SC: If somebody a year ago had asked me do you want to do a whole week of rehearsals via video call, I probably would have said no thanks, but it was actually great! With a small group of people and a very specific purpose, we were able to feel connected over time, which was really interesting. The Place: Seke, you worked completely virtually during your Choreodrome residency. In a way it’s the pleasure of what I used to do as a kid at home. Because I don’t have to teach it I don’t have to explain what I'm doing or sell it to a group of people who are giving you their time, not wondering whether it's interesting enough to be watched or engaging or dynamic enough or musical enough - it is literally looking outward from the body rather than looking upon the body. Not asking what is this idea, how do I communicate it, but instead actually being with movement and just letting whatever comes up come up and letting it all be valid and valuable. TC: Seke and I had a chat maybe 10 years ago around this term ‘Free Association’ and I realised when I begin by not thinking choreographically but just moving on my own it really is ‘free associating’. How does that change what you're working on or making as a choreographer? The Place: You said you are being alone with your body a lot more. Even if we mostly identify as an audience in relation to dance, often our engagement or our love for dance initially comes through participation and being in our bodies with others. It’s really the closest I have come to finding that sense of community and togetherness that I had missed. It has collected together movers of all kinds, inducing people who are located right around the globe. These last few months ‘Wainsgate Dances’ have been running their ‘Morning Practice’ over Zoom and I’ve found it a genuine lifeline. Over the summer I was dancing alone for hours each week in my local village’s Social Club. I can think of creating online performance content like films and working with what the screen can do that live theatre can’t, such as CGI animation, but I think the participation part may be the trickiest. TC: I think participation is really hard to recreate digitally. The Place: The people who choose to participate in dance, through classes or workshops, what do they usually look for and is there a way we can recreate that feeling of being together in our virtual world? When I am teaching at the moment, especially when I'm allowed to be in the studio, I feel like being in a room with people moving is an incredible thing to be doing, you really appreciate it again. However, another part of me feels like it’s not about money, it’s about the experience. Dance is a lot of people's livelihood not just an aesthetic or artistic thing, and that identity could be attached to the fact that you earn money from doing it. I worry that ‘official’ dancing will become more exclusive. I worry that funding and support for dance is impacted and will continue to be impacted more and more. It’s always been a precarious and fluid scene and the pandemic just accentuates that. But there are many structures and organisations that may not survive. SC: People love dancing, and they love performance so I have no doubt that dance as a physical activity will survive until there are no more humans left. The Place: Seke, how do you feel about dance, the structure and dance, the action? So yes, dance should survive, but I do think there's lots of systemic things that we can do away with. I think some things will have to, and should shift, maybe they no longer serve us. It's different when we think about the structures. I think danc ing could survive pretty much anything. As someone more adapted to project-based thinking, I am really interested in responding to zeitgeist and how to work within the current restrictions. TC: It depends on what we mean by dance - the system and culture as we have known it or dancing, the action? I feel I've done more of the latter through lockdown than I have in years, so I feel more connected to the potential of movement and how it can adapt. The Place: I would like to start the conversation with a bit of a provocation and ask, ‘why will dance survive this current situation?’ And maybe even more provocatively ‘should it survive?’ What does the future look like, for artists, performance makers, their audiences? How has the cultural landscape been changed by Covid? What do we miss, and what is no longer useful? While we explore on our digital stage what kind of world we will be re-emerging to post pandemic, we spoke to two dance makers, Theo Clinkard and Seke Chimutengwende, about their experience of being an artist in lockdown, and the systemic change they would like to see in the future.
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