Advertise on podcast: DOWNTIME - talking about dance and the arts

Jonzi D is the founder and Artistic Director of Jonzi D Projects and Breakin’ Convention the international Hip Hop festival he founded in 2004 with Sadlers Wells. A dancer, spoken word artist and director, he is the foremost advocate for hiphop theatre who has changed the profile and influenced the development of the UK British hip-hop dance and theatre scene over the last two decades. He has been actively involved in British hip hop culture, rapping and b-boying since its genesis. As well as making his own work, with shows such as The Letter in 2013, which he made about his decision to turn down an MBE, and TAg … Just writing in my name 2006, and the more recent film We Want Our Bodies Back he is passionate, as we will hear, about supporting the work of other artists, and the development of Hip Hop theatre as a whole. In fact his most recent role is as Artistic Director of The brand new Hip Hop Theatre Academy – which opens at the new Sadlers Wells East venue in 2023. Lou spoke to Jonzi in May 2022, and they talked about the changes he has seen across the years of Breakin Convention; his hopes for the new Sadler's Wells Hip Hop Academy and the philosophy of 'Each one teach one' – that informs his own life, and the Hip Hop sector more widely.

New York based Katy Pyle is a genderqueer lesbian dancer and choreographer who founded their dance company Ballez in 2011 to explore their complicated relationship to the cis-hetero patriarchal form of ballet, and to make space for their own, and their communities’, presence within it. The mission is to reimagine ballet through collaborative, community-minded, and antihierarchical approaches.  Katy is working to insert the herstory and lineage of lesbian, queer and transgender people into the ballet canon through the creation of large-scale story ballets, open classes, and public engagement. Major works include “The Firebird, a Ballez,” which has a lesbian princess and a “tranimal”—part bird, part prince), “Sleeping Beauty & the Beast,”which you’ll hear all about later in the episode, and most recently "Giselle of Loneliness," staged in  2021.  As a dancer Katy has appeared in the works of Ivy Baldwin, Faye Driscoll, Xavier Le Roy, Karinne Keithley Syers, Jennifer Monson, StinaNyberg and many others.  Lou spoke to Katy when they were in New York in May 2022. Wetalked about Katy’s journey in, out and back in to ballet, their refusal to bow to the traumatic oppression and limitations of the ballet world, and their realisation that they didn’t have to change themselves – they could change ballet instead. https://www.ballez.org https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/ballez-katy-pyle-giselle-of-loneliness/2021/06/01/23f9897c-bfd0-11eb-b26e-53663e6be6ff_story.html

 Joseph Toonga is from East London. He makes and performs dance productions that tell stories of the under-represented, relevant to the here and now which are embedded in the languages of contemporary dance and Hip Hop. Joseph is Artistic Director of Just Us Dance Theatre, has created work for Edge; National Youth Ballet of Germany;  Richard Alston Dance Company and Junior Ballet Madrid.  He is also co-founder of Artists 4 Artists and recently became The Royal Ballet’s first Emerging Choreographer. Lou talked to Joseph in April 2022 about his commitment to finding, making and sharing space; his desire to create dance in numerous contexts in order to tell the real stories of the under-represented; and the challenges of forging a path in new contexts that don’t yet feel like home. http://www.justusdancetheatre.com

Born in Havana in 1973, Carlos Acosta trained at the National Ballet School of Havana in Cuba. After winning a succession of awards, including the Prix de Lausanne in 1990, he went on to dance professionally with the world’s most prestigious ballet companies, including The Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Houston Ballet and Cuban National Ballet company. Carlos retired from classical ballet in 2016, after 28 years, having performed almost every classical role from Spartacus to Romeo. He is the Artistic Director of his own company in Cuba- Acosta Danza, he runs the Carlos Acosta International Dance Foundation, has written a novel and an autobiography, of which the movie Yuli was made. He received a CBE in 2014, the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award from the Royal Academy of Dance in 2018, and in 2019 the Critics’ Circle Annual Award for Outstanding Services to the Arts. in January 2020 Carlos Acosta became Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, and in February 2021 – he spoke to me.

Michael Keegan-Dolan founded Teaċ Daṁsa in 2016 as a means to forge stronger connections with the native traditions, language and music of Ireland, as exemplified by the company’s first two productions, Swan Lake / Loch na hEala (2016) and MÁM (2019). Previously Michael was AD of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre creating three Olivier Award-nominated productions: Giselle, The Bull, and The Rite of Spring. Giselle won an Irish Times Theatre Award and The Bull won a UK National Dance Award.    In this really entertaining conversation, Lou spoke to Michael about his resistance to many of the expectations and models of the entertainment industry, and how his belief that ‘what will be will be’ has led him not only to live the life he wants to live and make the work he wants to make in the way he wants to make it – but also to cope with this period of uncertainty with a philosophical shrug, a laugh and a willingness to accept whatever life throws at him. 

