Communication Through Movement

The Curve Foundation Dance Company was founded in 1998 by Scottish dancer and choreographer ROSS COOPER, and is dedicated to presenting exciting modern dance by a variety of choreographers. Ross tells the Arts Journal about their latest venture ahead of their Highlands and Islands tour.

Arts Journal: Ross, I have to ask you first of all – your programme includes Merce Cunningham’s ‘Signals’, and you are making the bold claim that this is the first ever production by a Scottish company of a dance by Cunningham. Are you entirely confident in that claim?

Ross Cooper: I am absolutely 120 per cent confident – I’ll place a bet with you now if you like! I went through the archive at Merce Cunningham’s company, and this is the first time a Scottish company has ever done a piece by him. It is quiet a serious vetting process that goes on – there was a lot of scrutiny of our work before they would give us approval to do it. I see this piece as a natural evolution for us.

AJ: Who did you deal with in New York?

RC: With Merce Cunningham. He is 85 now, but he is still in the studio everyday, and rehearses his dancers from a zimmer! He sent over Tom Caley to work with us in this piece, and that was great. He is real disciple of Merce’s work, and has worked with him over a long period of time.

AJ: Tell us a bit about the dance itself?

RC: The piece is now called ‘Signals’, and was made originally in June, 1970, with music by John Cage. It was performed in the first week of June, and then repeated the following week as ‘The Second Week in June’ and again as ‘The Third Week in June’, so ‘Signals’ is a new title he has given it.

“Our aim is to perform the most communicative dance we possibly can to as broad an audience as we possibly can”

AJ: Cage and Cunningham have an unusual method of working, don’t they?

RC: They compose and choreograph totally separately, then the two entities are put together. In choreographic terms it is about a group of six players who arrive in a space and perform a series of dances, and they are based on the signals that the dancers give to each other.

AJ: Is it improvised in that case?

RC: Not really improvised, no, but there are random elements. They work with a number of phrases they have learnt, but what they perform is dependant on the signal they get from another dancer, so the piece is never the same twice. I have watched many run-throughs now, and it is always different. In that sense it is an archetypal piece from the second phase of Cunningham’s work – he had four such phases in total, and this one comes from his chance or random elements phase. That element of chance keeps the whole thing fresh, and it certainly keeps the dancers on their toes.

AJ: What else are you bringing to the Highlands and Islands?

RC: We are doing a piece by myself, ‘When Disturbed, Then Disturbed’, that we first did in 1998. We have Rui Graca’s ‘First Draft’ which is a series of small sketches and encounters. We did the piece having just met on a course where we had to choreograph and perform a piece every day. The idea came out of that, and it is performed to Bach’s ‘Cello Suite No 1’, played live. It is for five dancers, and Rui always makes the hardest stuff for the guys. We really get pushed in this piece – he pushes us in every direction that your body can torque, but I find that dancers really respond to his work.

AJ: You are also doing Rui’s ‘Poison’ at the Brunton Theatre, but not on the tour?

RC: That’s right – it’s a bigger piece with an extra dancer, and we didn’t have the funds to tour it at this point. We are also doing Henri Oguike’s ‘Violet’, which is named after his granny, who died while he was working on it. It is a celebration rather than a solemn piece, as you would probably guess from the fact that it is set to Vivaldi’s ‘Summer’ from ‘The Four Seasons’, and it has been very popular with audiences when we have done it.

AJ: And you have on very new piece?

RC: It’s so new that I haven’t a clue what it is going to be at this point. ‘Cervantes’ is by Ana Lujan Sanchez, a dancer with Rambert Dance, a company I worked with a lot when I was younger. She is coming up to do this piece for the guys only, and we’ll be getting that one together next.

“There is a belief in dance that a narrative can stop you dancing, and I think you find that in music as well.”

AJ: Why did you decide to launch the company in the first place back in 1998?

