you want to summon? We’ve had the snake, the hare, learner driver. Yeah. Nice.

PETER:

But it is. It’s about there’s something conjures for me about getting closer to those things and listening and giving it opportunity. I had to think of your work with communities and things and this is such a simple and rich invitation for us today. And I was sort of curious, like, how do you, yeah, how do you manage that that sort of intimacy of dance and the expectations and like familiarity that maybe people who are new to it have or don’t have, right.

Dan Canham:

When I’m working with communities, it’s tends to be like social dances, my way in, even if we’re making up our own social dance, and I’m always mining for like simple steps which I can name the shareable and teachable that I can call out in the moment so people don’t have to worry about what comes next. Almost like a Cèilidh.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah.

Dan Canham:

But without the music or those particular steps. But it really is analogous to that kind of social dance I’ll call out something. And what it does generally seems to is just free people up and free them up to be with each other. And so much of the approach being explicit about naming “This is for you.” “This is for your friends,” as much as for an audience.. And not like a presentation, you know, face out, everyone face out front. I want them to be facing each other. I want to be looking into each other’s eyes. I want them to be enjoying the steps and crucially, as well, I always say there can be as many different versions of that choreography as there are people doing it. And I really mean that. As long as the spirit and the attack and the quality is there, you can do the same move in your left index finger, if that’s all you have facility for that day as you can with your full body. And I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it. It used to be just words that I said and figured, oh yeah, that theory is sound, but they’ I’ve really seen it. seeing, you know, 160 people on the Olivier (Theatre) doing this like storm sequence where they’re dancing and I’ve seen people like wheelchair users who who are putting it really in their shoulders or like someone who’s like 80 years old. Do you know what I mean? Finding their own way or a four year old just going for it? But as long as the collective approach and spirit is right, then they are meeting through dancing. And the step and the groove is a safety net for them so that they don’t have to worry about what it is they’re doing. They can just meet through. And then as an audience, maybe you see that and you see the connections and you think, I want to be part of that..

PETER:

Yeah, yeah. If not just as a witness, right? Feeling it, feeling the music, feeling the rhythm.

Dan Canham:

Yeah. Yeah. So, and I think the thing about the freedom of expression, obviously, obviously, as a choreographer, I have, like, many different, like, um needs to serve, not least serving the story or even if there’s no narrative, you know, serving the rhythm and the journey of a piece. But yeah, I think and so I’m really, I’m really hot on, like, detail, you know, when detail of approach and of attack, but then, I think because I worked for so many choreographers over the years when I was dancing, who were so. precise to the point of controlling that it could strip you of that creativity if you didn’t have exactly the right body or approach. And because I never trained. Because I did a drama degree. And my body doesn’t suit certain approaches. Then I just get a real kick out of opening up and cracking, approaches to dancing.

PETER:

Yeah. Because what’s so striking with what we did now is also that I’m standing there alone and I have to think about how the grass will continue moving. The crickets will continue sounding. The crack in the road will continue opening and the plants will continue growing through them. The snake will continue to shed its skin and the farmer will be still doing the fields., like this sort of like strangeness in dancing of like I’m doing it alone, but am I? You know, we were so far apart at the beginning I could barely see you. I didn’t know if it was you or not,

Dan Canham:

if it started

PETER:

if it started exactly and like, are we together or am I dancing by myself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there’s some sort of thread there where like the individual and the collective, they’re not so far apart. Like each person in the on the stage in the community dance needs to somehow be alone in themselves and in who they are. And at the same time, beside and with everyone else, right? There’s something

Dan Canham:

Totally And I think for that reason, I don’t often use physical contact. And if I do, it tends to be quite gestural or like overtly theatrical. I won’t often involve like, yeah, or if it is social, maybe there’s, you know, a social dance to it, but I don’t often use contact and even before work and a lot with members of the community, even with pros, I wouldn’t often use that because maybe because I enjoy my own space and being able to have agency over my own space whilst being in relation to Yeah, I don’t know. You can still do that when you’re touching, but maybe it becomes harder.

PETER:

Yeah. Yeah. No, there’s more or the agency, that like control of oneself is somehow limited, even by the just the social code of like, okay, now we’re touching so I should honor that. I mean, funny enough, we did touch. And I felt it as like a question. Like we were getting closer and closer and then of course the the sort of sort of, what do you call it, the end result of like getting closer is just let’s clap hands, let’s bump fists let’s hug but I felt that resistance and it was interesting because it meant, okay, but it’s not about somehow becoming one or I don’t know, that’s bad word, maybe,

Dan Canham:

but I know what you mean

PETER:

being together somehow it like caused me to ask questions of like, how can I continue this dance actually going past you? Yeah, yeah beyond you.

Dan Canham:

I was the choreographer in me was really present. That’s what I was like, no, we have to earn this moment. I like, we can’t just like, that can’t be the first thing, just bump fists. Do you know what I mean? So I was like, my choreographer hat was all, I was just like, what’s the what’s the good choice here? And butting back to back felt good, you know, because this whole thing about forwards and back on a straight line felt really. Yeah.

PETER:

I mean, actually, that was challenged a lot by the environment. So yeah, the road was is linear. Yeah. However, it doesn’t it doesn’t, it didn’t necessarily pull me in that sort of forward/back direction because you have this side wind. Yeah, which is so present almost omnipresent. Like it’s it’s inescapable, regardless of what direction you’re going. It really fronted that.

Dan Canham:

Yeah. That’s right. What did that. I once met, did a project interviewing some people out here and I spoke to a guy who at the time was a traditional eel catcher. He used to make willow traps. Oh, yeah, yeah. And he was part of a long line, like hundreds of years of his family. His name was Peter Carter and he told me “the wind out here is a lazy wind. because it doesn’t bother to go around you, it goes straight through you. So it’s lazy.” It’s just like a classic, like fen saying, but like that thing you say, yeah, I like, yeah, I felt it kind of slightly diagonal, so at times I’d just like orient to the road and then it’s just this wind coming at me or to my front or to my back.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah. Which I loved. Yeah, I mean, we I think that the beautiful thing with dance for me is that it does, like, it doesn’t really have a language and it struggles to sort of like find sort of representation in the world and relevance sometimes as well. But like you say, these colloquial sayings and things, like the conditions of the place often the environment, they’re so bodily. Like it goes through you, it’s lazy. It’s like a dancing partner, you know? Like it’s

Dan Canham:

and for me as well, like those conditions include my history and knowledge of like people and I don’t know how you found it, but and I think I’m like it in general, but like when it comes to taking up space and when it comes to being an expressive, like, I was really impressed that the first, I don’t know, maybe five, ten minutes of your dance, you were within 10 meters of this learner driver who just parked up and they were maybe watching? I don’t know, chatting through. Certainly it would have been out of the ordinary for them. And what it means to be antisocial or to be unpredictable or to be seen as, I don’t know, like, you know, flamboyant or extreme or expressive in a way that certainly around here isn’t necessarily welcomed because, I would say, at least from my experience growing up, and like historically, it’s quite a sort of conformist, do you know what I mean? Like, don’t step out of the ordinary. It will be commented on if you do. Yeah. And I just wondered for you how that was starting. I did have some level of like, can someone see me? Is someone watching? Will they call the police? What do they think I’m doing? Do you know what I mean? Like, but that speaks more broadly to me about, yeah, public space and dance as this kind of, you know, what it means to take up space in that way. And sometimes I’m uncomfortable with it. Like, if it’s not a licensed venue does it fit? How did that feel for you?

PETER:

Yeah, Well, exactly as you described it as like taking up space. It’s quite powerful as a meeting, actually, when I meet my like… Because it’s in me, also, right? Their eyes on me, my perception of their eyes on me what they perceive me to be doing and what am I allowed to do, what I think am I allowed to do.

Dan Canham:

Exactly.

PETER:

It’s it’s kind of it’s a very, like. It’s a strong sense of being allowed or not allowed to be present. And and we took up so much space. And like you say, there’s no dance studio as long as there’s.

Dan Canham:

No, no, no.

PETER:

But what came of it? You know, like the beauty of seeing your duet partner get closer? Or the person you’re conversing with physically get starts so small and also to have such range. I mean, we could have veered off the the droge, right?

