'Turn to the pigs for inspiration': how I became a countryside choreographer
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Version 0 of 1. I just need space. That is what you hear when someone is about to break your heart – or when you’re talking to a choreographer. There is not much we can do without it. We dream about it. When I lived in London I moved into a small basement flat and, on my first night there, I dreamed that I discovered an enormous room hidden in a kitchen cupboard. It was huge, empty and had a smooth wooden floor. I checked the cupboard when I woke. There was no hidden room. But there were two children in the flat: they were mine and for their sake I also craved space. So my partner and I started looking outside London. We imagined a village with a barely used church hall and a yearning for experimental dance theatre. But before we found that village, we found a co-housing community called Laughton Lodge. I don’t think they were missing experimental dance, particularly, but they had a wonderful communal space, amazing gardens and a house for sale. We bought it. Related: How the nation's theatre reinvented itself | Lyn Gardner The site was an old mental hospital. The house we live in is part of what would have been the wards. The place where I rehearse is in a separate building that would have been the dining room. It is nicer than it sounds. The building was probably built to last 10 years about 50 years ago. From the dining room/studio I can see a huge oak, two pigs, three horses, some chickens, too many rabbits and, in the distance, the South Downs. The first piece I made when I moved here was called It Needs Horses. It owes a debt to the majestic horses and our not altogether successful physical imitations of them. More recently, I made a piece with Lucy Kirkwood called Like Rabbits, inspired by them, their reproductive habits and a short story by Virginia Woolf. She spent time here, not in the hospital but nearby at Charleston house. I am currently working on a solo version of Paradise Lost. I am playing God. I haven’t seen him around here any more than I did in London, but such a self-obsessed bit of casting is easier down here where there are far fewer people to tell me it is a stupid idea. If it doesn’t work out, I will turn to the pigs for inspiration. I still carry my neuroses with me into this more spacious place and I think that is what drives me to make work I worried that the countryside might make me content. That I needed the edge of the city. That this much green and calm would make me realise what a pointless thing it is I do and that I’d want, instead, to become a shepherd. It hasn’t happened yet. I still carry my neuroses with me into this more spacious place and I think that is what drives me to make work. I feel that here I am better able to wrestle with those neuroses and put my energy into giving them a dancing form. I do not have to travel far; further than falling out of bed, but not as far as Shepherd’s Bush to Mile End. I do not have to pay as much; more than free but less than £30 per hour. And I no longer have to fight for and then defend my space. I am still a pretend country person, though. I am often on the train to London. I do not feel that my work is of much relevance to the wider rural community that I live within but am not really part of. I’m like a Dorset microbrewery that sells all its beer at Borough market in London. My support is mainly from London-based organisations and the company perform mainly in London and less frequently, in Brighton. What does the idea of “A Nation’s Theatre” mean? Maybe creating more artistic communities in rural locations is part of it. And also creating exchange between local artists and residents. I could do that here. It could be a hub, a centre of artistic activity, a thriving business. It sounds good. It also sounds busy. I can see the space filling up with people. Too many people. And as they arrive, I’ll be fighting the urge to start searching for hidden rooms in the cupboards. |