Directing Dance Umbrella

When London’s Dance Umbrella festival launched in 1978, its future was uncertain. Would festival-goers and funders love or loathe the radical contemporary dance it presented? With some infamous exceptions—audience members sparring loudly mid-show about the merits of a Douglas Dunn performance—the reception was positive enough to keep Dance Umbrella alive. Almost 50 years on, it remains an important and popular platform for international and homegrown dancemakers breaking new ground.

“The Herd/Less” by Mamela Nyamza. Photograph by Kim Stevens

Freddie Opoku-Addaie is the fourth artistic director to lead the festival. He took up the role in 2021, and as co-CEO of the Dance Umbrella organisation he also develops initiatives to support the dance community far beyond the autumn event. Before 2021, London-born Opoku-Addaie had been a guest programmer (2016-19) for the festival, and a dancer, choreographer and teacher, as well as an avid Dance Umbrella spectator. All enlightening experience for his current job.

Ahead of this year’s festival, opening October 7, Fjord Review spoke to Opoku-Addaie on a video call about the upcoming programme and his take on the through lines that keep Dance Umbrella relevant and true to its origins. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’re starting this year with a panel discussion, “Curating in Context.” Why are you leading with this conversation?

Asking the question “Who decides what goes on stage?” is really important right now, as is having a multiplicity of voices giving an answer. Some of the curators on our panel are based in Sub-Saharan Africa but work across the world, so they will be speaking through a global lens. I believe in the current geopolitical situation we must think both locally and internationally. We need to bring many voices into the room to have a conversation about curation as a practice, especially in a global city like London.

This discussion is linked to Dance Umbrella’s Diversifying Curatorial Stewardship programme, set up recently following some research you did into curatorial practices and experiences in the UK. What are your aims here?

We wanted to look at who is not in the room in a curatorial setting, which our research showed is mostly Black and Brown, global majority women. The programme is designed as an evolving practice and a long-term project about strategy. With our partners, the British Council, the Dutch Performing Arts Fund, Fabric, Aerowaves, DanceEast and the Lowry, we want to share our learnings and develop something more sustainable for the future.

When I was making work as a dancer and choreographer, I would sometimes ask myself: “Am I being put in this space because of what I look like not what my practice is saying?” or “Have assumptions been made about the type of work I will present?” There can be a tendency to do that I think with global majority artists. There are many choreographers whose work draws on indigenous practices, say, from the global South or East Asia. But most of the time we’re not asking whether they are creating something innovative beyond this. I’m most interested in an artist’s compositional and choreographic thinking. Are they trying to open up a different way of framing and expressing their ideas about movement? All artists are drawing on different perspectives and lived experiences to create their work. We all have many stories within us to tell, not just one.

Freddie Opoku-Addaie, artistic director and co-CEO of Dance Umbrella. Photograph by Miguel Altunaga Jr

Talking of storytelling, this year’s “Artist Encounters” event is with Akram Khan, who’ll be in conversation with the Royal Ballet’s director Kevin O’Hare. What influence do you feel Akram Khan has had on contemporary dance?

It’s really exciting that we will be hearing from such a trailblazing artist as Akram, whose company is entering a new era. Hopefully he’ll share something about that. For me, he really shifted the idea of what a choreographic practice can be, and he has an incredible ability to tell stories through a distinctive movement language. Having Kevin talk to him will bring a different perspective to the conversation. And we have dancers [former principal Erina Takahashi and first soloist James Streeter from English National Ballet] who will speak to us too. I’m really looking forward to it.

Looking at the whole programme, did you have a guiding intention putting this year’s festival together?

Many contemporary dancemakers are speaking to the times we’re living in and there is a strong focus on artists and their political position. Rightly so, I believe. How artists are navigating this is the interesting part. I was at an award ceremony for an artist a few months ago and someone asked them whether they would want to create a new dance company in the current times? They answered that it was more important for them to build a community rather than a company. Artists coming together in a festival like Dance Umbrella are speaking from different positions, but we are holding a common space for them to be able to do that. We are excavating the ideas that are out there and offering them up for discussion.