Dan Canham:

The drove.

PETER:

The drove. Yeah, yeah. And gone outwhere. Yeah. So like taking up space, it feels like a right. Yeah, right. And yet that freedom feels really elusive and we were speaking a bit about how the fans are they’re very wild space, but they’re very created Yeah, maybe. Yeah, yeah. maintained space.

Dan Canham:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s entirely human made now. Yeah, yeah, insulpted and farmed and kind of, yeah, ransacked. Yeah.

PETER:

I mean, like the the sense of permission to do dancing. I mean, I’ve also been looking, how can I walk these places? And it’s terrifying. I mean, most of the time I’m just like, oh, I don’t want to bother someone. I don’t want to walk on someone’s land and stuff. But how do you engage with, those questions in general?

Dan Canham:

Yeah. I think, yeah. It’s reminded me of a couple of things. One is with my oldest friend from around here, we used to go on these long walks, just sometimes in a straight line. You know, along the 40 foot drain, you can walk and some of it is private land. We managed to do it. It is when we were younger, we cared less. Yeah. But we managed to, yeah, walk in a straight line for 22 miles. Between Earith and Downham Market and that’s something. It is that Marina and Ulay thing, if we did opposite ends of that, it would take us, you know, a day to meet. And would you be able to dance for 11 miles? But no, I think, yeah, what it means to to be expressive in that way and to.. I’m really good when I’ve got the license and then I’ll just like. If I’m like, if someone’s like, here’s a stage, here’s a microphone, whatever, here’s a, here’s a license to do your thing, I’ll take up that space. If not, I get very I get very nervous. And yeah making sound and like, you know, all of that kind of stuff because it might be seen. And I’ just come back from New York. I was in New York This is what it’s on my mind a couple of weeks ago, doing some research and like there’s a possible project out there that may or may not happen and but I had the joy of just meeting incredible people out there and watching some rehearsals of things and the first thing I did after being on a plane for eight hours and then an hour and a half through immigration and then catch their Uber was land at Pier 76 on the Hudson River. So I’d been invited there. And there was this thing called Dance is Life, this party on a Monday afternoon between, I don’t know, five o’clock and 10 o’clock at night. It’s properly diverse, properly queer. People are just so expressive. And then you could see some of that too. Just around the city.. Do you know what I mean? Like, people roller skating and central. And like, and in fact, then we were chatting to someone about like nights out there and stuff. And they said every night out is like on some level is a queer night out. It’s no longer just its own thing. It’s just permeates culture for the young people. Do you know what I mean, out there. And I think especially like in New York in general, I just found people so at ease with expressing themselves. And of course, that’s a cliche too, in terms of. But it’s such a comparison to England. And especially around here, Tory hotspot as well. Do you know what I mean? Or probably Reform now. where it is very ordered. Even the land is ordered. It’s all straight lines, it’s, do you know what I mean? And so, and as you say, we could have just cut zigzags across one of it. I would be nervous. I still have the fear of a farmers shotgun.

PETER:

Yeah, of course.

Dan Canham:

From when I was a child. But yeah, I think I got, I’ve really, in New York, I was like, damn, this this is enticing. Yeah. Because there is this invitation to just do what the hell you want, where, what the hell you want and no one’s going to blink an eyelid. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

PETER:

No, it’s there is like a hope with this sort of like, I mean, it’s terrifying and freeing at the same time. Like we’re experiencing where anyone can have a voice, right? Like social media and yeah, has sort of on the internet has sort of created the space where we all feel like in some part that we should participate. Like we have to comment on things we have to like things. And that sort of culture, I think is becoming more and more prevalent or permitted in like so much of our lives and especially the young who are like growing up in this nature.

Dan Canham:

And this felt odd because we weren’t filming it.

PETER:

Exactly. Exactly.

Dan Canham:

It’s really for his own sake. Yeah. He’s like, shit, but this is gold. Where’s this? How can we put this on the gram and shit him in and all like, how can I harvest this some of this material like yeah, yeah, yeah yeah and so to do it for its own sake, I think it’s a good practice.

PETER:

Yeah. I mean, I mean, and in a way it’s not as well, right? We’re still capturing a part of it, but I was I was really thinking actually.

Dan Canham:

True.

PETER:

Because you chose such a visually spectacular. It’s not going to get a cross on audio, but it is just amazing. And like just, I noticed the detail, like I was at some point on the ground and you see the lichen. Like you see the conversation between nature and this road that has been built. And of course, yeah, you want to capture it somehow and put it out there, but it’s it’s a weird conversation when we know Instagram is sort of like this monopoly of like creator space as well.

Dan Canham:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

PETER:

It’s sort of almost authoritarian control space where everything has to function in the best way possible. That’s right, yeah. But what I love is you sort of opening up this question of like giving permission. And that really resonates with the kind of community dancing and when I’m working with people who haven’t danced so much, like exactly how do I give them permission to do these things? Like we know as professional dancers and people have worked in the field for so long that the the border between dancing and not dancing is so thin.

Dan Canham:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

PETER:

Like people can really do it. Like, that sort of old expression of like, oh, I can’t dance is really speaking to something that is very sad actually.

Dan Canham:

Yeah, no, definitely. Definitely. Yeah.

PETER:

It sounds really amazing. The ways in which you’re finding to sort of give permission or give license as you say as well.

Dan Canham:

I sort of, yeah, I think what I tend to do is I’m really, I feel like I’m really sensitive. I’m sensitive to where people might be at. And of course I I explicitly state early, like meet this wherever you’re at. And then I’ll, and then I’ll try and set the ask in terms of commitment really high. Right off the bat. And then as soon as one person or a number of people like meet that, I’ll reinforce it and I’ll praise it. And that generally works me and then everyone will say, oh, damn, right, they’re going for, I can, I’m allowed where it falls down, which almost happened to me the other time. Not so long ago. and it’s been a long time since in that situation I was teaching a group of teenagers, some of whom haven’t danced much at all. Some of like teenage boys and they were just part of this group, amazing group. in Stoke as part of this project I was doing with Restoke, or an amazing organization and they’re trying to up their work with teenagers. And in the first morning, I was doing what I thought was relatively low bar engagement, kind of just to get them humming in as a group, and they were not having it. And so my usual tactic of like ask and then support when it’s met just couldn’t happen because it wasn’t being met. And then I was like, shit, what other what other tactics do I have? like, how can I like get them in their power? And I’m used to doing it quick. And this feels like it’s going to be harder. I think actually then, because we were going to make like a we were making like a music video dance video after a bit of a struggley first session, I played them the music that was made by this guy, Paul Rogerson, who works at restock, was really cool music. I showed them some of the visual references, which included like this ROSALÍA & Travis Scott music video where they were like, oh, actually, this is pretty cool. I showed them some of the stuff I’d shot before and then suddenly they were on board. And it was just really interesting to me in that moment of like, I’ve always had the mantra in my head, like, the material, especially in that kind of situation has to be, is the thing. You can be as enthusiastic and as kind of motivating as you like, but if people aren’t really into the material, you’ve got an uphill battle. But one thing I noticed there as well is like there can be other ways of like, I guess we’re talking about, like trust and credibility. And you can signal I’m giving you permission, I’m giving you permission. But if they don’t trust you for whatever reason, even if you think, well, you should, it’s not going to fly. And so even just showing that Travis Scott and ROSALÍA music video or playing that music, suddenly it had a lot more cachet. And then when I was asking them to, we still had a journey to go on, but at least we were on the path, whereas when it first started, it was like, oh no, I don’t we can’t even see the path here. So it’s all trust, isn’t it? And one of the things in New York, actually, I was doing some work with this amazing, the public theater in New York, like, amazing, and they have this program called Public Works where they work with hundreds of members of the community and they’ve been doing it 10 years. Some of them have been in, they call them pageants, but they’re big shows and some of them have been in like four or five pageants over the years. Their whole family. Some of them might have started as a four-year old and now they’re a teenager and they’re still doing it, you know, incredible, long form community engagement. But yeah, on the wall there, Dahlia Ramsay Lopez (Dan meant to say Dahlia Lopez Ramsay) who I was working out there with She’d put “up always act in the interests of trust building.” I think. And she said I think those were the worst. And she’d she’d been round the houses on what it could be, like, always assumed best intentions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that was the one she’d landed on. And I should say as well, like so much of this approach is really, really grounded in director Emily Lim. You know, she’s run public acts at the National. She’s like, opened up so much of my work and and it’s so values led. And I’m sure, like, for her, like, yeah, always acting at the interests of trust building, I think, yeah, it is, like, that’s the. That’s the thing. That’s That’s what it is. And we’ve come out here because we know each other, the trust is implicit, but still, it’s only that that allows for you to step outside of their ordinary.

