52 Portraits

Jonathan says he started writing a list

of all the dance artists still alive

whose work he loves and needs.

Whose work he loves and needs.

And it got longer and longer

and he kept writing

and he was going to read it out to you,

and he was going to end the list

with the ones he missed

saying you, and you, and you, and you,

and you, and you, and you.

Saying you, and you, and you, and you,

and you, and you, and you.

This is the end of the 52.

It is an epic,

an epic love song.

It could go on.

(to the tune if 'So Long Baby' by Lightnin' Hopkins)

Claire says dance can really show the vulnerability of the body, or the strength.

The vulnerability of the body, or the strength.

She says we feel vulnerable because we have no medium except our own bodies, and that is political.

And Etienne says.

And Etienne says it's not about being extraordinary and that is a gift to the audience.

(to the tune of 'Gottes Zeit Ist Die Allerbeste Zeit', a transcription of Bach by György Kurtág)

Colin says in this song we should talk about love and friendship and the things that bring us together and the obstacles that keep us apart.

The things that bring us together and the obstacles that keep us apart.

Simon says he feels like a really unusual newsreader and something is going on in the foreground.

And something is going on in the foreground.

(to the tune of 'The Cold Song' by Purcell, as sung by Klaus Nomi)

Chisato says in this dance she's using passages of time to tell a story from a deaf perspective, about rain and water.

She says hearing people can hear the rain but she can smell it.

And she can see the rain, and it's important to her where she is and where the rain is and how to see the sound of the water.

And she says her eyes create the rhythm of how the rain is moving.

And through the table and through the umbrella and through the body she can feel the sound.

Katye says she grew up on Romney Marsh in Kent, the flatlands, and her dad was a tenant farmer until the M20 motorway cut his farm in half and then he wasn't a farmer anymore.

She says she doesn't fucking know actually if what she does is political, but there's something about doing it that changes something.

She says there's something about the way practice can bring her closer to a wilderness, or to a wildness that is political.

(to the tune of something with earthy darkness and roar)

Mary used to work at a law firm in Belfast before she retired to London.

Betsy was a pharmacist.

Betsy was a pharmacist but she says she feels she's always been a dancer.

Mary says when she goes to dance class now there's never a sense of who are these old people.

She says maybe dance allows participation more than other art forms and she says for her it lifts her spiritually.

(to the tune of the 2nd movement of Shostakovich's 2nd Piano Concerto)

Karl says he lives in a place called Findhorn in the North East of Scotland.

He says he's been an anarchist squatter, a carpenter, an estranged son and a choreographer.

He says being a white male middle aged artist is lonely.

He says it's not spiritual when he dances, but he thinks he makes dances as an antidote to a world that fundamentally makes no sense to him.

(to the tune of 'Prole Art Threat' by The Fall or 'Blindness' by The Fall)

Eleanor says funny you ask.

Funny you ask.

She says she's interested at the moment in the nature of thought in movement.

Of thought in movement.

Just the way the body knows things, remembers things, forgets things and imagines things.

And invents things.

The way the body is always novel but always related to something known.

The way it's always novel but always related to something known.

(to the tune of 'Let's Get Physical' by Olivia Newton-John)

Gaby says she started dancing in the womb.

She says she thinks for her it was unconscious, it was an expression of physicality that got translated into the idea that she was dancing.

She says dancing is definitely political.

She thinks just yes, yes possibly always.

It's just whether you choose
to be conscious of that or not.

(to the tune of 'White Riot' by The Clash)

Daniel is speaking and the words connect to his gestures.

The sun came
I didn't have any choice
they were putting it all on me
the shampoo
every time you hear yodelling
in the mountains.

(to the tune of 'Philip Guston' by Morton Feldman)

Kenneth began studying ballet aged 5 in 1960s Scotland, 
and they gave him the role of Little Black Sambo.

He remembers Robert Cohan saying three things about teaching:
only teach what you know,
teach everything you know
and do it with love.

(to the tune of 'The Swan' by Saint Saens)

Mary says she's just been looking
at an old black and white photograph
of a family tableux.

And she thought she'd recreate
this family scene.

And she remembers
balancing on her father's hand,
while her sister sat on his upturned feet,
and her mother supported upside down
in a knee and shoulder stand.

She says it's about expressing function,
and honesty and clarity.

(to the tune of 'Tabula Rasa' by Arvo Pärt)

Annie says she comes from Minnesotta, from the US: farm country.

She says she went to the dance studio in the small town where she grew up, and she started and then she got too shy and quit, and then she went back and never stopped, and here she is.

She says there's something ironic about the fact that she gets stared at all the time, and then she puts herself up onstage to be stared at, but onstage she can make people look at her the way she wants to be looked at.

Annie says she's interested in trying to rough it up a little and introduce her own ways, in a kind way.

(to the tune of cheesy soaring pop songs, like 'Fair Game' by Sia)

John says there's something maybe about showing the singing soul, but also in a way  being humble, and being a little bit scared and sad.

Bold, singing, scared and sad.

(to the tune of Ständchen from Schubert's Schwannengesang.)

Deborah says she comes from Brooklyn, and the first room she danced in was the dining room, in Brooklyn.

She says the whole thought is it's not why she dances or how she dances, it's that she dances, and that's why it's political.

And she says it's how she learns.

She says what keeps her practice going is that she keeps changing it, she keeps finding new ways, and the questions make more questions make more questions.

(to the tune of 'I'm Your Man' by Leonard Cohen, or 'Don't Fence Me In' sung by Bing Crosby.)

Ramsay says he's a bit of a Beyoncé fan, to be honest.

He says when you watch dance there's nothing you shouldn't look at.