Lou's guest on Downtime today is Swedish choreographer, film maker and dancer Pontus Lidberg. Pontus became Artistic Director of Danish Dance Theatre in 2018 . He has also been commissioned by  Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, Acosta Danza, Balletboyz and Beijing Dance Theatre. Lou joined Pontus virtually (sadly!) in his wooden hut on a lake in Sweden on July 31st 2020. They talked about his work as a film-maker and a choreographer, and the opportunities inherent in each form, and Lou made him answer some pretty niche questions about the term ‘abstract narrative’(!) They also discussed his role as Artistic Director of Danish Dance Theatre and his hopes for the 'relevance' of dance in the future.  

Lou's guest on Downtime today is Shobana Jeyasingh, an internationally recognised choreographer who founded Shobana Jeyasingh Dance 30 years ago. She has created over 60 critically acclaimed works for stage, screen, and public spaces such as Palladian monasteries, fountain courtyards and city offices.  In addition to her work with SJD she has also been commissioned by Rambert Dance Company, Ballet Black, Wayne McGregor/Random Dance, Beijing Modern Dance Academy and many more. Shobana is the recipient of numerous awards including the Woman of the World Award in 2017 and a CBE in 2020. Shobana and Lou met virtually in the mid-summer heat of August 2020. They talked about the almost eery prescience of her 2018 show Contagion; the process of making SJD Shorts – a series of digital films released during Covid; making work in, of and from the edges and some fascinating ideas around women’s and dispersed narratives...

The extraordinary Jo Verrent is my guest on downtime today. Jo is the senior producer for Unlimited - the world’s largest commissions programme for disabled artists, ensuring that work gets seen, discussed and embedded within the cultural fabric of the UK, and further afield, with partners such as ACE, Creative Scotland, Southbank Centre, and the British Council. I joined Jo on July 7th via her laptop in her home in Yorkshire, England. We talked about the work the disability arts community has been doing to try to capture the attention of the government via the WeShallNotBeRemoved movement, Jo’s belief that organisations that don’t have access and diversity at the heart of their practice should either sign up for voluntary redundancy or just be shut down – they had their chance. As ever Jo was full of brilliantly concrete ideas, proposals and projects for how we should change, who we should prioritise and how the sector can make itself more interesting, relevant and equal in the difficult but potentially exciting months and years ahead.  

My guest on Downtime today is Kate Prince - the AD of Zoonation – and the choreographer behind the massive hits Some Like it Hip Hop, Into The Hoods and most recently Message in a Bottle – a show set to the music of Sting which premiered at Sadlers Wells in Feb 2020. She was also, as we’ll hear, choreographer on the west end hit Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, and she co-wrote SYLVIA at the Old Vic. Her commercial credits include Strictly, the Olympic Games of Beijing, The tour de France and Nelson Mandela’s birthday party.  Kate and I had a right old chat at the end of June 2020. She taught me a thing or two about the various ways her shows are produced, what the term hip-hop actually means,  how projects can be tailored to support working mothers if the will (and the cash) is there, and sadly, about the appalling racism members of her company have had to endure. Some of that might be hard to hear. We also talked about how her work is motivated simply by the desire to tell stories, how different audiences respond differently to those stories, and the tricky territory of crediting dancers for choreographic input to a show.  

Today’s Downtime chat is with UK-based choreographer Gary Clarke. Gary is known for creating a place to tell socio-political stories and histories of the British working class, in a contemporary dance setting, which is no mean feat! He is loved and respected by audience and dance professionals alike. Lou and Gary have worked together for over 12 years. Lou was dramaturg on COAL (UK Theatre Award & Critics Circle Award), and Wasteland, among other projects and productions. Gary and Lou spoke early on in the Covid journey, in May 2020, and they discussed how Gary Clarke Company initially responded to the Covid-Lockdown, how the future might look for the company and the sector, and the arrival of a peacock in his Dad’s back garden!

In this episode Lou spent some Downtime with Aditi Mangaldas, a leading dancer and choreographer in the classical Indian dance form of Kathak, based in Delhi, India. Aditi runs her own rep company -  Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company – The Drishtikon Dance Foundation. It is here that she experiments with what she calls ‘contemporary danced based on Kathak’. Her productions, for example Inter_rupted and Within, have toured the world to great acclaim. Lou zoomed into Aditi's life while she was in the countryside outside of Bombay towards the end of June 2020. They had a far-reaching conversation that covered the Covid situation there, the uber-difficult task of supporting artists when the sector itself is not organised , and the digital work she is creating to raise funds to support the artistic community. They also talked about Aditi’s relationship with classical Kathak, what her style of  'contemporary dance based on Kathak' means, what her processes look like and why she turned down the celebrated National Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2013. Quick fire questions were, on this occasion, provided by Aditi and Lou’s mutual friend and collaborator Aakash Odedra. http://www.aditimangaldasdance.com/index.php