On Contact

Body parts and friends in the arts

Rehearsal with Chloe Aligianni and Co.

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.

As I gently massaged the shoulders of a 6ft man in a vest top whom I had merely smiled at in class by way of greeting I thought a) I should probably do this for my boyfriend more often and b) dance is a strange but wonderful profession in which you rub up your potential colleagues rather than email them. In this world of contactless payment cards, internet dating and online shopping, physical contact is becoming increasingly scarce in daily life yet as a dancer it is an important part of my practice.

In Renaud Wiser’s technique class that morning the act of massaging one another was used as a warm up, to get our bodies ready for the challenging movement material, getting to feel free and easy (as Julie Andrews might sing). Physical interaction finds its way into dance in many other forms from contact improvisation to choreographed duet and group work and provides a great sense of community within a class, rehearsal or performance together with infinite choreographic possibilities. In rehearsals for a new work, by friend and MA choreography colleague Chloe Aligianni, we have been creating resistance and release duets that become physical confrontations between two bodies. The process has seen me repeatedly head-butted in the stomach, climbed on, my foot used as a headrest and my pelvis as a tripod. I have pushed, pulled, jumped over and fallen on my partners and yet we still like each other and in fact have developed friendships through this exercise. Even in open professional classes in which you may never have met the person you touch you can create short-lived relationships as you physically negotiate with one another in order to fulfil the task. It has to be said that this experience can vary greatly depending on the task and the other dancer involved as I found in Charlie Morissey’s contact improvisation workshop. As I seamlessly gave and received weight with one partner I found myself struggling to keep up with another or feeling mutually unsure of what to do with someone else. But however successful or otherwise the partnership turns out to be, you go through a shared experience and navigate the task and each other simultaneously.

Bodies in urban spaces by Willi Dorner

 

But these physical exchanges are but secondary to the importance of making social contact within the dance industry. The acquaintances you make in any given setting; be it a contact improvisation class, an audition or even a social event unrelated to your field where you might just bump into someone who knows someone else in the business, are the key to finding work. As I have so often and so unnecessarily been told ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’. I am well aware of this annoyingly accurate fact but a simple awareness of such will not gain you entry into the perilous professional dance network. You must be constantly active, seeking out new ways to meet and become associates of potential collaborators and employers, signing up to endless mailing lists to stand a chance of staying up to date with the latest networking events and building numerous online profiles on various virtual platforms to feel part of this work-hungry artistic community. You cannot simply turn up to an audition knowing nothing about the choreographer – you must have at least taken their company class a few times or maybe even been an apprentice dancer for them already. I don’t see myself as much of a brown-noser and so although I attend many current choreographers’ classes I find it difficult to introduce myself and blatantly compliment their work at the end of class in order to stick in their mind.

Do not despair - I am not completely associate-less. The greatest advantage my MA in Choreography has granted me is not what I learnt on the course but the determined and talented colleagues I had the opportunity to work alongside and become friends with along the way. I am now dancing for two of my fellow MA Choreography graduates and am performing my own work in an event curated by a third. (Details of performance events in next post).

Despite these rewarding collaborations I am still looking for more projects. As I stood in the extraordinarily long queue for the Hofesh Shechter apprentice audition (a great example of an audition in which you probably didn’t stand a chance if you hadn’t at least been to some of his workshops) I got chatting to a fellow auditionee who happened to currently be performing in the touring production of Wicked – I was in awe already! She had also worked in opera’s at the ROH and as I mentioned that I had auditioned for an opera she offered me the email address of the ROH casting director. Despite not being able to make my eventual time-slot at the audition I felt it hadn’t been a completely wasted queuing experience as I had met an inspirational person and gotten a new avenue to explore. Now I just have to work on getting to know what to say (another Julie Andrews lyric) when casually dropping this casting director an email, as she suggested.