He used to have very long hair down to his shoulders, and his earliest memory of dancing is doing Scottish dancing at Betty Bursy's Academy in Southport.

He says it's about falling into it and being in the groove.

(to the tune of 'Farewell to Stromness' by Peter Maxwell Davies.)

Alesandra says she made this up on the bus.

She says her work is created through emotional phrases.

Raw expression of movement.

Liberation.

Freedom of speech.

Honesty.

And knowledge.

Liberation.

Freedom of speech.

Honesty.

And knowledge.

(to the tune of 'Expensive Shit' by Fela Kuti.)

Liz came
from the bleakest suburb
at the end
of the District Line,
and she got
into dance
by mistake.

She says
it's inevitable
she'll carry on,
she doesn't
have a choice
and age
won't stop her.

She likes
that line
between tragedy
and comedy.

Is it ha ha ha,
or is it boo hoo hoo?

(to the tune of 'Queen Of The Night' by Mozart, or the smallest little Schumann children's corner music, or any crackly old opera.)

Oom pah pah, oom pah pah, 
Igor and Moreno
are from Sardinia and the Basque country respectively.

Oom pah pah, oom pah pah, 
Oom pah pah, oom pah pah, 
Igor and Moreno
met in a ballet class
in Brussels,
where they found themselves
sharing a ballet barre.

Igor says
when he woke up this morning,
Moreno was having breakfast,
and he noticed his yellow trainers
and wore a T-shirt to match.

Oom pah pah, 
Igor and Moreno
say in this dance
they are listening, 
and provoking,
and finding and losing themselves.

Oom pah pah, oom pah pah,
Oom pah pah, oom pah pah,
Igor and Moreno
say in this dance
they are listening, 
and provoking,
and finding and losing themselves.

(to the tune of some Sardinian singing.)

Emilyn says she left the ballet because she got injured with arthritis in her foot, and she went to New York and got stuck into drugs and sex, and from then on she was working on a much more existential questioning of life and death, race, feminism, class and politics.

She says ever since the dream was broken, she's questioned everything.

Emilyn doesn't care about being an academic, but she likes talking and she likes thinking and she spends hours in the studio just falling, and she's going to write a book about that.

(to the tune of 'Piece of my heart' by Janis Joplin)

Seke is making the sound of the dance he is dancing. 

Mette says what matters to her in dance, is how it can be a space for experimenting with other ways to be together.

She says in this dance she's dealing with how commercial imagery uses sexuality to sell products, and how when you exaggerate images like this, there's always a certain absurdity.

She says making art is always political, but the task is to find where the political lies in each particular thing.

(to the tune of Suck and let go' by Peaches)

Crystal says this dance is in sixes.

But she says since having a child

she finds it harder to remember things,

so she hesitates.

And she says is it ok

if she counts it out loud.

And she says is it ok

if she does it just one more time.

(to the tune of 'The Four Seasons Recomposed' by max Richter, the track called 'Winter Three'.)

Mette is from a small island with a bridge, in Norway, but it never felt like an island.

She says in her work she's trying to feel space, create space or other spaces, to come closer, bringing the inside out and the outside in, this is what she wishes for the audience.

She says that balancing being an artist and a mother, is kind of like a continual process of mutual interference and inspiration, and also separation.

(to the tune of a music that opens space and that breathes, and for Mette's liking, harmony works well for her feeling: or it could be the version of 'Take a look at me now' by Phil Collins, where the singer sounds like they're really far away)

Bill says it's amazing how much work gets done in the kitchen.

He says moving makes him curious.

He says hopefully dance isn't about doing things that other things can't do because he likes it being part of everything.

He says dance may be the solution to a problem that was never a problem in the first place.

He says he has a lot of conversations about what's going on in his garden, and he apologises to plants for doing certain things like ripping stuff out.

(to the tune of 'Temporary' by A.J. Roach)

Chrysa says she goes where the work is, and she leaves behind a trail of intimate relations.

She leaves behind a constellation of aesthetic and emotional connection.

And sometimes she circles back through, and sometimes she leaves it all behind

(to the tune of 'My Dog Is Inside The Piano' by Indian Ropeman)

Theo says he woke
at three a m,
and remembered his mother's last land line message
was still on his phone.

And he decided to dance
with her voice in his ears.

He thought about the idea
of his mum's portrait somehow
presented through him.

It's a portrait through a portrait,
can you see?
it's a portrait through a portrait.

(to the tune of 'Alison' by Elvis Costello)

Zenaida's everyday job for 25 years has been eyelashes and the whole works, and she wanted to represent that here.

And for the past couple of years she's been thinking about retirement, and she wanted to deal with that too.

She says dancing is liberating and all that stuff, but one forgets when you have a bad performance how shit it is, and how that feeling of liberation stops.

But all the same, when she dances she feels the instinct and freedom that a wild animal has.

(to the tune of Cherubino's 'Voi che sapete' from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro)

Andros grew up in the West Village of Manhattan, New York City.

His parents are modernised hippies: his mom was a dancer and his dad was a jazz radio personality and jazz club owner.

The first room Andros danced in was the first room everyone dances in, which is the living room, to the first music everyone of his generation danced to, Michael Jackson.

He says that camels, despite how they're always portrayed, actually don't really want to move, and he can relate to that.

Andros says the work is always about how he can himself to want to move.

(to the tune of 'What A Feeling' from Flashdance)

Lucy says that in this dance, she's remembering music, and remembering people, and trying to remember what comes next.

She says when she dances she's immersing herself in a memory of some sort, like a little fluffy cloud, and she slips herself in the middle of the memory.

She says she'd like to transfer her ideas and energy over to the audience, otherwise what's the point of being there?

(to the tune of 'Cold' by Annie Lennox)