Terpsichore: Voices in Dance

Originally trained at the Julliard school in New York, Janet Eilber danced professionally with the Martha Graham Dance Company for many years. During this time she danced many of the greatest roles from the Graham repertoire and had several new ones created on her by Graham herself. In 2005, she was appointed as the company’s Artistic Director, tasked with preserving Graham’s legacy while keeping it relevant for new generations. Her leadership has been defined by a commitment to expanding audience access to the Graham masterworks, which has seen her do everything from implementing contextual programming to pioneering the use new media, as well as commissioning contemporary choreographers to create new works that shed new light or engage in dialogue with Graham’s oeuvre. Now, she’s overseeing GRAHAM100, a three-season-long centennial celebration of the company and its dancers. 

I sat down with Janet to find out more about what’s in store for the GRAHAM100 programme, to discuss what it was like working in the studio in one of the leading pioneers of modern dance, and what she thinks the next century of the Martha Graham Dance Company will look like.

Cassa Pancho founded Ballet Black in 2001 after graduating from professional dance training and was one of the first dancers and choreographers in the company. Her initial goal was to provide role models to young, aspiring Black and Asian dancers. A year later, she opened the Ballet Black Junior School in Shepherd’s Bush, London. 

Since starting Ballet Black, Cassa has commissioned over 40 choreographers to make work for the company, including Richard Alston, Javier de Frutos, Annabelle Lopez-Ochoa, Shobana Jeyasingh, Henri Oguike, Arthur Pita, Will Tuckett, and Mthuthuzeli November, who himself is a dancer with the company. 

Currently, Ballet Black is touring, ‘Heroes’, a double bill of works by Sophie Laplane and Mthuthuzeli November, around the the UK. I sat down with Cassa to find out more about what’s in store, as well as reflect on how the landscape has changed for dancers of colour since she started Ballet Black in 2001.

Québécois dancer and choreographer Louise Lecavalier joined choreographer Édouard Lock’s company La La La Human Steps in 1981. Known for its energetic, acrobatic style involving fast-paced and athletic physical contact, La La La is regarded as one of the most prominent contemporary dance company of the late 20th Century. Louise became one of its key figures, and was well known for mastering La La La’s signature barrel jump. During her 17 years with the company, Louise danced in seminal works including ‘Human Sex’, 'Businessman in the Process of Becoming an Angel’, and ‘Oranges’, and took part in groundbreaking collaborations with the likes of David Bowie and Frank Zappa. In 1999, she left La La La to pursue alternative projects. Since then, she’s danced with Tedd Robinson, Benoît Lachambre, and Crystal Pite, and started creating her own work under the umbrella of her company Fou Glorieux.

Outside of performing, Simone enjoys choreographing, and founded The Playground, a free, monthly creative platform for professional artists supported and held at Rambert’s studios.

Based in Dehli, India, Aditi Mangaldas is a leading dancer and choreographer in the classical Indian dance form of Kathak. Having trained extensively under the styles leading gurus, Aditi is recognised for her artistry, technique, eloquence and characteristic energy that marks every performance. Considered a maverick in India, she has consistently broken new ground as choreographer, creating works for her eponymous company that combine Kathak with contemporary influences and confront timely socio-political issues. 'Mehek', Aditi's latest piece, is the first full-length duet she has ever created. Developed in collaboration with with UK-based choreographer Aakash Odedra, it tells the story of a relationship between older woman and a younger man and meditates on the theme of “unspoken and taboo love stories”. Ahead of Mehek’s UK tour this April, I couldn’t wait to speak to Aditi to find out more about what’s in store, and to reflect on her impressive 50-year-long career. 

Andrea Miller is a US-based choreographer, creative director, and the founder of the internationally renowned multidisciplinary organisation GALLIM. Working across dance, film, fashion, and the visual arts, Andrea is known for her exploration of the essential elements of human behaviour and the alchemy of human expression through the medium of movement and performance.

On Friday 24th November, Andrea will be returning to London to restage excerpts of 'Les Noces Ascent to Days' at the Victoria and Albert museum as part of their dance-focused V&A Friday Late event. Ahead of the performance, I couldn’t wait to talk to Andrea about breaking out of the concert dance bubble to present work in non traditional performance spaces, her collaborations with visual art organisations and creators in particular Phyllida Barlow, and her plans for the future of her company who are fast approaching their 20th anniversary. 