What draws you to the work of South African dancer-choreographer Mamela Nyamza, who’ll be presenting the UK premiere of “The Herd/Less?” She’s a returning Dance Umbrella artist and was just awarded a Silver Lion at this year’s Venice Biennale.

Mamela's work speaks about her local experience but also global themes. She uses dance to ask questions. In “The Herd/Less” she looks at who is being manipulated and how. As an artist from South Africa she opens up a conversation about certain movement aesthetics and what is expected of an artist from that location. She had a training in ballet and makes us look more closely at certain movements, like lifting the leg, which happens in ballet but also in Zulu or gumboot dancing in South Africa. Mamela expresses these movements in a way that perhaps makes us see and understand them differently. It makes me think about how athletic and repetitive movements can also be graceful, like classical ballet.

And Lebanese dancer-choreographer Omar Rajeh is showing his live work “Dance is Not For Us,” plus he’s contributing and selecting some screendance for your digital programme.

Omar is an artist I've been following for a while. He and his company Maqamat had a lot of success with “Dance People” at last year’s Edinburgh Festival and I’m excited this is the first time he’ll be taking part in Dance Umbrella. His choreographic practice maqam, or ‘instant composition,’ is very interesting. It’s not necessarily ‘instant,’ because it’s planned to an extent, but the interaction with the audience is totally in the moment. He’s very skilful at that.

There are other artists like Omar who are pushing further through the fourth wall and looking at how artists engage with an audience. Jack Anderson and Charlotte Mclean’s “not for glory” is interactive in how it relates to the audience. Dance is being offered as something to be shared in these performances, like we share social dance in everyday life in our various communities. The language may be different but these artists are saying, “Even though you are sitting there watching me, we are having this experience together.”

“The Odor of Elephants After the Rain” by Omar Rajeh. Photograph by Monia Pavoni

Screendance 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 [able-bodied 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.

“After After” by Arno Schuitemaker. Photograph by Nina Durdević

What do you hope festival-goers today take from the dance you’re presenting?

For me, it’s important to widen people’s perception of what twenty-first-century choreographic practice looks like. The term ‘contemporary dance’ can convey an idea which boxes everything in. I think we need to think about and explore what choreography and composition are today? How does an artist get from A to B in their work and what makes that interesting?

What have you learned since becoming artistic director?

To stay curious. I’ve also thought a lot about the role London plays in the local and global dance conversation. Thinking about our festival partners, matching an artist to a venue can be a bit like hosting the show “Blind Date.” We bring the two together and hope that it will be a good marriage! After they’ve appeared in Dance Umbrella, some of our artists go on to have a longer relationship with a venue. That’s what we want the festival to be about.

You’re building on the legacy of the three directors before you—Val Bourne, Betsy Gregory, Emma Gladstone. They all aimed to strengthen the dance ecosystem as well as staging an annual festival. How important is this for you?

It’s very important. As we approach our 50th anniversary I’ve been reading a lot about past events and our history, not just the artists involved but also the programme managers; people like Gregory Nash, who went on to become a dance-sector leader. Val is a legend, of course, then when there was a big funding cut, Betsy [Gregory] did amazing things putting on the festival with choreographer Jonathan Burrows at Central Saint Martins. Emma [Gladstone] created the Producer Farm [offering artists free residencies to develop their practice]. Dance Umbrella has always been about the wider dance community, upholding our values and building relationships.

Dance Umbrella takes place across London October 7-27, and online October 7-November 30. For more information, visit danceumbrella.co.uk

Rachael Moloney

Rachael Moloney is a freelance writer and editor covering dance and the arts. She has studied ballet as well as modern and contemporary techniques, and has worked on and contributed to publications including Departures, the Financial Times, Fjord Review, Sunday Times, Time Out, Vogue and Wallpaper*.

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