Three Questions And Answers That Help To Understand Lloyd Newson
How would you describe your work?
Newson ... DV8 was the first company in Britain to call their work physical theatre, which is a Grotowski-based term. Now it's a term I'm hesitant to use because of its current overuse in describing almost anything that isn't traditional dance or theatre. My physical work requires trained dancers, although many dancers have difficulty adapting to my approach because they've had the connection between meaning and movement trained out of them.
How would you differentiate your work from that of other practitioners?
I am committed to making new work, not returning to old forms - even to the extent of not maintaining a repertoire. We make work from scratch — writing new stories, which requires commisioning musical scores and set designs.
Set design has become integral to our invention of movement. I am interested in understanding movement in different spatial contexts. Similarly, Jack Thompson's work as lighting designer is crucial in creating strong atmospheres and highlighting meaning within scenes.
With regard to our physical language, I constantly try to encourage the performers to find ways of moving that are personal to them - their own unique movement vocabulary. Obviously I've been influenced by other dance forms but I'm not a purist — or stylist. We find movement to express the meaning or idea we're presenting moment by moment, and if movement can't do it and words or song can, then we'll use those. Most dance companies, I feel, have restricted what they can speak about because they have accepted a limited definition of what movement constitutes 'dance'.
The research and development period for Enter Achilles (1995) occurred almost two years prior to the piece being completed. This gap suggests that sometimes there can be quite a significant delay between ideas being initiated and the work that emerges a few years later.
During a five-week R&D period in Glasgow in 1994, I found myself struggling creatively while investigating the distinction between subtleties of the spoken word and the equivalent subtleties in movement. The improvisations were quite frustrating and quite tough. Yet suddenly, I found a new direction for the experimentation. One day I went down for a drink with the performers after we had finished rehearsals; we were all sitting around rather tired, and I noticed that everybody was drinking pints of beer. Seeing the potential for both initiating and limiting movement exploration, I suggested bringing pint glasses to the studio the following day. As work progressed the glass became a metaphor for all sorts of things in the piece to do with masculinity and British culture.
Is there anything in particular that has helped you develop your work?
My background in psychology has provoked me constantly to ask "why?" Why do an arabesque? What does an arabesque mean? Ironically, for the first time in 11 years, we actually have an arabesque on stage in Bound To Please. I left traditional dance because of its lack of specificity, its lack of questioning and its lack of rigour beyond technique. Psychology training has helped me to see patterns of behaviour and language and think of physical ways to interpret these.
What are your thoughts on audience?
With Enter Achilles and Strange Fish, I made a decision to keep the audience entertained, and what that really meant was keeping myself entertained. But I need to alternate these types of pieces and my need to please with work that is challenging and 'enduring'.
I have felt over the last few years that many dance companies, including ourselves, have been coerced into doing easier pieces for audiences. There are lots of reasons for this. The pressure is often subtly implied, though, rather than overtly stated. As the company plays to larger audiences, you are forced to consider mass appeal.
When we presented MSM in the West End, I was told that we couldn't do anything "illicit or obscene" — their words not mine — in case we offended the audience. So we had to have a lawyer present in the dress rehearsals advising us on what was 'decent' and what was not. That experience made me realize that DV8's values and politics will never be mainstream and I don't want them to be, even if it means foregoing large amounts of money for the company and perhaps results in smaller audiences.
I'm pleased our work has an edge to it: thought-provoking work will upset and create factions. Skill-display in dance too often overrides
Bein' A Part, Lonely Art
1985