PETER:

Exactly. I was just going to say, like, in a meta way, like I’m so, I feel so privileged that you trusted me to do this. And I think it was clear, like I sent you a message on Instagram after, yeah, after we’d sort of reconnected there and then immediately you were like, yeah, let’s see. And I think, and throughout it as well, like trusting to stay a little bit longer with a movement, trusting to stay or to go back to back, even though I felt your choreographic hand sort of like, oh yeah, you’re right. Let’s trust in what else could be there. And then trusting in, oh, can we can we find contact and what kind of contact would that be? And throughout, like there’s these plays around permitting and providing, which sort of I had to think a lot about how for a while I was thinking that Dance doesn’t always have to be performed and that dance can exist outside of that economy almost. And I still agree with it, but I think there’s something still, which is similar to performance, maybe definitely not just for the stage, but a performance where it’s like being present, taking space, and trusting one another and permitting one another to be able to, for that dance to exist. And even to trust yourself as well. To dance.

Dan Canham:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. There’s a moment relatively soon after I’d stopped performing on stage where I still enjoyed dancing, obviously, and with dance like to music in my living room and so on. And I realized like, oh, I can close my eyes. Because for years it was like, never close your eyes. Do you know what I mean? Like, that was just my thing. And like, always let the audience in and what are your eyes doing? And that performative outward facing. And then I was like, shit, I can just close my eyes. Just have a great time. Just vibe out. And it felt like, I don’t know. Yeah, it felt like a whole different relationship to moving. Yeah.

PETER:

It’s. I mean, the word is really big, but everything about your proposal today screams freedom in some way or another, just being in such a large expansive space and then trying to to find a little bit of freedom in there and be there. It’s really beautiful.

Dan Canham:

Good, yeah. Good. It’s nice.

PETER:

Yeah, I think we could probably start to wrap it up there unless you have anything else. It’s pertinent from this experience. Otherwise, you could let us know, maybe how to get in touch with your the rest of your work.

Dan Canham:

Yes. If you’re curious. Instagram’s the place I put everything. But I’ll, you know, when I say everything, it’s not my whole life, but, you know, everything I’m up to. And the Instagram is @dan_canham. There’s some pictures and films and stuff up there. I’m co-directing the closing event for Bradford City of Culture, which will be Winter Solstice. Nice. Yeah, so that will be 20th and 21st of December in Bradford in a park, and we’ve really drawn on kind of ways of gathering and of congregating at that time and fire and dance and music.

PETER:

Wow. Real fire.

Dan Canham:

Yeah. Yeah. That sounds amazing. So that’ll be, yeah, maybe like 180 performers, hopefully. From the Bradford region and big audience, maybe We’re hoping for like 5,000. Yeah. Under the sky, whatever the weather. Yeah. And so that’s a big one coming up. And then, yeah, lots of lots of nice kind of film-based projects that find their life and their place. online or in festivals over over the time and there’s quite a few of those I’ve put up on on the Instagram. Yeah.

PETER:

Yeah, great. Yeah, that’s great. And I mean, then you seem to be everywhere. You’re in New York. You’re all over.

Dan Canham:

Yeah, you are traveling in the minute, yeah. Yeah. I think that seems to just be the nature of it, I think, with how things are. Yeah. Being able to go wherever that those little pockets of exciting work are is essential. I’d like to work in Briston more. I’d like to not be away from home as much. But, yeah.. What I do is relatively, what I’m into is relatively specific. Yeah. This is broad, but, like, you know, so… I got to go wherever that is.

PETER:

I mean, I it sounds so awesome. I hope I can come to the north and see you. I need to come to the north. That’s not a place to be. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Dan. We’ll keep talking.

Dan Canham:

Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good.

1. Stockholm University of the Arts / ADiE project (Artistic Doctorates in Europe) – linked to the PhD Practice Week.
2. https://nivel.teak.fi/adie • “No Answers, Questions Only”https://nivel.teak.fi/adie/no-answers-questions-only/
3. No-How Generator (2019–ongoing) – Sperling’s choreographic work and PhD project. nohowgenerator.com
4. Back-and-forthing – the central practice within No-How Generator.
5. View the score (PDF) http://nohowgenerator.com/nhg_choreographic_score.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
6. Neurolive project – five-year collaboration between artists and neuroscientists.
7. http://neurolive.info
8. Deborah Hay
9. Steve Paxton Small Dances
10. Limón technique
11. Katye Coe – dancer and Sperling’s collaborator in No-How Generator. http://katyecoe.org
12. Paul Feyerabend – philosopher of science, known for Against Method and the idea of “epistemological anarchy.”
13. Karl Popper – philosopher of science, mentioned in contrast to Feyerabend.
14. Catherine Malabou – philosopher known for the concept of plasticity.
15. Guy Claxton – learning scientist who researches the body, intuition, and intelligence. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Intelligence_in_the_Flesh/xqpJCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
16. Cindy Millstein – anarchist writer, referenced for her ideas about freedom.
17. Aby Warburg – magic and science.
18. Website of the Warburg Institute (London) – A short biography of Aby Warburg and history of the Warburg Institute: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/about-us/history-warburg-institute
19. Matthias interest in Warburg’s epistemoloigcal approaches is very influenced by the ways that art historian Georges Didi-Huberman articulates them in this book: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Atlas_or_the_Anxious_Gay_Science/FXlvDwAAQBAJ?h

PETER:

Hello, Today we are dancing with Matthias Sperling.

Matthias Sperling:

Hello.

PETER:

It’s such a pleasure to have you here to be in the studio with you,

Matthias Sperling:

Yes. Very nice to see you too. Very nice to see you in the UK.

PETER:

Yes, yes, so we met, actually, 2018. I mean, at least the first the time I remember us meeting. And that was at a PhD Practice Week in Stockholm where I had a practice of no questions only answers, which I think you probably participated in. which was lovely. And this was the first time I met you and I remember because I knew of you, you were already very successful in the UK when I was studying here, and I’d heard of your name and but unfortunately hadn’t got to connect. And then I got a taste of it in 2018 of your genius or your brilliance.. But very, I feel very fortunate to be able to continue this conversation and exactly as you say. To meet here where you are more or less based, right? Yeah, yeah. If people don’t know you, how do you introduce yourself? Or how would you introduce yourself today, perhaps?

Matthias Sperling:

How would I introduce myself today? Um, I am an artist, a choreographer, performer, researcher, I guess I sort of increasingly describe myself as a researcher because I am often involved in research. I was born in Canada, in Toronto, and I started dancing there. And I moved here in the mid/late 90s. So I’ve been in London for a very long time, based in the UK. And yeah, most of my work has happened based here, where I danced with a few companies in the beginning and I then started to make my own work more. And I, yeah, I’ve done various things, various ways of like, learning along the way. And then the more recent things for me have been that I did a PhD here in the UK and some of the practice that I proposed to share with you today is related to that. It might even be a little bit related to if we did anything together that I led in 2018, then it would be. It would be more of that.

PETER:

I think we did, yeah. Great. Well, that’s great. I’m not a beginner..

Matthias Sperling:

Evolutions, evolutions of that. And, yeah, so I finished that in 2022 and also, I’ve been co-leading a research project that is an interdisciplinary collaboration between artists and scientists, specifically dance artists and cognitive neuroscientists, and that’s a five year project that is already coming to a close this year. So, yeah, that’s also what I am involved in. And I guess a way to introduce the kind of things that I’m interested in, maybe I guess through the kind of lens of my PhD research is looking at relationships between choreography and knowledge generation and connecting that with ideas like conjuring or, well, I would say magic and science at the same time. So ideas about, say, the biological basis of embodied knowledge generation and the way that that might be described in a neuroscientific context, but then at the same time, what I call magic. So these ideas about, say, conjuring, perhaps divination, yeah, that kind of direction, which I’m sure we can go into more.

