Screen dance has become an important part of the festival. What prompted you to include Candoco’s seminal 1994 film Outside In this year? It was pioneering at the time, like Candoco itself, a company made up of disabled and non-disabled dancers.
I remember first watching Outside In when I was in college. There was some integrated practice around at the time and I actually danced with Candoco in Celeste's last year with the company [Celeste Dandeker-Arnold, co-founder of Candoco]. The film still feels innovative and offers so many readings, like when [non-disabled dancer] Helen Baggett drops [disabled dancer] David Toole. It’s such a beautiful moment, full of questions—“Is he alright?” and “Did she mean to do that?”—and so impactful artistically. All the choreography in the film is phenomenal. Great art transcends time and I think this film does that. I’m very proud we’re showing it this year.
What should we know about other films in the programme?
Artists responding to location is interesting to look at this year. In their trilogy, The Coast I, The Forest, and The Door, Yinka Esi Graves [choreographer] and Miguel Ángel Rosales [filmmaker] investigate where can dance happen, where movement can be found [in landscapes with a colonial history]. Omar Rajeh locates his film, The Odor of Elephants After the Rain, in his land, Beirut, and looks at the shifts and destruction that have taken place there. Poliana Lima has a short film 15 años about the body and identity; she’ll also be performing live with Yinka Esi Graves in “A Place to Dance.” All the works in our programme bring to mind the question: “What do you do when you have nothing else apart from dance?” The films allow us to capture this question and come back to it again and again because the movement is recorded.
Several events are taking place in smaller, community-focused venues across London. How important is place and audience for Dance Umbrella?
There is definitely an important emphasis on where people want to commune and a tapping into different dance cultures. Take folk-dance practices, and the work of Jack Anderson and Charlotte Mclean, who’ll be performing with musician Malin Lewis at folk-arts centre Cecil Sharp House. Ceilidh is a huge scene at the moment so we want to engage with that community, as well as the communities who come to spaces like the Indian arts centre Bhavan for Akram’s talk and east London arts hub Rich Mix for guest curator Anthea Lewis’s “Touch the Floor.”
Hopefully these audiences will also transfer to the venues of our bigger partners. It’s important the festival has many homes across the city. I think all the directors of Dance Umbrella have aimed to close the gap between venues and put the emphasis on the people inside a building. It’s people who create connections and so we work on inviting as many people as possible into the festival space in the time we have.
Thinking about the work of Dutch artist Arno Schuitemaker, who’ll be presenting “After After” at the Place, how important is the visual impact of a dance performance today? Schuitemaker often works with renowned lighting designer Jean Kalman.
I’ve been aware of Arno's work for a long time because we did some residencies together. He thinks in a very visual way, yes, but for me it’s more about the composition of the whole work. How does an artist combine all the elements of a piece: the movement, sound, lighting, scenography? I think Arno is very good at bringing all these elements together on stage to make something impactful.
comments