By Jo McDonald.

Emerging South Australian dance theatre and education company, One Point 618 will present a world premiere production, Involuntary, at Adelaide’s Space Theatre from May 1^st to 5^th. Directed and choreographed by renowned dance artist Katrina Lazaroff, Involuntary looks at how society is preoccupied by the pressures of life, consumerism and regulation. In the lead up to opening night, Dance Informa spoke with Lazaroff about her new work and her plans for the future.

What was the inspiration or motivation for Involuntary?

Well, just as with my last work, Pomona Road, I began with a stimulus that in the end didn’t continue through the work. I was watching my mother-in-law watch football.  Her body was reacting unconsciously to her experience and she was throwing herself around the room.  I thought it was hilarious and I could really make a work about this.  Also, when my daughter Zoe was very young she made lots of involuntary movements that were sporadic, crazy movements.  It was these two things that inspired me to make a work called Involuntary.

I’ve had three development stages for Involuntary:

The first was a workshop scenario, when I set aside an hour after teaching class at Ausdance each week and invited people to work with me and test out ideas.

The second development was a showing in Ausdance’s Choreolab.  By then I released I needed extra substance for the work if I wanted to attract grant funding.  I needed to make a societal connection.  The bureaucracy involved in applying for grants was so frustrating.  That’s when I started thinking about how much we have to do in society to be a part of society – things we don’t really believe in, the rigmarole, the red tape.  We do this involuntarily so we can operate in society.  We go along with the rapid pace of technological advancements, which may not always be our choice.

In the third development I looked at the influence of media and subliminal advertising.  I didn’t want the piece to be just about technology.  I wanted it to be about the actions, often unconscious, that we do each day to survive in society.  After the third development, I realised I wanted to look at a lot of things we were unconscious about. The things we just do, rather than the things we choose.  I wanted to look at how we react to having to talk to computers and phone prompts, when all we want is to talk to a real person.

Involuntary by Katrina Lazaroff

My original idea was abstract and humorous.  And though I’ve thought more seriously about societal issues, I don’t mean to be dark about it.  It’s a satire.  I want to get people to think.

What is it that drives you to create work with a social connection?

I need to make work that says something, that speaks to people, that is more than just my own personal aesthetic or artistic concept.  I want to make work that a broad range of people connect to.  I want to bring people to the arts, to show that performing arts is a broad medium to share thoughts and feelings.

Involuntary is very socially relevant.  Everyone can relate to it and their own involvement in society.  People laugh when I mention I’m making a satire about that.  My last work, Pomona Road, was a story about a family.  Involuntary comes from a very different place.  It has a cold, contemporary side to it, but it’s about what we go through as people.  I want to create work about what everyone experiences.

What has been the most satisfying part of making Involuntary?

The dancers I’m working with are just amazing.  It’s been quite a process to cast the work properly.  I feel I have the right group and artistic team around me.  They are so wonderful and open to my ideas.  It is just so exciting.  I really want to go to work and share everything with the team.

I feel like I have something important to say and I feel happy about that.  I’m glad I’m making social comment.

What has been the most challenging part?

Trying to work out the right team.  Initially I saw it as a really technical dance work, but it has become a more theatrical work where I need people interested in theatrical aspects, rather than technicians.

I didn’t attract the funding I’d applied for, which meant the dancers I worked with through the three development phases kept changing.  I worked with young graduates, and then really technical dancers.  In the end, I realised what I needed was dancers who were open to speaking and using their voices, as well as with technical skills.

I’ve learnt I need to work with people that I’ve have worked with for some time, like Tim Rodgers and Veronica Shum.  It’s like coming home.  They understand me and I don’t have to start from ground zero again.  A lot of young dancers across the country wonder why choreographers use the same dancers all the time.  But it is about trust in making work that means something to you, and knowing the dancers get where you’re coming from.

How have you grown as a choreographer with Involuntary?

I think I’m getting better at refining ideas, including movement, thematic and conceptual ideas.  I can sift through things and decide quickly if an idea will work or not.  I’m better at trusting my instincts.  I’m trusting in my movement making ability again.  I was a performer for so long, then had a child, and along the way lost some of my trust in my instincts.  Self doubt is going away, and so I can hone into the process and practice.

What’s next for Katrina Lazaroff?

I plan to tour the three works – Involuntary, Pomona Road, and Skip, and create a new work.

The working title of my next work is Prison.  It will be a dance theatre piece that invites different mediums.  I started looking at people in confined spaces.  I’ve always been fascinated with small spaces and people’s rituals in small spaces. I’ll look at people’s behaviour in prison – it’s incredible how people survive in confined spaces.  The work won’t mimic prison as such, but will look at the prison of our own minds, and the way we imprison ourselves through the way our minds operate, and how we don’t allow ourselves to be free much of the time.

Essentially, I want to focus on getting my work out nationally and regionally.  I want to share it.

Published by Dance Informa dance magazine – everything dance in Australia – dance auditions, dance events and dance news.

Leigh Warren and Dancers’ Christmas came early in December with the confirmation of two of its major dance works programmed for the prestigious Edinburgh Festival and New York’s SummerStage festival in 2012.

Despite the recent decision by the Australia Council to cut the company’s triennial funding, Leigh Warren and Dancers continues to rise to great heights, both nationally and internationally.

After an extremely successful 12 months that saw the company collaborate with some of the world’s most talented artists and stage acclaimed performances to thousands of people in three major Australian festivals (WOMADelaide, OzAsia Festival and Brisbane Festival), LWD Artistic Director, Leigh Warren, says 2012 looks like one of the most exciting years to date for the company.

Leigh Warren & Dancers presents Maria de Buenos Aires at Brisbane Festival 2011. Photo by Tony Lewis

“Looking back on our audience numbers and the quality of work we produced, I honestly thought 2011 was a watershed year for the company but looking at what’s in store I think we’re in for an even more remarkable year,” he said.