PETER:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s super exciting stuff. And very interesting. I, yeah, I already feel like there there are threads to be pulled and I think I think it would be nice to get a sense exactly of that conjury magic world and how it relates to dance and choreography. But what are we specifically going to do today? What have you brought for us?

Matthias Sperling:

Well, I’ve kind of considered slightly different versions of the same sort of main materials that I’m interested in. I think what I’ll introduce is something specific and then what we can do might be a bit looser around the edges of that. Maybe it’s just a more sort of clear way to talk about it is to start somewhere specific. So in my PhD work, the sort of site of that research is a choreographic work called No-How Generator, which is spelled NO HOW, which doesn’t come across very well in audio. No-How Generator is the name of the work, is the title of my PhD. And within that choreographic work, the sort of nucleus of the score is something that I call back-and-forthing. And so I wanted to share that with you.

PETER:

Fantastic.

Matthias Sperling:

And also, I guess, some sort of ways into that, and then also some ways in which that has evolved a bit more recently for me. So obviously with the PhD, I have sort of lots of writing around that and like a dedicated website to that. I also wrote like a written version of the choreographic score, which is part of my written PhD. And so in that I have these words that I can share now, which are, yeah, sort of an introduction to back-and-forthing as a choreographic material.

PETER:

Yeah, please.

Matthias Sperling:

Okay. So this is sort of slightly adapted from the written choreographic score of No-How Generator. And it introduces this sort of as it comes into the score.

“Back-and-forthing unfolds through a rhythmic yet changeable, rocking motion. While the rhythmic rocking of weight remains a constant, the specific form of the movement is always evolving and adapting in relation to the perceptual feedback that you experience from your moving body and the environment around you. Your weight shifts back and forth in space between body parts and/or spatial locations that emerge as what lights up in your felt sense perception from moment to moment. The rhythmic pendulum shift of your weight between a back and a forth remains a constant presence in space, regardless of smaller and sometimes larger changes in the shape of the movement. The work is on insisting on the possibility that your whole body at once as your teacher (a phrase from Deborah Hay, among many phrases from Deborah Hay, that I quote in this score) can accommodate. So, sorry, the work is on insisting on the possibility that your whole body at once as your teacher can accommodate within your back-and-forthing what you are reading in your felt sense experience, including the curiosities or appetites that you notice emerging. While the degree and frequency of change starts out small, it can grow larger later on, once the regularity of your back-and-forthing has become established enough to remain a continually felt presence. Back-and-forthing settles into a momentum that feels like it takes care of propagating itself, something like a perpetual motion generator. So you don’t have to do too much, but can rather keep enlarging your experience of its unfolding.”

So that’s a kind of introduction to this particular material back-and-forthing in No-How Generator. And so No-How Generator is a work that was first performed in 2019 and that I’m still happily that we are still performing now. And a couple of things that I want to say about this that I think are, yeah, that are important to me about this are to do with the idea of taking a reading.

PETER:

Okay, yeah.

Matthias Sperling:

So that’s something that I feel as a sort of umbrella for me about that many of the materials that I’m working with are, I’m interested in the idea of, yeah, approaching, dancing as a process of taking a reading.

PETER:

And taking a reading, you’re taking that from Tarot? Yeah That’s why I associate to when you say that the word taking a reading.

Matthias Sperling:

Partly. What I like about it is that it has, like I mentioned magic and science before, that for me, taking a reading can have both of those kinds of connotations. So the scientific connotations would be like a measurement device that takes a reading of something. And so I can we can think about like my biological being or my cells as these sort of measurement devices, or perceptual devices. And then from that more divinatory perspective, yeah, taking a reading can be taking a reading with tarot cards or palm readings or like reading tea leaves. All of those things. So that as a general sort of operation.

PETER:

Yeah.

Matthias Sperling:

And then also what I’m really interested in is working with momentum and perception at the same time. So we’re taking a reading with momentum and perception engaged at the same time. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah.

PETER:

And so if I understand, if I can already sort of try to surmise we’re going to be with this rocking motion, I assume. and we are going to be taking a reading from it. So allowing it to occur and like you say, say in the text, the motion can enlarge and get small. I was wondering, is breathing already a sort of rocking motion? I was sort of as a way to try to understand how you’re thinking it. Is it like small dances of Steve Paxton, where we’re already in movement or are we generating the movement? I just out of curiosity. I like a practical question, maybe.

Matthias Sperling:

Well. for me, I guess it has to do with the way that I think about momentum. And so for me, I’m thinking about my whole mass in relation to momentum.

PETER:

Okay.

Matthias Sperling:

And so there’s a relationship to gravity in a way that I think breathing doesn’t necessarily have. So it’s, yeah. So generally with this material, I’m working with a little bit more expanded relationship to gravity and momentum.

PETER:

Great, yeah. That’s clear.

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah. And partly, I guess, what I’m interested in is. Wow, yeah, how to a lot of it for me, has to do with, um being able to draw on different ways of working that I’ve practiced throughout my history of dance. And so this thing about momentum and the more expanded range has partly to do with how to make links with more expanded ranges. At the same time as working with the yeah, the work that I’m very interested in in relation to perception. And when we mentioned Deborah Hay, I was kind of, you know, I was one really important influence for me. Yeah, and the score, yeah, this sort of the written score draws very heavily on sort of Deborah Hay’s written scores as an example of what kind of form a written choreographic score can take. And also, I work with in this score, with a sort of a “what if” question that addresses the whole score? And I might mention that as well. because I think that’s, yeah, important to know in relation to this as well. So the question is, “What if how all of my cells are doing knowing serves me well in the practice of no-how generation?” And no-how generation again is that N O how. And it could be, you know, “…no-how generation, whatever that might mean.” Yeah.. Yeah: what if how all of my cells are doing knowing serves me well in the practice of no-how generation?

PETER:

Yes, so it’s I see how it is really trying to be with the knowledge that you’ve accumulated in this vestule, body.. Yeah. And then. the Deborah Hay like score, the “what if” it is it is suggesting that it’s there in the body and then for the no-how generation, just to sort of name that, because normally it’s know K N OW, right?

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah.

PETER:

Which is a sense of like the already knowledgeable, or no, sorry, it would be the knowledge that’s needed to do something, right?

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, so practical knowledge.

PETER:

Exactly, exactly, right. Practical knowledge. So this is NO, how? Yeah. So we’re sort of imagining it’s unpractical.

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, perhaps. Something other. Exactly. Something. Something that clearly sounds like it’s somehow related to knowledge. Yeah. But somehow it’s an other form of knowledge or knowledge otherwise.

PETER:

Yes. Speculative, perhaps. Yeah. It’s interesting because the reading is both factual and speculative as well, so. You have these fractures of knowledge. Great, I think there’s for me that’s feeling quite clear. Is there anything else you want to say? So we will go and do this backand-forthing, amongst all these ideas around no-how, is there anything else you’d like to.

Matthias Sperling:

Maybe just that in the choreographic work, No-How Generator, myself and my collaborator, Katye Coe, who performed this work together. we do this practice wearing elf ears.

PETER:

Wearing elf ears?

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, So you don’t have to wear elf ears, while doing this, but it is. Yeah, it’s very much part of this work. And that for me, yeah, I was enjoying listening to some of the other podcast episodes that you’ve done, and they were already in there, some references that I heard to Deborah Hay. I think through Cullberg Connections.

PETER:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matthias Sperling:

And talking about lightness. And so this is also something that I, yeah, really, find really important, and that I find Deborah Hay really helpful with, and I also love her sentence about this, which I heard her say some years ago: “I always retain the capacity to laugh at my own serious intentions, even while those intentions remain serious.”

And so I find that really like a crucial part of practice. Not necessarily something that I always feel capable of, but I feel I always need to keep striving for.. And that it is very generative in itself. And of course, I say that with like, great seriousness. This is very typical of me that I’m like, very approaching with great seriousness, the reminder to try not to be so serious. But the elf ears are something that helps to do that. Yeah. Yeah..

