Trailblazer Retrospective - Champions

Over the last couple of years Vicky’s work choreographing Contemporary and Street Dance performances has taken her to some exciting places: since devising part of the London 2012 Opening Ceremony she has spent time in Russia working on the ceremonies for the Winter Olympics and is now in Glasgow preparing for the Commonwealth Games. Despite this success Vicky still recognises the importance of the role the ADAD Trailblazer Champion award had to play in her journey: ‘For me it was a real confidence boost, with Champions someone nominates you so there is someone that puts you in the running. When anyone backs you it’s a risk because, as an artist, you are always selling something you haven’t even made yet, and sometimes don’t even know how you are going to, so it’s a real affirmation.’

Vicky went on to explain what a difference this made to her practice: ‘until now I’d had a barrier with arts council funding, I’d look at the form and think “you know what, I’ll try and find the money another way” so everything else I had done had been self funded through income generation programmes like the Uchenna summer school. The support that ADAD gave me allowed me to build relationships with other organisations and funding bodies and gave me the confidence to write my first Grants for the Arts application [to the Arts Council] which I was successful in getting. It was the first time I had the funding to be able to take time to get the right team together and to work on a piece. It enabled me to take my work to the next level in terms of positioning myself as a choreographer outside the box, being bold and being brave.’ The innovative work that Vicky developed, ‘Our Mighty Groove’ was a great success, creating an interactive work that transported the attendees at Sadler’s Wells Lilian Baylis theatre to a New York night club.

Reflecting on making her first application to the Arts Council Vicky said ‘I feel like there is a gap between BME artists and ACE, I feel like the mist needs to be wiped away. If you have an idea and you are passionate about that idea there is no reason why you can’t make an application, its not rocket science, you just have to read the questions, its not out of your reach. Connect with the arts council, its not the only source of funding but its there to help artists of any genre, style or art form to make exciting work so why not? If that means you have to make a couple of meetings with someone in ACE to get your head round what that form means, do it. Its an investment in the future. As an artist you just have to go out there and make the opportunities so you have to be confident, believe in the work and know who you are and what you are selling. People don’t view dance of African origin in the same way as Contemporary or Ballet but we do have a richness and as artists we need to take the time to understand the forms so that we can be articulate about them. We need to sell ourselves and sell the work, if we can do that we can change how these forms are seen in the wider dance context.’

Vicky valued the mentorship relationship above all other parts of the Trailblazer programme, her mentor was Emilyn Claid, an artist who ‘knew nothing about the styles’ Vicky dances but knew a lot about choreography and composition. ‘The relationship we built was so beneficial and integral to my process, it was career changing. Emilyn came with a breadth of knowledge that I didn’t have and was able to question and challenge me in a way that someone who knew about the styles wouldn’t have thought of, I felt super lucky to have her. As a Trailblazer you can reach out and grab someone to be your mentor who you wouldn’t usually have contact with and ADAD helps broker that relationship. I would say to any future Trailblazers make sure you really know why you have chosen that person and use it to the best of your ability because it does make a difference.’

Vicky’s company, Uchenna Dance, will be celebrating its five years anniversary this year and right now Vicky is ‘trying to take the company from being an expensive hobby to a viable business’ through a whole catalogue of activities which includes working on booking a UK-wide tour. Revealing the entrepreneurial spirit that made her the perfect choice for a Champions Fellowship, Vicky explained ‘if I talk to ten people, six will say there’s no money in touring. People place a ceiling on themselves thinking “it’s gonna cost this, how much will each venue be willing to pay you, how many dancers can you pay etc,” but it is something that I want to do and I want to do it properly. We have an audience nationally and internationally that we have not connected with so I’m going to make it happen. When I speak with people outside dance I feel inspired because I think “I can transfer this to dance” so I’m trying to look at things with a different mindset, acting like I don’t know anything about dance and there are no barriers. The biggest thing I’ve learnt is that you just have to put yourself out there, the worst that can happen is that someone doesn’t return your call.’

Denise Rowe

Denise Rowe - 'Exposure' Showcase at The Place, London

Denise is an artist with a wealth of training and influences that span a huge range of styles, including African dance from Senegal, Zimbabwe and Cameroon, Contemporary Dance, Aikido and Non-Stylised/Environmental Movement. What makes Denise special is not only the way in which she weaves these different strands together but the journey she takes to get there. During the course of the Trailblazers fellowship Denise has been working on a project entitled ‘She Who Walks’ which explores the relationship of women to the land and their ancestry. The project included various phases that culminated in a piece entitled ‘She Who Walks: The Bridge’ which was premiered at ADAD’s ‘Exposure’ event.

Audience members spoke of being transported to another world by a powerful and moving piece that touched them in many ways. In a surprising departure from her usual performance style, during the piece Denise speaks directly to the audience to express her outrage about the numbers of women killed during the witch hunts of the Middle Ages. ‘I read estimates of 3-5 million women being killed over 300 years for things as simple as walking alone on the land or gathering medicinal herbs. We have this bit in our history where being in your power, being on the land, communicating with the land or using herbs, became not OK and was pushed underground. That was a thread which came out strongly when working on Mel Tor [on Dartmoor in an earlier part of the project] and I felt it needed speaking.’

Although one side of Denise’s ancestry stems from Europe the other has roots in Africa and over the last year she has also travelled back to Zimbabwe to dance. ‘This thing about our shared ancestry of women and our relationship to the land is so present and strong in the village I was in in Zimbabwe. You get the vitality of the people in connection to the land and ancestry, these people are full people, they are in their power. Although the connection with the ancestors is very valued and ceremonies are still happening in the village in Zimbabwe, there is still this modernising current that is sweeping through so it feels really important to recognise the power of these traditional ways whilst they are still there.’

‘In Zimbabwe dance and music are used as a bridge between people and spirits. They do something in the body of the dancer and in the body of the witness, the receiver, musician, we are all part of this thing. For me that’s what dance is about: what it does energetically, physically, emotionally and spiritually. It felt important to bring that because our culture has gone down the route of emphasising what we can do with the mind and not really valuing what we can do in connection to the body.’

Although not yet worked into the final piece Denise found she could pull together what seemed like two very differing lineages by using the tools of Environmental Movement. By giving audience members a ‘score,’ with suggestions of a quality of attention with which to receive the work, the performance becomes truly immersive and the audience are embodied in the experience: ‘This thing that we call dance we could see as something that happens in one person who is dancing but is co-created by everyone who is present. If the audience are just watching it that creates a bit of a drain. If the audience are present in their embodiment that enhances the experience of the dance. It’s something that happens at a molecular level, a change in vibration, and at this level there is no clear division between audience and dancer so that vibration transmits.’

Again Denise felt that the most important part of the Trailblazer fellowship was the relationship she developed with her mentor, Helen Poyner ‘it was absolutely amazing, she blows me away, she is so in her integrity as an artist. I felt like I had an anchor or a bit granite rock at my back or always the earth underneath my feet. If I wavered or lost track or doubted she brought me back to my integrity as an artist, staying with my practice and working with what is unfolding. She helped me to understand that as an artist you are a midwife for a piece of art, the piece of work knows what it is, keep listening, keep coming back to the practice and be available for the work to come through. [Being a Trailblazer Champion] has been extraordinary. It gave me the possibility to follow through on some threads, on inklings. I didn’t come to the work knowing what it would look like or what it would involve, I just had a sense of what I wanted to work with and it wouldn’t have been possible to realise it without the support of ADAD.’