Hari Berrow talks to National Dance Company Wales’ outgoing artistic director Matthew William Robinson about the company’s double-header autumn show Frontiers | Gorwelion, devised by Robinson and Melanie Lane.
Frontiers | Gorwelion, National Dance Company Wales’ latest production, is made up of two dance pieces: AUGUST, choreographed by NDCW artistic director Matthew William Robinson, and Skinners by Melanie Lane. “In Frontiers, each work is exploring humanity at the frontier of change, whether that’s change on a personal level, how we deal with change in our own lives, or on a global scale where we as a society are dealing with profound change,’ explains Robinson.
“This started from a quite big change in my life a number of years ago, when my father died. AUGUST is not about my life, but about the emotional journey that it provoked, and that it triggered in me; about the stretch between who we were before something, and who we are becoming. I guess it’s also about love, the pain of loss, and finding a way. I think the work navigates all of that, and offers a message of community at the end.”
Rather than offering set movements to his dancers, Robinson has a more organic approach to choreography. “I try to offer the dancers clear physical instructions. We work from the body, trying to articulate texture, and different qualities in the body. The dancers never begin from the point of trying to create or represent an emotion, but rather I give them the tools to make materials, and then I see what comes back that speaks to what I’m searching for. I’m really excited about the communicative potential of movement, that’s not about miming a story, but is about moving and evoking emotion.”
Where AUGUST is a very human show, Skinners is about our developing relationship with technology. Melanie Lane, says Robinson, “is really thinking about the relationship with ourselves in an increasingly digital world. She’s talking about how we’re living in a digital age; how we use filters to shift reality through social media avatars that change and represent us differently. We talk to artificial intelligence, and it talks back to us. It’s a kind of exciting but also quite scary moment, where what’s real and what is illusion is really blurring in those online spaces.
“Melanie has a really exciting signature physicality that is rhythmic and full of punctuation. There were moments today, when I’ve been watching rehearsals, where the dancers are like an AI robot or something – they move between that kind of rigidity to later in the work, when they’re exploring such freedom in their bodies – hurling each other around the stage, falling, throwing, lifting each other. As a spectacle that is beautiful to watch – the poetics of it are really powerful.”
Robinson is set to leave NDCW at the end of 2024, taking up a role as head of its Maltese equivalent, ZfinMalta. For his swansong, then, he’s hoping that the show will offer audiences something thought-provoking and empowering. “I hope the evening gives a sense of the power of community – global community – that the world is confronting us all with huge challenges and change, and we are all meeting those challenges in our own way. I think knowing that is really important. A frontier of something new can be both thrilling and terrifying, and we all face those moments in our lives.
“For us as a company, we know that dance is an important and powerful way of connecting us as humans and communicating the feelings we struggle to express as words, and I feel that coming together is the only way we navigate the complexities of contemporary society, so I hope it gives people that to go away and think on.”
Frontiers | Gorwelion, Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, Thurs 19 + Fri 20 Sept; Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea, Thurs 3 Oct; touring Wales and England later in autumn.
Tickets: £8-£23. Info: here
words HARI BERROW