PETER:

So if people do have elf ears, then they should do that. And it’s sort of it jumps back to you mentioned the word conjuring. I imagine when one wears elf ears there is a sense of conjuring something other.

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah.

PETER:

And we can mention we’re in a space which has music playing somewhere else. There’s a great drone sound, which you mentioned you might use as well while we practice, where we dance. So hopefully this isn’t too irritating to listen to, maybe also adds to that magical aura.

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, I hope so.

PETER:

Okay, then, we will pause and we’ll come back in a bit.

Pause

PETER:

Great. All right Okay, so we’re back um I think we can just try to recall a little bit what happened. what we remember, what we experienced. We started with what you called a sort of light version of the back and forth, and you led us going to the floor and coming up and down. And then you spoke about it as being looser to the back and forth. And I was wondering if you could maybe describe or tell a little bit more about this tightening towards this back and forth. I think you mentioned it when we spoke before, but.. Yeah. If you can. I think it’s an interesting.

Matthias Sperling:

Well, I guess there are different things. There is a sort of, what is the particular um what are the particular parameters of a particular iteration of the practice and those parameters can be more defined or less defined and those might in different ways have different things that are good about them. Or in terms of what they might open up towards. And for the tightening of the practice, so to speak, so we eventually worked a little bit with some of this back-and-forthing practice, sort of closer to the form in which it begins in the score of the choreographic work No-How Generator. And that works with, I guess, a slower rate of change, so this constancy of this rhythmic rocking back and forth, but in terms of the way that the shape of the movement becomes articulated, that there’s a kind of discipline about the accumulation of information gradually over time. And so partly, I think there’s a kind of affordance in that from the perspective of experience, that it’s what it opens up is the ability to stay with something. And but then on another level, from a more choreographic perspective, thinking about the audience, I am really interested in, I’m interested in the audience in a witness being able to become familiar with the practice that’s happening through what they’re seeing. And so, for instance, that they can become familiar with the idea that there’s this rocking back and forth and that it appears that nothing is changing, but then something is changing a little bit. But then it seems that nothing is changing. But then something is changing. And that that might be that might be engaging.

PETER:

Yeah.

Matthias Sperling:

And also you can settle into this rhythm of witnessing the momentum, moving in this rhythmic way. And, yeah, sometimes audience members say that they, yeah, sort of on their way home are still sort of feeling this sort of kinesthetic response to that rhythm. Like you’ve sort of been by the sea, by the waves for a long time.

PETER:

A sort of sea sickness.

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, hopefully not the sea sickness, but yeah. But yeah. But so for me, it’s important that there can be this ability for the performer to be experiencing this live and the audience to be experiencing this live, and for those experiences together to kind of meet in the zone of whatever the material is. And so that the material also allows the audience to be kind of on the journey with the material. Having a sense of to some extent some predictability of what it is and where it seems to be going right now. And then the possibility for it to become more unpredictable. But the sort of baseline of sharing some meeting zone feels important to me choreographically.

PETER:

Yeah. Now it’s fascinating that you bring in the sort of social contract that is sort of built or the choreographic contract that’s built with the audience, because I was thinking about how the oscillations and you sort of mentioned this and maybe this is what you mean by layers. They they’re not singular. There’s often a sort of bom bom bo bum And it’s was sort of very curious about you had an insistence on momentum, right? And I think this was a very interesting insistence because it it does it for me feels that actually perhaps that it’s between that social contract, sort of producing of a contract of how am I recognizing the entirety of my center of gravity, maybe, or how is that felt and moved into the space? Because these oscillations, it could be quite micro and not communicative at all. Because sort of the momentum of walking or rocking forward and backwards, then sort of dissipating into the multiple frequencies in the body could then sort of distill into almost standing sort of feeling. That’s the feeling I got. However, there was a sort of desire to be with the the center of gravity and it’s. momentum. And maybe that relates a little bit to what you spoke of as the. Now I’m going to forget the term, but I want to say spotlight, but it wasn’t spotlight.

Matthias Sperling:

What lights up?

PETER:

It’s a fantastic phrase. Yeah, what lights up.. I guess sort of maybe also a a key into how I was also interpreting as well, like that imagination of the attention of perception being almost like a spotlight. But it How does that resonate with you, this sense of the. Yeah, the conceptualization of momentum, maybe within this, what we did now.

Matthias Sperling:

Well, there’s a lot, I’m curious to know a bit more about the connection you were just making between momentum and what lights up. So essentially, yeah, so I like to talk about momentum and perception. And so for me, what lights up is is a kind of operation of perception. A way of working with my perception in a way that I find helpful because it’s a simplification. And so in effect, what lights up for me is a lot about allowing my attention to be with one or a few things at any given moment, as opposed to the sometimes overwhelming attempt to be with everything I am perceiving on every level at the same time, which I think is more my understanding of how a lot of how Deborah Hay has worked, that that she doesn’t sort of narrow the field of perception but is working with everywhere that I am. And I guess sometimes I’m using what lights up as a kind of as a kind of way of slightly reducing the kind of cognitive load… within an experience of practice. If I’m trying to do things, for instance, on the level of momentum and the level of perception at the same time.

PETER:

Okay.

Matthias Sperling:

So I find it useful to simplify it on that level, because then I can sort of be actively engaging with both of those dimensions at the same time. There are several things about momentum. One of them is that I mentioned wanting to, before we began, I mentioned this desire that I have to try to bring with me all the things that I have learned or all the different kinds of ways in which I practiced over time in dance. And so for me, a big part of my early training was Limón (technique). And so this sort of focus on, in a way momentum, weight, gravity, and so that’s something that’s very kind of in me. And so I I’m looking for, I enjoy working with that, and I’m looking for that sort of way of opening towards that, along with other things I’ve learned later. And then another thing is the thing that I mentioned which you picked up on while we were moving, about, I guess what I might call getting moving what is fixed in my perception. And so for me, there’s something how being in motion with my weight, with my whole mass, and this sort of rhythmic motion and this kind of a wave-like rocking, and we talked about this idea of this sort of like sloshing of water almost, and this sort of constancy of almost like this body of water. Sometimes for me, it feels like that has the potential to support the mobilization of my perception. And so that’s kind of what I mean when I’m using the language, like, getting moving what is fixed. So there might be something in my experience of my whole environment of my whole perceptual reading, which I notice is kind of static, or constant or even like if I was sensing a kind of weather in the space around me, and this is sort of like heavy weather or, yeah, just something that is kind of stuck in place in my perception. And I like the idea that I guess I’m using this sometimes in my experience, that the momentum can be a kind of, can partly support this kind of unfixing, it’s like unmooring of the things that are really kind of anchored, particularly when they feel in some way like they might be a limitation. Yeah. And so this kind of it’s also a relationship for me to ideas about knowledge generation is this like making possible the becoming of something, making possible a shift in the kind of conditions of possibility. So something like, say even like the walls of the room.

PETER:

Yeah.

Matthias Sperling:

I might experience as very fixed and static. And when I start to get into a practice of working with my momentum and perception at the same time, that at least in my experience, I might just start to go somewhere imaginatively and experientially, where the room isn’t so fixed anymore. And actually the world that I’m in sort of opens up in possibilities in some way. And my momentum is the actual, the actuality of my momentum and the rhythmic movement of my mass is part of what helps me together.

PETER:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s there’s a lot to unpack. It’s beautiful, and you articulate it so well. I had to think definitely by the end of the second sort of chapter. or the first chapter. Yeah, depends on how we divide it, but I’m thinking about the before we started the sort of tighter version of forward and backward, I really felt a sense of I got lost in the momentum. in a sort of beautiful way, I was I was able to allow exactly that “what lights up” to sort of drift and not be so demanding as exactly as you say, like, “everything, everywhere, all at once,” type Deborah Hay style of try to be with every sinew in the body simultaneously, right? And what I loved was, I think when you were speaking about, that which is fixed, I think you said something along the lines of, if that’s even possible.

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah.