RC: I put it together in 1997-8. We wanted to start developing our own work and putting together our own repertoire. It was pretty much formed out of necessity. Initially the dancers were a mix of people I already knew and some that we auditioned, and we still have dancers in the company who were involved in the first performance.

AJ: Where was that?

RC: It took place in Muirhouse in Edinburgh, in the community centre that is now the North Edinburgh Arts Centre, but then was still pretty much a drop-in centre for drug rehabilitation. Not the easiest start, but definitely an interesting one!

AJ: How do you see the focus of the company’s work?

RC: Our aim is to perform the most communicative dance we possibly can to as broad an audience as we possibly can. We believe very much in communication in dance – there are a lot of choreographers out there working, and some are better at creating communicative dance than others. I am interested in working with people that can do that, and can give something of value to the audience.

AJ: And that is reflected in your choice of repertoire?

RC: I programme the kind of work that I feel meets the artistic standards we require, and can communicate in that way. We have an interesting repertoire we are working on at the moment, some of it coming from within the company, and some external. The theme of the work has been the same from the outset. Dance can be very abstract, and in that situation it is very much about how the movement and the vocabulary of the dance communicates to you. We have been working on as wide a vocabulary as we can over the past seven years, trying to give ourselves as much as possible to draw on. We have six dancers on the tour, and they can cope with an international repertoire at a very high level, and we have worked hard to develop that within the company.

AJ: Is that communication achieved through movement rather than narrative?

RC: There is a belief in dance that a narrative can stop you dancing, and I think you find that in music as well. We have done some narrative pieces in the past, and might do it again, but primarily we work with more abstract dance.

AJ: You now have a base at the Brunton Theatre in Musselburgh – how did that come about.

RC: We had used rehearsal space there, and Lesley Smith, the arts officer for East Lothian, had seen our work, and was very supportive. She was interested in developing a firmer link, and we now have an office at the theatre and use of the facilities, and they have helped us in all kinds of ways in facilitating the work we do. That link has been essential for us. It’s a big theatre, too, so there is nothing that we couldn’t put on here in terms of space, and we can evolve and build on that.

“there are no frills when you come to see us, but you get the essence of what we are trying to do”

AJ: You mentioned that you would have live cello in one piece – is the rest pre-recorded music?

RC: Yes, and I admit that is a total compromise, and something that I feel is totally detrimental to the work of dance companies in Scotland. My budget is about the size of Scottish Ballet’s tights’ bill, and I was pushing for a chamber group for the Vivaldi, for example, but it just couldn’t be done with the money we had. I don’t ever want to do this again, though, because I think the live music is crucial. We work with musicians all the time in rehearsal, and this is what feels natural to us. To go to all that work to make live dance and then have recorded music is something I really hate!

AJ: How about sets and costumes?

RC: You probably shouldn’t print this, but basically we have four cheap chairs and a cut-down broom handle!

AJ: We can call that a minimalist approach, then?

RC: Yes, minimal would be right! The work that we do isn’t really dependant on costumes or sets – we work with things like the colour and feel of the dance rather than literal costumes. That exposes the dancer and the choreographer – there are no frills when you come to see us, but you get the essence of what we are trying to do, and it throws the element of communication I mentioned earlier back on the dance itself.

AJ: Is this your first tour of the Highlands and Islands?

RC: The first tour, yes. We went to Mull at a point when the modern dance companies hadn’t really gone there before, and we were surprised that the stuff the audience got into most was the more abstract material, which maybe wouldn’t have been our expectation. We try to give people a varied repertoire and an international standard of performance, and hope they will find something to respond to in that.

AJ: Thanks, Ross.

Curve Foundation Dance Company will visit the following Highlands and Islands venues:

• Dervaig Village Hall, Mull, Friday 8 April 2005
• Spectrum Theatre, Inverness, Wednesday 13 April 2005
• Aros Centre, Portree, Isle of Skye, Friday 15 April 2005
• Nevis Centre, Fort William, Saturday 16 April 2005

© Kenny Mathieson, 2005