Choreographer and Artistic Director of the National Dance Company Wales Caroline Finn speaks with Luke Owain Boult about their upcoming Folk tour, and the creative process behind dance.
Could you tell us a little bit about Folk, the dance piece you choreographed?
My initial idea was to make a piece about social dynamics and how people interact with each other. So what makes people become part of a group, what differs people from the group, how people behave differently when they’re with people compared to when they’re alone and how people can manipulate each other, whether that’, in a negative way or in a positive way. I wanted to create a little world, a little community where these stories can play out where people can observe the dynamics and interactions and it can just come alive.
So how do you go about doing this?
There’s actually a combination of ways. For example when I was away for Christmas, I gave the dancers, some quite specific tasks to work on to generate a bit of movement themselves. It’s always important to me that the language of the piece is really in combination with my physicality but also with their input. I took some oil paintings from the 17th and 18th century, and I asked the dancers to see if they could identify with one particular character on one of these paintings and from that we sort of imagined if that character was to move, how might they move? So each dancer generated a little solo based on the physicality of the character. Now I’ve also been giving them tasks focussing literally on manipulation. How you can physically manipulate someone without even making physical contact with them. We were basically playing with a lot of ideas like that and we generated a lot of material and then combined with some movement poses from myself.
How does the score come about?
For me, that’s something that really varies. For Folk, there were a couple of music that I’d heard already before, and I’d generated ideas, pictures and images in my head. I knew that’s what I wanted. But then on the other hand there are certain sections where I know the ambiance I want to create and then actively search for the people that fit.
What’s the most challenging issue facing dance?
It’s key to get people active and ready, especially with the younger generation, people sometimes think ‘oh, I didn’t realise that could be fun’. People often think it’s going to be serious and elitist, which it can also be. I think it has a lot to do with where we place ourselves. For example we often do what we call ‘pop ups’ where we’ll go to a city and literally travel to the town square. Almost like a sort of flash mob in a way but dancers sort of enter the space and start doing an extract of a repertoire and we’ll be on hand there with fliers, and it gives people a taster of what they can expect. We make it clear with this tour that it’s diverse. We really feel that there’s something for everybody
You have three pieces in the Folk tour. We know one of them is Folk, could you tell us about the other two?
The other two are Tuplet by Alexander Ekman and A Mighty Wind by Jeroen Verbruggen, and they’re just completely contrasting. The first is this beautiful projection of the dancers making a lot of sounds with their voices and bodies, so it’s not exactly a narrative piece, but it’s incredibly witty. The second piece, A Mighty Wind, is like a big rock ballet. There’s a lot of energy, and a lot of fun.
Do you remember the first time you fell in love with dance?
I was really young, I started when I was three. I did ballet, tap, and jazz and suddenly there was a sort of light-bulb moment when I was eleven when I suddenly realised that I wanted to be a dancer. I’d actually suffered a lot strangely, very young, with depression. So that moment when I was eleven was when the clouds just lifted.
National Dance Company Wales Spring Tour: Folk, Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea, Thu 4 Feb+Fri 5 Feb. Tickets: £10-£14. Info: www.taliesinartscentre.co.uk; Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, Thu 18+Fri 19 Feb. Tickets: £15-£22. Info: www.shermancymru.co.uk