PETER:

And I think that was what was very inviting was exactly this challenge, maybe, to the to the possibility of unfixing or moving or changing. And and exactly what I think I think you’re pointing to something really fascinating with the experience that in momentum even in momentum, in change, can we unfix, what is fixity? When we are so, for want of a better word, fluid, like the bag of water, right? sort of oscillating inside of these conditions of perception and awareness and body and space and there’s something very, yeah, beautiful there. And I love, it’s beautiful that you do connect it to knowledge. I have to think of Epistemological anarchy (Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge), and this philosopher of science (Paul) Feyerabend,. I’ll write it down, because I’m not pronouncing anything very well. And he does this very provocative move after (Karl) Popper, who is another philosopher of scientific method, and he makes this provocation, saying, the only way to do science is outside of the method. Sort of insisting that the change comes from a happenstance, comes from whatever you do within the method is only going to reproduce the same methods sort of thing. and I think in a way and I know you’re working with neuroscientists, is that right?

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah.

PETER:

So I think it also produces a challenge to, I’m not agreeing or maybe making any connection with the scientific method, but to the sense of change in the brain, and I have to think of plasticity and how it seems to provide the model for structured structure-less-ness, you know, a sort of anarchy, an ability to be to change, but still remain structured in some way. At least this is my understanding of plasticity from what I’ve read of Catherine Malabou. This is a philosopher who looked at the concept of plasticity in.

Matthias Sperling:

So it makes me want to talk about… plural epistemologies.

PETER:

Oh, nice.

Matthias Sperling:

And So I guess this is in relation to lots of different things for me. Let’s say in relation to my work with collaboration, my work collaborating on research with neuroscientists. So if I were to say that there’s a particular epistemology at work in their practice, I find it really important that the artistic research of my practice or other artists’ practices, can coexist with bringing different epistemologies that can be in contact with each other and that can so in the that’s how I see from my perspective, one of the things that’s most important to me about the Neurolive research project that I’m currently still involved with, a five year project that is in its 5th year now. So, yeah, they’re around these like performances that we’ve made in the past few years, inviting different artists to create new works. The artistic research is happening and the scientific research is happening in these kind of interwoven ways. And so that for me is particularly important coming out of my PhD research, which was before this Neurolive project. And so yeah, these kind of ideas about plural epistemologies, and in relation to my own practice of dance, choreography and specifically something like back-and-forthing, I also see that, you know, through my understanding, the way that I understand embodiment I understand my body to contain plural ways of knowing. Plural epistemologies. And so I have these embodied capacities, some of which are more rational, some of and more sort of towards the rational, the language oriented, and then I also have embodied capacities of ways of knowing that are felt sense, that are intuitive, that are what I like to think of as more than rational. And these things are part of my being. And also, I mean, there can be one of the ways that they can be described is through, I guess, neuroscientific or cognitive scientific lenses, including the intuitive, including the less conscious or non-conscious, all those things can also be described through a scientific lens. And I’m quite excited by the ways in which they are being more and more described and integrated with each other. And so when I refer to cognitive science in my own interests, I’m often referring to those people in that field who are really tuning into those particular ways of knowing and the ways in which they are fundamental and necessary within human ways of knowing. And so people, like Guy Claxton is a British, I think he’s described himself as a learning scientist. He studies learning and has a really strong focus on the body and movement and the relationship between body, movement, intuition, and how that relates to intelligence. And so all these kinds of perspectives I find, well, I find that they have a lot of kinship with the kind of experiences that I think I and lots of other people have in dance practices.

PETER:

No, absolutely. I think it brings me back again to actually that, and it was really strong in the experience of the practice, the perception of the fixed or maybe I’m now mixing aspects of the practice, but how that what I perceive to be fixed in the room or within my body or within the patterning or my choice making or my association, and then how you invite both trying to make it loosen you spoke about, giving it a little bit more space, maybe that perhaps it could be not necessarily unfixed, but it would somehow. Yeah, somehow shift, maybe. But at the same time, this question also of, is it even possible? And exactly in relationship to this felt sense, I love that you because I love that you connected to the more the more than rational, because in the dancing, it is a very clear felt sense of now this is something I know, or this is something I don’t know. This is a real felt understanding of that. The place I notice it the most is actually, I am now dancing, I’m not dancing. Actually, that felt sense between what I perceived to be fixed maybe as dance and not as dance, because, I mean, on an intellectual level, I can say anything can be danced, but for for me to feel it as dance, I need to relate to it in a different way. I need to start to Yeah, or I’m not sure, maybe what causes those shifts in consideration. But that fixity and definitely these elements of consciousness being aware of certain parts, of the the dance. or of what is fixed or not fixed, is really important, and it returns me again, and I think it’s very notable that you’re not.. You seem to have an interest with the performance, the presentation of dance. So there’s also involved in this, and I brought up social contract, right, a making conscious of or sharing a consciousness of sharing a perception of something that seems to exist, that a felt sense or a rational understanding, a reading if it were, right? Yeah. Yeah. It’s super beautiful. The the levels, this is what I think I’m trying to describe is that it goes from a very perceptive, very felt place, and it can be extrapolated right to the stage in a social political context. around knowledge production.

Matthias Sperling:

Yes. Yeah. That’s definitely how I see it. There was so much in what you just said. I just I. A couple of things that came up for me as you were just speaking, when you were talking about feeling what you’re doing as dance. It made me think about, I think that for me,. I think for me, it has something to do with the more that I feel that all of my capacities are being engaged, the more I feel that I am doing what for me is dancing. And so, yeah, and that’s a kind of an experiential thing. And I guess also I’m I’m associating that with the capacities that I have invested in developing, which are different kinds of capacities over different, you know, periods of my dancing life. And so I feel like I’m most fully dancing when I can be engaging as much as possible with all of those at the same time.. They’re all there. Yes. Yes. And why not?

PETER:

Yeah.. I didn’t think it makes me aware of how. I mean, I feel it’s very explicit in the at least what I experience now is that there are aspects of my perception of my capacities, that are or are not engaged, that sort of drift. I always remember hearing I feel terrible, I can’t remember who said it, but it was some dance, choreographer. It said that “all dance involves space, time and movement.” And of course, I recognize the sentiment and I also recognized the validity that there is always space time and movement present, however, one’s approach to the dancing will shift if you come from the perspective of or the perceiving that dance is now involving space, time and movement, or thinking through that I’m gonna play with rhythm or I’m gonna just have a jiggle around and not include those concepts. The concept produces a specific type of dance, a specific way and generalizing in that way and it just reminds me of the what we attend in our dancing. It also it becomes a part of it and the fact that you say the capacities being engaged, it really resonates with exactly how I feel dance, is that I have an attention to something which is really specific. And it is that kind of engagement. And if I may, it also feels like I am tapping into something divine or spiritual or of other worldly or and not necessarily having to name it as such a structure it as such, if that makes sense.

Matthias Sperling:

Mm hmm.

PETER:

Or magic, I think actually. The word magic is probably a lot better than those three.

Matthias Sperling:

That’s the language that I use. Yeah. Which I think, yeah, is magic in a very kind of expanded sense, of, I contrast it, yeah. I contrast it with science, but I also associate it with science. So magic and science at the same time, is a phrase for me that comes from Aby Warburg, who is an art historian. who died in 1929, who had some very interesting epistemological approaches.

PETER:

Oh, cool.

Matthias Sperling:

And it kind of special attention to movement as the lens through which to trace history. So the appearance or the reappearance re-occurrence of gestures over time was what he traced. Okay. And so movement had became very sort of central part of his way of reading time. And so he has a category called ‘Magic and Science’, which is one phrase, the two of those things held together, which I really love. And so I what I take from that in relation to the way that I like to think about choreography and about sort of a choreographic epistemology almost is this coexistence and complementarity between magical ways of knowing and scientific ways of knowing at the same time, which I think about the scientific ways of knowing as objective, ways of knowing. And I think about the magical ways of knowing as subjective ways of knowing. And when I think about my own body, I think about how I have both this objective ways of knowing and subjective ways of knowing, always happening in coexistence with each other, in collaboration with each other at the same time.

