How does a choreographer connect to the work of academics and their research interests? That’s a question that I mulled over in my new role as Knowledge producer at the Cultural Institute at King’s, a programme that connects academics from King’s College London with artists. I’d spent more than 25 years mining human physicality for meaning through movement so I decided to see what the college offered in terms of alternative narratives of the body.
I chose film studies (bodies interpreted through a lens), cultural studies (the body in society), geography (the body in landscape), robotics (body mechanics) and neuroscience (inscape of the body). There followed some of the most intense, inspiring and informative conversations I have ever had.The passion with which the academics spoke about their work was palpable. I listened spellbound. I wish school had been more like this. As I had – sadly – anticipated, the world of contemporary dance was a closed book to all but one of them. Not for the first time, I wondered what contemporary dance lacked in its dissemination that it failed to embrace the very individuals who would respond to its seriousness of purpose.
I started by inviting my chosen academics to a dance showing. It was a refreshing exercise: a private performance (which involved a filmed extract from my dance work Bruise Blood and two dancers performing live) unencumbered by the politics of theatre presentation. I had no idea what the response would be to this unfamiliar and non-verbal world of movement. I knew from experience that when an Indian woman talks about dance, even in the abstract, people create images in their head that inevitably involve lotus hands and some drums. They found my choice of music for Bruise Blood (an electronic remix of Steve Reich) not what they expected. However, there was no doubt they were engrossed.
When I asked them to write about their experience of watching dance, there was a bit of persuading to be done in some quarters, understandably. I would feel the same if asked to write my thoughts on neuroscience after one visit to a laboratory. However, my intention was to put dance, rather than them, in the dock. Instead of writing technically about dance, I wanted them to bring their own highly refined terminology to bear on the form. In this way, both dance and academics would change locations and effect a mutual migration.
The texts produced were brilliant in their variety and scope. They ranged from the kind of in-depth analysis any choreographer would die for to a spontaneous spoken riff. These unique pieces were the basis of the six films that became Translocations.
Each film owes its personality to both the academic featured and their reading of the dance. For example, the sparkling analysis offered by the head of film studies is counterpointed by her still presence against a projected backdrop of moving images. The geographer’s perspective on ensemble choreography is heightened by his position on the street, among the real-life “street ballet” of the Strand.
I wanted Translocations to be more like visual radio than conventional films. I hope these portraits of passionate people reveal something about their own work, and in that process reveal something about the power of dance to speak across departments and disciplines.
Image: Devaraj Thimmaiah in Bruise Blood. Photograph: Nuno Santos
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