“To be invited to play Edinburgh Festival any year is a wonderful validation of one’s artistic value on an international scale but with it coinciding with the London Olympics, 2012 is a landmark year for the festival so we couldn’t be more honoured by the invitation. And SummerStage is one of the most exciting arts festivals in the most exhilarating city in the world, so I’m absolutely thrilled to be invited back to perform in New York again.”

SummerStage is New York’s largest free performing arts festival with over 100 performances in eighteen parks throughout the five boroughs. Performances range from American pop, Latin and world music to dance, spoken word and theatre. Since its inception twenty-six years ago, more than six million people from New York City and around the world have enjoyed SummerStage.

Leigh Warren and Dancers will be performing their major work Breathe at both the Edinburgh Festival and SummerStage. This work, choreographed by Frances Rings, premiered at WOMADelaide this year. Without the constraints of the stage at WOMADelaide, the Edinburgh and NYC performances of Breathe will take the work to another level.

The globally acclaimed and award winning contemporary dance company will also soon announce a new Adelaide season for May 2012 in addition to their international touring commitments.

Top photo: Choreographer Leigh Warren. Photo by Alex Makeyev

Adelaide based choreographer Leigh Warren has enjoyed a lifetime of artistic and critical success and now he’s taking on both the past and the future.

By Paul Ransom.

“I don’t want to do as much but I want to do everything better,” declares Leigh Warren from his Adelaide headquarters.

For a man who has been living and breathing dance, (from his early days on stage with Nederlands Dans to his award winning career as one of Australia’s most daring and consistently brilliant choreographers), the fire remains undimmed. Now, as he approaches 60, he can not only look back on a stellar past but contemplate an exciting future. 

“Maybe as you get older you keep less and throw out more,” he muses. “You hold what you really need and you remove the padding, so the work is leaner. It’s not just about spewing out movement but choosing movement that’s going to connect to an audience and really let them follow what you’re saying.”

Leigh Warren. Photo by Alex Makeyev

Appropriately, Warren’s latest venture is a blend of past and future. When his company premiered Dreamscape this month at OzAsia Festival in Adelaide it saw Leigh revisiting a work he first danced in under the tutelage of the legendary Czech maestro Jiri Kylian and a brand new piece celebrating his passion for Japanese inspired dance.

Of the former, a Kylian piece called Dreamtime, Warren observes, “This is the first time that I’ve worked on a piece that I was in and it’s amazing how the body remembers it. If things aren’t quite working in rehearsal I’ll go to do it and I will automatically move with ease into how it’s supposed to co-ordinate. If I don’t think about it, it’s just there.”

Whilst restaging someone else’s work might seem creatively limiting, Leigh Warren seems very much at ease with his erstwhile mentor’s original vision. “They pretty much are the same combinations of steps,” he confesses easily, “but what’s interesting is that when you look at something again your view of it has changed.”

It’s tempting here to suggest that perhaps the passage of years has rendered Kylian’s choreography dated but Warren is adamant the work is timeless. Indeed, picking up on that thread, he launches into an impassioned criticism of choreographic fashion. “The big pitfall of everybody is that they start using the codified moves,” he begins. “If I see somebody throw themselves to the floor once more for no reason I’ll scream. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Although Warren has been critically feted, shown work internationally, worked in film and teamed up with legends like William Forsythe, he is the first to admit that he has never been fashionable. “But then I’ve never strived to be,” he adds. “Some people get more celebration than others but an artist with any integrity just goes their journey because that’s who they are and they don’t succumb to the pressures. And I mean, you do go out of fashion just as quick, even if you do start going into the gimmicks and the latest combos of steps.”

Invariably, what this means is a process of continual reinvention; and part of the back story for the other half of the Dreamscape double bill involves one such creative epiphany. Warren had gone to Japan to participate in a Butoh festival where, he says, “I was taken totally out of my comfort zone. I was miserable. I really didn’t want to be there. I was in the middle of a rice paddy ankle deep in water and everything that wanted to wriggle and bite me was in that field. It was horrible; but that experience was a revelation to me because I was separated into what I call the second person, the person that you really are.”

Kaiji Moriyama in Dreamscape

That second person, as Warren calls it, is the older, wiser person, the one who outlives the flare and glare of reflexive passion and comes to a state approaching grace. For Warren the choreographer this experience sparked a profound shift. “When I came back from that I started to work with people, not on people. That’s a very big difference because everything you do after that is richer. It’s not just about you, it’s about everything.”

Fast forward to 2011 and Warren’s Japanese inspiration is finding new life in Escape, a piece built around the dynamic movement of Kaiji Moriyama and the delicate piano score of Australian composer Simon Tedeschi. Clearly energised, Warren says, “Kaiji is not just from Japan, he’s from another world.”

However, for all his worldly vision and vast experience, Leigh Warren chooses to live and work in Adelaide, a city far removed from the so-called ‘centres’ of dance. Like all Adelaide artists he’s used to the obvious question: has being based in a ‘provincial outpost’ held you back? His answer is illuminating, “Wuppetal is the armpit of Europe but it didn’t hold Pina [Bausch] back,” he quips. “You may be in a swanky city or something but it’s not going change who you are. While some things appear more prestigious it doesn’t really change anything. The real challenge for all of us is resource and touring; getting your work out there.”

And getting it out there is precisely what Leigh Warren & Dancers continue to do with great aplomb. If you haven’t already worked it out, the man is a national treasure. Then again, as he is quick to point out, “There’s nothing nicer than a surprise.”

Top photo: Dreamscape (Escape fearturing Kaiji Moriyama). Photo by Tony Lewis