PETER:

Yeah. It, I’ve been grappling a little bit with Cindy Millstein. a theorist, actually in anarchism. She expressed how one of the challenges with anarchism is the to hold both freedom from and freedom for simultaneously positive freedom and negative freedom. And it somehow resonates, right, that to be with the objective and the subjective simultaneously, it contradicts one another as a. It feels like they ask for each other to be excluded from one another, and yet at the same time, I think on a felt level, they have to be incorporated somehow.

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. That’s a really big question. But, I guess the way that I like to think of it is perhaps that a sort of idea about separation between subjective ways of knowing and objective ways of knowing is at least on some important levels, a cultural thing. A cultural separation.

PETER:

Yeah.

Matthias Sperling:

And whereas in actuality, those ways of knowing are not necessarily in opposition with each other and actually that neither exists without the other. Yeah. I think it’s. Yeah, I think yeah. I mean big question.

PETER:

No, but it’s exactly in at least for me, in the material, and I mean, I’m very speculative in my thinking. I mean, it’s very clear this is from a PhD, it has a sort of a groundedness. There’s a sense of. It’s very Western to actually have this knowledge constructed in this way. Yeah, I would say.

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, and so for me it relates to the sort of terms in which I’ve been thinking for a long time, particularly sort of earlier on before my PhD about mind and body relationship, or sort of the cultural effects of mind body dualism. Thinking about understanding non-dualism between mind and body, which I would, yeah, relate to these different ways of knowing. and looking at what that could mean in relationship to dance and choreographic practice. It’s a lot of what I’ve been motivated by for a lot of years.

PETER:

Yeah, And may I ask, as well, what the weather is, because it was also a reoccurring theme, and it feels very very full as a material. I’m just wondering if you could expand, maybe it doesn’t relate so well to what we were just talking about.

Matthias Sperling:

I think for me, when I use that term, like the weather, taking a reading of the weather, for me, that has to do with a felt sense reading of my environment and this sort of image of understanding my environment as one that’s full of weather or weathers there’s multiple weathers that can be changing, there could be different weathers in different areas. There is this kind of reading of different kinds of intensities? in the way that I have a felt sense of the environment that I’m in. And so it’s trying to open up towards open up towards noticing and reading information, noticing percepts or intuitions or projections or imaginations that are about the whole environment that I’m taking a reading of. Yeah yep

PETER:

Yeah, it’s really wonderful. And you also borrow from Deborah Hay, these concepts of cells because there is something very with the inclusion, the consideration of the weather, there is a potential for and I think you even said it at some point where thought could sort of be have a light. Yeah, sort of put on it. and butchering your words again. And but it sort of somehow begs the question of like, how much are we a collective and individual as well, and maybe as subjective objective. I don’t know if that resonates at all.

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah.. I mean.. I don’t know. See, with these kinds of things, it’s interesting that I often go to things that I’ve read, that are related to, neuroscience or also, maybe not just cognitive science, but also philosophy of cognitive science. And so there, when you’re talking about sort of, are we individual, the sort of boundariedness of each of us, it makes me think about Andy Clark, a philosopher of cognitive science, who’s very interesting. And so some of his past work has to do with, yeah, the sort of the way that our mind, our cognition doesn’t stop at the edges of our skin, but that there are lots of ways in which our cognition extends into our environment and also in lots of ways, yeah, Guy Claxton really goes into this as well, about how our cognition is so relational as well. And how, yeah, just how interwoven we are and how not sort of boundaried we are. So I think there’s something about this kind of some of this kind of neuroscience perspective that I just find really helpful because it’s very.. There’s something very clear about the propositions that are being made, and sometimes I also really love reading things that are not from within dance, or within, even from necessarily very concerned with art, art making, art history. But these sort of like other touching into something from another discipline, sometimes just helps me kind of shift my own thinking more. Yeah.

PETER:

Yeah. I mean, it’s really, it really echoes that sense when dancing, there is a collective quality to the experience, even within the ballet classes I’ve done, you’re completely muted, I mean, because of the discipline in the room, there’s no speaking or little speaking involved, and yet the communal quality of being in in conversation with these different bodies, be it in unison or be it. Yeah, not in unison. Yeah. And there’s something magical about that as well, right? There’s a. When we when it brushes up with these, maybe the narrative, the grand narrative, or the learned narrative of science, that we’ve sort of been taught, have to think of David Graeber (and David Wengrow) really framed it well for me in a book on Anthropology, “The dawn of everything,” I think it’s called, and he speaks about how colloquially we have these grand narratives that we start as sort of small bands of communities and then the bigger, the band of people comes, the more control and structure that is needed to control the people, and yet the science actually gives a different story, and I’m thinking about how the what you’re describing for the science, that you’re reading and so on, is actually something of a bigger, more complex picture, a more magical picture than maybe what one would first, if I assume is the nature of personhood, of collectivity, of objectivity, subjectivity.

Matthias Sperling:

I absolutely love that. That, you know, because of the way that I use the phrase “magic and science,” I love the way that you just, you know, framed science as, in some situations, the more magical influence. I love that. And sometimes that is true for me. And yeah, but of course, you were talking about you know in relation to David Graeber, these kind of like power dynamics. Yeah. And in a sense, if I can say it that way. And of course, you know, science has been, often is, a tool of that. And so I even though I’m interested in engaging with science, for me, it’s important to also, yeah, keep approaching this idea of plural epistemologies as opposed to a kind of hegemony of knowledge that only science can own. And I feel like, for me, there’s something very immediate about that subjective experiences of dancing are these very, very, these experiences that are full of knowing, full of the coming into being of knowing, and that they definitely stand in the same world as a system of knowledge like science.

PETER:

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful. And I think I’m gonna wrap up a little bit. I feel so yeah, it’s so it’s so wonderful, actually, to be invited to be beside that tension between, yeah, all of those conflicting knowledges exactly the pluralistic nature, perhaps, of knowledge, maybe not conflicting per se, it makes it too somehow binary.

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, but they also sometimes are conflicting, we have to acknowledge that too.

PETER:

But they’re not all conflicting. I think that was why I wanted to not emphasize that it’s all conflicting, but that it’s plural, is a better description. And some are conflicting in some aren’t and vice versa. But it’s such a pleasure to be beside that, actually, and to invite that into the dancing. And actually, in a lot of ways, you still hold space for your history and background in dancing, coming from Limón and having those practices, sort of those histories and yet allowing them to come with you into this sort of research and speculative space. It’s such a pleasure, yeah. Thank you so much.

Matthias Sperling:

Well, a pleasure to pleasure to do and talk with you too. Thanks very much.

PETER:

But if people are curious to get in touch with you or to know about anything that’s up and coming, you’ve mentioned a little bit, the work that you’ll be doing with Katye Coe. Yeah, in Stockholm.

Matthias Sperling:

Yeah. So, yeah, so Katye and I will be coming to Stockholm with No-How Generator for some workshops at SKH and at Dansalliansen. , and then two performances at SKH presented by Fylkingen, and the performances are October 16th and 17th this year, 2025 and yeah, you can yeah, definitely I would love to hear from people if they would like to get in touch and I have a website with an email. I have various other ways to be in contact and then.

PETER:

Yeah, you’re very approachable. You’re so grateful. And, I mean, and also your PhD work as well has its own website so people can even delve deeper into what we were doing today in so many, I imagine you have many different ways of approaching it and getting involved.

Matthias Sperling:

That website is nohowgenerator.com NOHOW, nohowGenerator. Yeah.

PETER:

I will link everything and I will also try to write down and catch all the references that came up and I will keep those in the description. But thank you so much. I am so grateful and I look forward to continuing to dance with your ideas and following you somehow.

Matthias Sperling:

Thanks, Peter.

PETER:

Thank you.

