The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Dancers let their hair down
How do you choreograph a dance about hair? It all comes down to curiosity, says Scottish Dance Theatre’s artistic director Joan Clevillé.
The company is getting ready to screen a new free work to celebrate International Dance Day tomorrow – and it all began before lockdown with a trip to South America.
Company member Pauline Torzuoli created Thin h/as h/air after seeing bizarre plants called Itla-okla that resemble hair while on tour.
“She had seen these plants when we were in South America,” explains Joan. “We were there in June 2019, in Colombia, Peru and Chile.”
Intrigued, Pauline went on to discover another curiosity called hair ice – a strange type of ice that grows on rotting wood. This led her to choreograph the dance while wondering: “aren’t trees the hair of the Earth?”
Joan says people might wonder “how do you come to notice that trees are the hair of the Earth – and how are you going to translate it to movement?”
He continued: “We invited the dancers to create something. The brilliant thing about dance is it encourages the development of curiosity. Pauline has this incredible curious and poetic look into the world.”
Thin h/as h/air was originally performed live as part of a showcase called Sputnik in December 2019. The solo work features dancer Yosuke Kusano.
Without giving anything away, Joan confirms hair does feature on the stage and this “creates some very beautiful imagery.” The 20-minute performance will be the world premiere of Thin h/as h/air in its digital form as it has been filmed especially for new digital platform Rep Studios.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A session and the performance will be available to watch afterwards via Rep Studios.
The next offering from SDT will be a new fulllength work called The Life and Times which runs from June 17-18. It will see the ensemble returning to Dundee Rep’s stage for the first time after the lockdown.
Joan adds the company is hard at work creating new content to share later this year, with each dancer creating a duet with someone who lives in Dundee.”