Female choreographers deserve to be in the limelight
Dance
ASK yourself how many female choreographers you can name in under a minute. Living ones, only, please. Now do the same with male dance-makers currently having work staged. Maybe it’s the noticeable difference in numbers – fewer women are calling the shots, and creating the steps – that has Scottish Ballet’s artistic director Christopher Hampson smiling broadly when he references the company’s forthcoming tour.
Both pieces in the double bill are choreographed by women: Emergence is by Canadian Crystal Pite and Sibilo, which will be premiered this week in Glasgow, is by Scottish Ballet’s own Sophie Laplane.
Hampson’s pleasure when he talks about her work and this new commission is palpable. “It’s been wonderful to watch Sophie’s steady progression as a choreographer, and to be able to give her the opportunity to stretch herself even further on the main stage. Our audiences have already seen short works by Sophie, they’re starting to know her and her particular ‘language’ and style. I think they’ll really enjoy seeing where she’s taken that with Sibilo.”
The commission, however, had some specific challenges attached to it. Hampson wanted Laplane’s new work to be longer than previous pieces, use more people, have a definite beginning-middleend arc to it – and she had to rehearse a second cast to the point where they could go on-stage on opening night if necessary.
How did Laplane herself feel about these riders? She readily embraced them, of course.
Whether she’s dancing in company repertoire – the Parisianborn Laplane joined Scottish Ballet in 2004, and was promoted to First Artist in 2011 – or making her own work, Laplane has the kind of hungry curiosity that translates tasks and challenges into valuable learning curves.
“Being asked to make a piece that will be performed with Emergence makes this a very exciting time for me,” she says.
“Exciting, but maybe a tad nerve-racking.” Crystal Pite is not only established and acclaimed, internationally, she’s increasingly hot property.
The last three or four years have seen Laplane preparing and investing in her own ideas, shaping her own distinctive movement vocabulary, pushing herself to use each finished piece as a building block towards the next project.
“I started with Oxymore,” she says, “and that was just six minutes long. Then I did Maze, that was 15, and now there is Sibilo, and it is twice as long. I’m using eight dancers, four men and four women, so I can play around with different couples. I think it’s very dynamic when you see two boys dancing together, or two girls, and I like those possibilities very much. And yes, I do have a second cast! That has been really interesting for me. Picking up on different details when someone in the other cast does what I’ve choreographed on the first group, and you find yourself thinking, ‘It looks better that way’. Or you choose to change something to fit a different person.
“As a dancer, I think that is appreciated, because it makes it more personal to you as an individual.”
Her own individuality as a choreographer is expressed in a geometric, angular style of movement where the hint of mechanistic precision creates clear physical and emotional tensions between the dancers, especially when the moves are done at speed and you’re watching, on tenterhooks, wondering if those opposing bodies are going to “click” together as a couple. It is tempting to connect Laplane’s compelling juxtapositions of cleancut lines and real drama with childhood influences at home.
Her father is an architect, so the exactness of structural drawings crept into her frame of references, while she remembers her mother taking her, often, to the theatre.
“She has a very good eye,” laughs Laplane. “She would notice if something wasn’t right, wasn’t working, and point it out to me. Maybe that’s part of why my own work has to make sense on-stage, why I have to be sure that the emotions I want are really coming through.” What also comes through in Sibilo – it means “whistle” in Latin – is Laplane’s sense of humour, her flair for unexpected twists. “I love surprises a lot, and I like it that whistling is a sound that comes from inside our bodies,” she says. “It’s like another kind of voice. I also like to use different kinds of music in my work and I’d been wondering how could I link those themes and ideas across 30 minutes.
“Then I heard this very cartoony piece of music, Whistleitis, that matched with a duet I’d made to be danced in silence. Lots of whistling! So when I started working with composer Alex Smoke, I told him I wanted whistling to be the link, then I tried to explain what other kinds of sounds I wanted. I don’t know what all the exact musical terms are, so I’d say, ‘Can we have something like bubbles here?’ Bless Alex, he’s very patient! So yes, it has been an adventure.” Scottish Ballet begin their tour of Sibilo and Emergence at Theatre Royal, Glasgow, tomorrow night.