1. Jenny Sunesson
2. Hara Alonso
3. Ulrika Berg
4. Jennifer Lacey
5. Darko Dragičević
6. Helen Walkley
7. SNDO School for New Dance Development Amsterdam
8. Irmgard Bartenieff ( Bartenieff Fundamentals)
9. Rudolf von Laban
10. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (BMC)
11. Daniela Herlyn (BMC)
12. Linda Hartley (BMC)
13. Susan Klein (Klein Technique)
14. Barbara Mahler (Klein Technique)
15. Hanna Hegenscheidt (Klein Technique)
16. Steve Paxton
17. Dances from the Ga, greater Accra region, Ghana, West Africa
18. Alexander Technique
19. Tom Koch (Alexander Technique)
20. Silvia Sferlazzo (Alexander Technique)
21. Gilles Estrain (Alexander Technique)
22. Jacques Rancière
23. Giorgio Agamben Homo Sacer
24. Janet Cardiff (Sound Artist)
25. Ligna (Media Art Collective)
26. Gotthard Graubner (Visual Artist)

1. Rachel Tess
2. Cullberg
3. MADE, Master’s Programme Dance Education Stockholm University of the Arts
4. Anna Pehrsson
5. Anna Grip
6. Jonna Bornemark- professor in philosophy at Södertörn University and works at The Center for Studies in Practical Knowledge. Lecture at Kulturhuset ”At vrida världen” Att föda kunskap (To give birth to knowledge) Orionteatern
7. Vaginal Davis
8. Eleanor Bauer
9. Clare Guss-West
10. Malcolm Gladwell ”Outliers: The Story of Success”
11. Deborah Hay
12. Steven Paxton
13. Anthony Hopkins
14. Sanna Nordin-Bates, GIH — The Swedish School Of Sport And Health Sciences
15. William (Bill) Forsythe

1. Ballet
2. Apass https://apass.be/
3. Reggaetón and perreo (known as “doggy dance style”)
4. Cumbia
5. Tango
6. Chrysa Parkinson
7. Contact Improvisation
8. Salsa
9. Cunningham Technique
10. Graham Technique
11. Pa-Kua
12. Release Technique
13. Passing through
14. Brazilian Samba
15. Argentinian Zamba
16. Malambo
17. Flamenco
18. Andrea Manso
19. DJ
20. Contemporary Dance Histories
21. Sandra Noeth
22. Cognitive learning
23. Authentic Movement practice

1. In circles leading on, folkdance, a choreographic intersection https://www.visjournal.nu/i-cirklar-som-leder-vidare-folkdans-en-koreografisk-skarningspunkt
2. Dancing Dots – the exhibition by Olof Misgeld
3. Rebecca Berchtold 5678 5678 | Lyssna här | Poddtoppen.se
4. Chrysa Parkinson https://www.en.visjournal.nu/documenting-experiential-authorship
5. Patrik Andersson
6. Vegar Vårdal

1. Iokasti Mantzog
2. An*dre Neely
3. Onur Agbaba
4. Tchivett
5. Self care , self as other Zine
6. Martin Sonderkamp

1. To let things unfold(by Catching the Centre) https://uniarts.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1631198&dswid=-9987
2. Jan Burkhardt
3. Hermeneutics
4. Riks Teatern https://www.riksteatern.se/
5. Chrysa Parkinson
6. Daniel Sjökvist
7. Hemmagympa med Sofia, SvT https://www.svtplay.se/hemmagympa-med-sofia
8. Call and response
9. Catherine Malabou – Stop Thief!: Anarchism and Philosophy https://youtu.be/3Ova40bfrl8?si=HzDabgz89HeGPePz
10. Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening “The new sound meditation (1989)”
11. Eleanor Bauer
12. Matilda Bilberg, All those things left behind, for now

1. Certainly! Here’s the corrected information:
2. MA Choreography at the Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH), formerly known as Dans och Cirkushögskolan (DOCH)
3. The dance company ZOO, founded by Thomas Hauert
4. Samlingen with Nadja Hjorton, Stina Nyberg, Halla Ólafsdóttir, and Amanda Apetrea
5. Example, On Air with Nadja Hjorton
6. KUR, Swedish Arts Council is Kulturrådet
7. Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ with Hanako Hoshimi-Caines and Elisa Harkins
8. Dancing is… with Stina Nyberg
9. Martin Kilvady
10. “Mody Bind” by Eleanor Bauer
11. Paloma Madrid
12. Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement by André Lepecki
13. Automatic writing
14. Frédéric Gies “Good Girls Go To Heaven, Bad Girls Go Everywhere”
15. Authentic Movement (AM) Mary Starks Whitehouse further developed by Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow
16. Karl Marx Alienation
17. Do what you like, like what you do PETER
18. Don’t dance. If it feels like dance, do something else. What feels more or less like dance PETER
19. Cullberg
20. Dansplats Skog
21. Catherine Malabou Pleasure Erased: The Clitoris Unthought
22. https://www.uniarts.se/english/people/co-workers/zoe-poluch/

1. The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs
2. Simon Vincenzi
3. Stockholm university of the arts
4. Dance studio conversations https://uniarts.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1807269&dswid=-1752
5. Anna Pehrsson Ep12 PETER, dance with Anna Pehrsson
6. Chrysa Parkinson
7. Catherine Malabou
8. Michel Foucault
9. MA expanded dance practice https://theplace.org.uk/lcds-courses/maexpandeddancepractice
10. https://www.frankbock.net/
11. https://www.artsadmin.co.uk/profiles/frank-bock/
12. https://sosinternationale.org/
13. https://www.seforeningen.se/
14. https://www.uniarts.se/english/courses/master-programmes/master-programme-new-performative-practices/

1. DISCOntact https://discollective.upri.se/discontact/
2. Time Dances https://discollective.upri.se/timedances/
3. Life. Refabricated. http://refabricated.life
4. Obed http://obed.works
5. Silver Gold https://nda.si/srebrno-zlato
6. Drop Dead Laughing http://zacrknt.si
7. DISCOrrespondance (on purpose it is a instead of e) https://discollective.upri.se/2022/02/28/discorrespondance-24-1-3-2022-capaccio-ljubljna-world/

1. Episode #192 – Should we overthrow the government tomorrow? – Anarchism Pt. 1 (Chomsky, Malatesta) — Philosophize This!

1. Jonathan Burrows, A Choreographer’s Handbook

1. Anna Koch
2. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
3. Jonna Bornemark
4. Gunnerud https://www.ruralmovements.se/

1. Benjamin Richter : https://benjaminrichter.net/

1. Anna Halprin
2. Suprapto Suryodarmo
3. Sally E. Dean, Somatic costume
4. Adrian Heathfield
5. BMC (Body Mind Centring)
6. Janine Antoni

1. Ofelia Jarl Ortega
2. Octavia E. Butler
3. Sara Ahmed
4. Nasim Aghili

1. Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre: Rite of Spring
2. ChatGPT
3. https://inferkit.com/
4. Operation Infinity
5. Dr. Mabuse
6. TROUPE_MABUSE
7. LUXURIANT: Within The Reign of Anticipation
8. Some Shadow Plays From The Cave: Scripts

1. Gyrokinesis
2. Jennifer Lacey

1. The Cultural Politics of Emotion by Sara Ahmed

1. Butoh

1. Glenna Batson
2. Martha Graham
3. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque by Gilles Deleuze
4. Primitive Mysteries 1931 by Martha Graham
5. Louis Horst
6. May O’Donnell
7. Albert Einstein
8. Catherine Malabou. The relation between habit and the fold. 2017 https://youtu.be/EglV1eVTrpU?si=HaLN_4EdZuZi2pL7
9. Deborah Hay
10. “Benni” Benjamin Pohlig

1. Steiner Eurythmy
2. Boris Charmatz’s 20 Dancers for the XX century
3. Michael Clark

“Fuck you roots, long live water lilies! The roots hold back. Water lilies float freely on the surface of the world! They are the Pontoons of the New World Tributaries!”

Ponton is water, border, frontier, stopover, home and scene for all those tired of false traditions, bad authenticity, appropriation of space and confinement within the borders of one nation, one culture, one religion, one belief… Ponton releases ballast water according to ethnic, cultural myths, national, linguistic, racial, sexual and gender purity! Ponton is not interested in anything in particular, because Ponton is interested in absolutely everything: all countries, all people, all races, genders and sexes, all politics of humanity, but also the humanity of politics

1. Sybrig Dokter
2. Robert Malmborg
3. Adam Seid Tahir
4. Escarleth Romo Pozo
5. Ar Utke Acs
6. Hara Alonso
7. Jonatan Winbo