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DON'T STOP THE DANCE

A variety of Londoners from an elderly priest to jaded bankers have found an unlikely new interest: dancing. Bruce Clark and Lizzy Le Quesne take to the floor ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Summer 2009

Although he lives above a church in a grimy part of north London, and his commitment to the Catholic priesthood is unwavering, Colin MacLean devotes only a small share of his time to celebrating Mass. That is not merely because he is 74, has a pacemaker and can live modestly on a hard-earned ecclesiastical pension. The main reason is that almost every night he is out dancing. He has dazzled critics, delighted choreographers and inspired fellow artists as a ubiquitous figure at the more experimental end of London’s contemporary dance scene.

Observing MacLean at home, it gradually becomes evident that he holds together several universes with a dancer’s grace: he is well-settled in a light frame, gently but totally present, and graceful in every movement. Nor, in his view, is there much distance between liturgy and dance: “After all, dancing probably began in a religious context—as I realised when I first saw liturgical dancing in Ethiopia.”  

Having trained formally at the Laban centre in south-east London (in his 60s, after earlier lives in the army, and  then school and hospital chaplaincies), MacLean is by no means the most surprising participant in the dance world. He inhabits a place where categories and conventions have come tumbling down, in an art form that is gaining strength and visibility. The process is especially palpable on the eastern edge of London where Bangladeshi migrants rub shoulders with jaded bankers, and skyscrapers abut empty warehouses in search of interesting uses. For a start, cultures and artistic styles are being combined in ever more ingenious ways: MacLean has shared the stage with practitioners of Butoh, a newish Japanese dance form, and Kathak, a classical Indian tradition.

At the same time, the range of people who participate has grown ever wider. Community dance—where trained dance artists work with untrained members of the public, with many generations and levels of ability collaborating closely—thrives all over Britain and is taken very seriously by the profession. In MacLean’s case, the shift to his current work from full-time priesthood started when he became involved with Amici, a west London dance group where disabled and able-bodied people work together at a high standard. He caught the eye of Rosemary Lee, a choreographer who is probably the best-known pioneer of the principle that children, old people and entirely untrained members of the public must all have their place in performances that speak deeply to ordinary people about their own lives and dilemmas.

Experimental and community dance, as they now flourish in London, draw on artistic approaches developed in New York in the 1960s. Radical ideas (about body-mind integration, for example) that began as a fringe movement in America evolved and thrived as they took root in Europe and found a home on the cultural left. Especially in Britain, American innovations fed into home-grown ideas about social inclusion.

Experimental dance in Britain has benefited from a new level of comfort with the human body, and a blurring of the distinction between audience and performer. Along with many other art forms, dance of all schools has become more accessible, less voyeuristic and more obviously connected with sensual experience. In Oxford the dance artist Cecilia MacFarlane has won national acclaim for her work with groups of performers aged between three and 88, often spanning three generations of the same family.

Summing up the realities she combines, MacFarlane says: “I find the word ‘amateur’ deeply offensive. It implies that you are not paid, not good enough. Some dancers are professional, some are not, but in my groups they all dance together, in the community.”

In London national and social categories now blend almost as seamlessly as generations. Sanjivan Kholi, born in Britain to east African-Asian parents, was once a successful young investment banker, exhausted and frustrated at times but with every prospect of huge financial success. After turning down a promotion that would have propelled him, in mid-2001, to an office in New York’s twin towers, he took a massive pay cut and entered the dance world. Now he manages a London company that experiments on many levels with the fusion of cultures. Its director Shobana Jeyasingh mixes the ancient Bharata Natyam tradition of South Asian dance with Western techniques, classical and contemporary. And in a new work, “Just Add Water”, the company will playfully examine the way cultures meet through food.

Although its members are trained, professional artists, rather than “community” ones, their relationship with ordinary Londoners is closer than it would have been in the days when dancers were remote sylphs. For example, outreach events are designed to connect with children in London’s multi-ethnic schools who juggle a range of gestures and cultural codes in their daily lives. As Kholi puts it, the company is trying—whether on stage or in the classroom—to go beyond ticking the boxes demanded by funders and develop a more subtle approach to mixing cultures: this sometimes means “unpicking the conflict” as well as suggesting new modes of co-existence.

For all its convention-defying radicalism, London’s contemporary dance scene clearly benefited from the economic expansion that came to an abrupt end last year. It was able to count on adequate grants from the Arts Council, local authorities and corporate sponsors. How will it fare in today’s harder times?

Practitioners of experimental and community dance (which is intended to promote social solidarity, reaffirm local roots, and question the cult of individual success) are quietly optimistic that their art form will adapt to a more bracing environment. Compared with other arts, it requires little equipment and can thrive in many different spaces. And some of the cultural changes that made the dance revolution possible won’t be reversed. As one dancer puts it: “Once you learn to live happily in your body, you don’t stop.” 
 

Picture Credit: Naomi Morris, lepiaf.geo (via Flickr)

(Bruce Clark is international editor of The Economist. Lizzy Le Quesne is a choreographer, dancer and writer.)