Playing With Ideas

CLAIRE PENÇAK is the artistic director of Tabula Rasa Dance Company. Kenny Mathieson caught up with her ahead of the company’s participation in the Made In Scotland programme at the Edinburgh International Fringe

NORTHINGS: Claire, you were based in Sutherland for a while, but I understand you have moved a bit further north?

CLAIRE PENÇAK: I moved up to Orkney in January. My partner lives up here, so that was behind the move – it certainly wasn’t work-based. The St Magnus Festival is great, and the Pier Arts Centre, but I’m not sure how much opportunity there will be to do anything directly here.

NORTHINGS: I’ve described you as the Artistic Director of Tabula Rasa, but in fact you are more the sole proprietor, aren’t you?

CLAIRE PENÇAK: Yes, it’s basically me. Tabula Rasa is a project-based dance company, so we work with dancers and other collaborators on each project. This is our tenth year, actually – we have been going since 1999, and we make mainstream or contemporary performance pieces for adult audiences, but we also do work for children, which began in 2002.

Claire Pençak

NORTHINGS: Which brings us neatly to Dilly Dilly, the show you are doing at Eden Court at the start of August, and then taking to Edinburgh. You made that last year, I believe?

CLAIRE PENÇAK: Yes, and it’s our fourth show for children. We started doing it last February or March, and we have done a couple of tours with it. It’s a one-woman show, and Tara Hodgson, who was born in Orkney and grew up in Inverness, is the dancer. The music is by Quee MacArthur [of Shooglenifty], and the digital images were created by John McGeoch at Arts in Motion in Evanton. We are reviving it now for the Made In Scotland platform at the Fringe.

Dancing is about ideas and exploring ideas for me, it’s not just about bodies jumping about in space

NORTHINGS: Tell us more about Made In Scotland.

CLAIRE PENÇAK: Made In Scotland is a partnership between the Edinburgh Fringe Society, the Scottish Arts Council and The Federation of Scottish Theatre, and is new this year. It’s basically a platform for twelve Scottish companies – from both dance and theatre – to present work. We are in Dance Base, but it’s not focused in one venue.

The idea is that they are trying to promote work to go overseas, and they have chosen pieces that are pretty much ready to go, I think. The British Council will be coming to see the shows, and there will be lots of breakfasts and so on, all with a view to promoting Scottish works to go overseas.

It is a real mix of shows, some by well-established companies like Scottish Dance Theatre and others by young emerging companies, and it is a very varied range of work. If a show does get picked up by an international promoter, the plan is that there is still some funding left to help the companies to go abroad.

NORTHINGS: Good luck with that, then. Going back to Dilly Dilly and your work for children, what are the things that you have to take into consideration for that audience as against an adult one?

CLAIRE PENÇAK: The way I make the work for children isn’t actually any different to the way I would make work for adults. The process is the same, it is the way that you present it that is different, and the way you dress it up. One thing I don’t believe is that you need to have story for children, although I know a lot of people do think that. I think they have so many stories in their heads anyway.

When we go into a studio I suppose I am trying to be playful and imaginative, that’s the main thing. The way that children actually play – one moment they are doing one thing, and then something sparks off another idea and they are doing something different.

Dancer Tara Hodgson in Dilly, Dilly (photo - Callum Mackay)

NORTHNGS: And your structures work in a similar way?

CLAIRE PENÇAK: It’s a bit like that – it’s not free association, but normally it would be led by an image or an idea or a piece of music or something like that within the piece. I tend to pack my work for children full of things – they are so used to television and quick edits and jumps and so on, and I believe to hold their attention you need lots of things for them to look at.

My work tends to be very visual anyway, whether it is for adults or children. When they are young you can actually play with quite simple things – it’s not about us being clever.

Having said that, it’s also vital that you don’t treat them as if they don’t have any ideas, because they have plenty. I try not to play down to them and make the work childish – it is never that. Child-like perhaps, but never childish. In this piece some of it is quite mad and quite fun, and we find the adults tend to laugh as much as the kids, although perhaps at slightly different things.

NORTHINGS: In terms of the company’s work in general, what do you see as the distinguishing features of your approach?

CLAIRE PENÇAK: I suppose collaboration is fundamental. I always work in collaboration with other artists, whether that be visual artists or composers or writers or designers, and of course dancers. I like to make work in collaboration, and it tends to be very visual work. For me choreography is really about playing with ideas – dancing is about ideas and exploring ideas for me, it’s not just about bodies jumping about in space.

Having said that, I think each piece we make is actually quite different. They have a style which says Tabula Rasa, but I don’t always work with the same dancers and collaborators, and they are very much driven by the idea behind the piece.

NORTHINGS: And you are very committed to rural touring?

CLAIRE PENÇAK: Yes, that’s other thing we have always done. We went to the Western Isles in November, which is the first time I had work shown over there, and that was great. I do try hard to get out and about, although touring is tricky these days. With Dilly Dilly we actually went into schools for the first time as well, especially in Sutherland, and that was a new experience.

I am keen to make the work as accessible to a wide range of people as possible, and I think I would rather tour to small venues than work just in the established venues.

Dancer Tara Hodgson in Dilly, Dilly (photo - Callum Mackay)

NORTHINGS: What other projects do you have in hand at the moment?

CLAIRE PENÇAK: We have something called Lisbon Diary ongoing, which has been a choreographic research project this year, and we will be doing more of that at the City Moves festival in Aberdeen in October. At the moment that is the only one.

NORTHINGS: What became of The Crossing, which as I recall was a site specific installation project you were developing with Jo Clifford and the composer Peter Nelson, and a couple of landscape architects?

CLAIRE PENÇAK: Hmmm. Well, we did a lot of research work, and I’ve made various attempts at getting funding, but with no success so far. It is there and still waiting to be done, and I think we will probably get to do it sometime, but perhaps not in the format we originally imagined.

Another complicating factor is that a lot of the collaborators on that are also lecturers in universities, and getting them together is mind-bogglingly difficult! I do very much hope that something will come out of that, but we may need someone to come on board with us in some kind of co-production.

NORTHINGS: Finally, I see you have finally relented and decided to launch a Tabula Rasa website?

CLAIRE PENÇAK: Yes, I’ve finally bowed to the inevitable. It is an Inverness company, ifoundry, that has designed it for us, and I think it looks very nice. Unfortunately, though, there is no broadband where I live in Orkney!

© Kenny Mathieson, 2009

Links

• Tabula Rasa Dance Company
• Made In Scotland 2009
• Made In Scotland Funding 2010