Denise, could you tell me a bit about your journey of dance, how it started what route your training took?
My journey started from just loving dancing but in the sense of formal dance training it started in Devon with Ayodele Scott’s company Kabudu. I went straight into performing with this group, with no previous training, which took me by surprise, I think it took everybody by surprise. My training took me to Africa many times but the first was when I visited Ghana. I had an extraordinary feeling of coming home, something woke up inside me that really connected. I saw a resemblance between the Ghanaian look and the look in my family. I grew up in a predominantly mono-cultural environment and didn’t know anyone from an Afro-Caribbean heritage. I only saw my dad’s side of the family once or twice a year, so to be surrounded by these familiar looking people for a whole month was quite extraordinary.

In 2003 I returned to Africa. I went to Cameroon and spent time in the rainforest with the Baka hunter-gatherers as at this time I was performing with Baka Beyond. I saw how completely woven into their lives the dance and music are, and had the feeling that dance and music are essential for them being alive. I saw dance as the way I could communicate with the Baka; it was a language that we shared, that I dance and they danced and we could dance together. It also allowed a reconnection between the dance forms that I was learning and the joy of dance when I was growing up; when they are dancing it is pure joy coming through and spiritual connection simultaneously, it was never just about doing some dance moves.

I was fortunate to receive funding from Dance Bristol to travel to Senegal twice to study djembe and sabar dance and I also travelled to Zimbabwe twice to explore the culture around mbira music. On my return trip to Zimbabwe I went with an agenda of wanting to learn dance, and when I got there I found that the concept of having that agenda almost seemed to be mocked. There was something about me that was moving at a faster pace than everybody else and people were looking at me thinking ‘why don’t you just chill out’? Most of the dancing and mbira playing happened in the evenings in the kitchen of the place where I was staying. There was one girl called Lavendar I had made friends with on the previous trip, she was showing me some Zimbabwean moves and then I was showing her some contemporary dance. One thing that really struck me was that Lavendar said "Do you want to come and play Dine?", not learn or practice but play. Another time she said "Come on, lets go and play Bakomba," and I felt that the dance for them really is a game, it’s a profound thing but also a playful thing.

This time round we had a Bira [a sacred mbira ceremony] in the village which was extraordinary to experience. There was one girl who danced pretty much the whole night, singing at the top of her voice which was so powerful. I danced in there feeling the energy of all those people and all those voices and realised that of course you can dance for hours because it’s not you dancing any more, you are simply allowing the dance to arise. It was really beautiful to experience and I felt I connected with the ‘epic memory’, connecting to my ancestors and with the ancestors of that village. The ceremony carried on all the way through the night, the next morning the people sacrificed a cow, the spirit medium drank the blood and the musicians moved outside. When it got to about midday people were still playing and dancing, and a friend said to me "You have to dance to show that you are here and present”. The dance is a way of saying ‘yes I’m available to life,’ like turning the light on inside yourself, becoming visible. The wisdom of the dance received in moments like that is so rich and so deep that for years I think that it will be digesting and unravelling and connecting up with things.

The period in which I received my Trailblazers award was quite a year for me: I was finishing my HND; I travelled to Cameroon with the Trailblazers bursary; I established my own company Tolo Ko Tolo; and was making my first forays into non-stylised and environmental movement.

When I returned to Cameroon I went with an agenda of finding a teacher and learning some of their traditional dances. When I got there I realised that it was a very different world. For them there is no possibility of just teaching me a dance, you need a full moon, plenty of the local beverage, the whole village to be up for it and for the people who really channel the dance to do that. It took the whole month to manifest that, and when it did it was a massive thing that involved everybody. The ‘lesson’ was a woman dancing and doing her thing and encouraging me to come and dance with her, really it was spirit coming through her. It was the most perfect, extraordinary lesson in dance I could imagine. It was also really quite challenging, I felt safe in the situation of someone showing me dance moves and me copying them. I can do that, but this was different; you have to really step in, really make yourself available for the dance. This is not learning some steps, this is a whole other ball game.

At that point I was also setting up Tolo Ko Tolo with Penny Avery. The support from ADAD gave me confidence to believe in myself as a dance practitioner and to begin to explore, follow my heart and follow my dreams. Tolo was emerging from having been given that support. Trailblazers also established a long lasting relationship between me and ADAD as their support didn’t stop when Trailblazers came to an end. Although my way of approaching work has changed, due to exploring more non-stylised movement and moving away from traditional African dance, the support is still there. One of the highlights of that relationship for me was to be commissioned by ADAD to create the site specific trio ‘This Body’ [which was presented at Re:Generations 2010 and Bloom festival in Bristol in 2011]. I was definitely branching off by then and that’s the direction I am continuing in with my current work She Who Walks which is being supported by the ADAD Trailblazer Champions programme. When I first applied for Trailblazers I wrote what I was passionate about and to have that supported was extremely powerful. I have always found that extraordinary about ADAD, that they have supported, and continue to support my passions, I don’t feel that I have to fit into a certain mould to make myself supportable.

Your work blends contemporary and African styles, what has been your experience of blending these dance forms?
I did an HND course in contemporary dance at Bristol Dance Centre and the content of the course felt like familiar ground, it completed the picture somehow: The African dance that I had been doing until then was connecting to heritage on my dad’s side and this work was connecting to my heritage on my mum’s side. I think Helen Poyner once said to me that as an artist your work arises out of your life, your work is to share whatever it is that is arising, emerging and unfolding. How someone else might categorise that is up to them, if you categorise yourself as an artist and try to make work that fits into your category that is not the work. There was a point when I was asking myself a lot of questions around should African dance be contemporised? Is it valid? Then something shifted at some point and went ‘what happens if I just listen to what is coming through'? Maybe some people won’t like it but to others it is communicating something and it’s authentic, and for me that is what it is to be an artist and to be alive.

You mention that your work is also very influenced by your explorations of non-stylised and environmental movement. Could you tell us a bit more about that and how you have brought it together with contemporary and African movement?
In 2006 I also started training with Helen Poyner in non-stylised and environmental movement. I find it a really profound practice. When I started it, it seemed as though it was completely the other end of the spectrum of African dance, but actually they are different reflections of the same thing; they are about being present, connected, embodied, true, available and expressive. The work with Helen has been a massive journey, it has been about liberating the body without it being in a certain style, habit or pattern. It takes a long time for the body to understand that it doesn’t have to do what it has learnt to do.

My work now connects to African dance partly because what I do draws on the training I have had but I also feel that it draws on the aesthetics, at the level of what you feel rather than what you see. One level of connection that is fundamental to lots of the traditions I’ve connected with is between dance and music; the connection between our rhythms and the rhythms and cycles of nature and life. There is something about rhythm that has a powerful effect: it helps us to locate ourselves in space and time and to create connections with ancestry, we can connect with the epic memory, the things that we are born with, that are passed down by people who have lived with a tradition of movement that came from their ancestors.

I also particularly draw on the feeling I had when I was in Cameroon and Zimbabwe of empowerment, and connection to earth and community. It’s a sense of letting things come through and dance being a place where that which wishes to speak can speak, and that which wishes to speak arises out of the connection between the person, the landscape and the environment, the conversations of body and earth. That is what I see as the gift of the roots of these dance forms. That connection is where our vitality is. In Devon, especially on Dartmoor, I know who I am, not in terms of identity or label, but my being understands that it is alive, it is connected and is part of all this livingness. The dance offers a window into this new way of being.