Christine Devaney

9 Jul 2009 in Dance & Drama

Sowing a Curious Seed

HELEN SLATER caught up with dancer and choreographer CHRISTINE DEVANEY as she put the finishing touches to Found, a new touring show for her dance company, Curious Seed, created in the course of a two-week residency at Eden Court in June

HELEN SLATER: This residency that you and Curious Seed have just finished at Eden Court is based on what you describe as “a dance inspired by a film based on a story which hasn’t been written yet” – this sounds very intriguing….

CHRISTINE DEVANEY: That idea came from trying to create something from nothing, which is usually the case with dance – unlike a play, you don’t often start with the script. It also came out of last year when the process of starting to create ‘Found’ began.

I had worked with composer and musician Luke Sutherland on a show called Venus as a Boy. We then started doing some short improvisations together. A strong thing for me that became more pertinent was that the less we talked about what we were going to do before we started, the more potent were the images and threads of potential fragments of stories.

Dancers Michael Sherrin and Christine Devaney

Then Curious Seed was given the opportunity to have a residency at Dance Base in Edinburgh to further develop this process. This was when the rest of the creative team came on board. Both Luke and I knew that we didn’t want to create a duet, so Luke invited Jer Reid – who’s another amazing musician – and I invited performer Michael Sherrin to come and join us. That’s also when designer Karen Tennent joined and then more recently video artist Jonathan Charles and lighting designer Jeanine Davies.

HELEN SLATER: How did you use this as a stimulus for creating dance?

CHRISTINE DEVANEY: One strong image that had stayed with me from our early improvisations – which was quite a cinematic image in my head – was of a woman in an almost empty room with golden sunlight streaming in through the window onto the floor. And actually she was lying in the light. At around the same time I was reminded of a composer called Barry Adamson, who’s created soundtracks for films that don’t exist. So it led me to thinking – ‘Can I do that with dance?’ – because I knew I didn’t want to start with a story, yet I knew it wouldn’t be completely abstract either.

HELEN SLATER: It sounds like you’ve built up a strong team of artists and designers that you’ve met along the way. How did you see this second residency at Eden Court developing and moving on from the earlier residency at Dance Base in May last year, and the more recent work you did at Dance Base for this project. What were your aims with this further development?

Musicians Jer Reid and Luke Sutherland with Christine Devaney

CHRISTINE DEVANEY: For this residency at Eden Court I knew that by the end of it I wanted to be clear that the structure of the show was right. We’ve been creating all the work from improvising and gradually, very gradually starting to “set it” and create a structure with the separate components. And that includes the live music, the movement, the text, the design, the film and lights. So starting to think about all these things in relation to the structure. And we have managed to achieve that – which is great!

HELEN SLATER: I understand that this is the most ambitious project that Curious Seed has done so far, although I believe that the company has grown up over the years doing other projects, including site-specific work and aerial work, involving community groups as well as professionals. Do you want to tell us a bit about how the company has grown?

CHRISTINE DEVANEY: Well, I formed Curious Seed in 2005, which was when I returned to live in Scotland after 12 or 13 years of living in London. So I suppose I wanted to start developing my own creative voice after years of collaborating with Directors and being very much involved in helping them realise their vision. But I wanted to know what it would be like just to follow my vision. So the first Curious Seed production was a solo for myself called “Almost, but not quite”. And then two years ago I was involved in creating a big site-specific piece with professionals and non-professional performers, which I directed but didn’t perform in.

So I suppose this piece feels like a big step in terms of my creative ambition for the company. Because it’s drawing together different strands of my work in terms of performing, choreographing, and also being the Artistic Director of a company.

HELEN SLATER: Your background in dance is really wide ranging – including being one of the founding members of the Dundee Rep Dance Company, which has now become Scottish Dance Theatre; working with Plan B at Eden Court; working with X-Factor Dance (who’ve also been to Inverness many times) and performing with V-Tol for 9 years. Can you say what you’ve learned from working with such a diverse range of choreographers? How has it spurred on your creative process?

CHRISTINE DEVANEY: I think one of the things I’ve learned from working with so many different kinds of people is to really follow your vision, and even though you might be collaborating with amazing composers, amazing dancers who’ll have their creative input, it’s really important to stay with your vision. So at the same time as being really open to the process and being able to hear what everyone else has got to say, it has to be your vision. And within all that I realise how important communiciation is. It’s all about communication!

Dancers Christine Devaney and Michael Sherrin

HELEN SLATER: Curious Seed gave its very first showing of Found, as it stands so far, in Eden Court’s Jim Love Studio last month. What do you think went particularly well and are there any further developments you would like to see?

CHRISTINE DEVANEY: Well one of the first things that went well was we had a good turn out and a good mix of people. As I said at the beginning of the showing I thought there might be one or two points where one of us might have to stop and ask “What’s next?!”, because it was really the first time we’d run it as a whole thing.

And it was great because that didn’t happen, which meant that our focus and the focus of the audience wasn’t broken. The main development – which is the next stage – will be adding in the film images, because that’s an important layer, but we’ve not been able to do much with that yet, and of course lights, costumes and properly rehearsing the show now.

HELEN SLATER: What did you get from showing it to a live audience, and did they give you any useful feedback?

CHRISTINE DEVANEY: It felt really good to do it for an audience, and we felt really supported by the people who were there. We got very good feedback and the comments people made were very perceptive and helpful and gave us quite a lot to think about. I also asked people to write down on postcards something that it made them feel or anything about what they had just seen, and I’ve got some fantastic feedback from that as well.

HELEN SLATER: How did you find Inverness and working in the facilities at Eden Court?

CHRISTINE DEVANEY: It’s been great having the residency at Eden Court because the studios are beautiful, and for Eden Court to be supporting work being created in the building can be nothing but a good thing.

HELEN SLATER: And what are you most looking forward to next?

CHRISTINE DEVANEY: As well as looking forward to performing the show in the Edinburgh Fringe at Dance Base, I’m looking forward to coming back and starting our tour here in Inverness in October – that feels really right!