Shobana Jeyasingh CBE is a London-based choreographer. Born in Chennai, India, Shobana trained in Bharata Natyam (the classical dance of Tamil Nadu) and read English Literature before founding her eponymous company in 1989. Since then, she has created over 60 critically acclaimed works for stage, screen, and out and indoor sites, ranging from Palladian monasteries in Venice to contemporary fountains in London.

Shobana’s work is known for both its intellectual rigour and visceral physicality. It is rooted in her experience and perspective of life as a female postcolonial citizen of the world. Over the course of a distinguished career she has collaborated with scientists, curators, composers, film makers, digital creatives, dancers and designers to make dynamic multi-disciplinary work that places the body centre stage in the dialogue of ideas.

On 19th and 20th August 2023, Shobana will be restaging her site specific work ‘Counterpoint’ in the courtyard of Somerset House in London as part of the venue’s Summer in the Courtyard series and Westminster City Council's Inside Out festival. Originally choreographed in 2010, the work contrasts the powerful curves and thrilling physicality of 22 dancers with the formal lines of the neoclassical courtyard and modernist fountains. Ahead of the performances, I couldn’t wait to talk to Shobana about the original inspirations behind the piece, as well as her career long investigations into composition and writing stories with the body.

Florence Peake is a London-based artist who has been making solo and group performance works intertwined with an extensive visual art practice since 1995. Presenting work internationally and across the UK in galleries, theatres and the public realm, she is known for an approach which is at once sensual and witty, expressive and rigorous, political and intimate. Florence explores notions of materiality and physicality: from the body as site and vehicle of protest to the erotic and sensual as tools for queering materiality. Most recently, she’s been working on her exhibition and performance, ‘Factual Actual’, focusing on the possibilities of painting, exploring its relationship to movement and upending its static representation often found in museum collections. Originally commissioned by London’s National Gallery in 2021, 'Factual Actual' has been on show at Southwark Park Galleries since 16th April, and will close this weekend on 2nd July before touring to Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery and Towner Gallery in Eastbourne later in 2023 and 2024. Alongside ‘Factual Actual’, Richard Saltoun Gallery in London has also been showing ‘Enactment’, a complementary exhibition open until 8th July that presents new installations, sculptures, canvases, and works on paper that continue Florence’s artist's research into the possibilities of painting. I couldn’t wait to sit down and speak to Florence about where her interest in melding human bodies and artistic materials came from, the absurdity of the performance-making process, and why she never lets her work arrive in one place. 

Dollie Henry MBE is recognised as one of the most formidable exponents of artistic and creative jazz dance and theatre dance in the UK and globally. Over the past 40 years, she has led a respected career as a performer, choreographer, theatre director, creative jazz artist, working on diverse projects in the West End, film, and TV, as well as in concert dance, jazz theatre, cabaret and the commercial dance sector. In 1996, Dollie decided to found the premiere jazz theatre company in the UK, Body of People, or BOP, with her partner the jazz composer Paul Jenkins. Now in its 26th year, BOP Company has produced an array of original productions and taught countless workshops, with the aim of advocating for jazz to be respected as an art form alongside other contemporary and classical genres. This mission has also seen Dollie and Paul write ‘The Essential Guide to Jazz Dance’ a landmark text charting the development of jazz theatre in 2019, and establish Jazz Theatre Arts UK, a network for jazz dance practitioners developed in partnership with One Dance UK. Currently, BOP is working towards their inaugural Jazz Arts Rewired festival, which will consist of a day of workshops and an evening of performances at The Place, London showcasing the diversity and creativity of jazz theatre in the UK. Before the festival takes place on 27th May and 3rd June, I couldn’t wait to speak to Dollie about where her intense passion for Jazz came from, how it’s sustained her throughout her career, and what her hopes are for the future of the art form.

Katrín Hall is an Icelandic choreographer and artistic director. She started dancing at a young age with Iceland Dance Company, before moving to Germany to tour internationally with the legendary Cologne-based company Tanzforum. In 1996, Katrín returned to Iceland Dance Company to take up the position of Artistic Director. In this role, she placed a strong emphasis on collaborating with Icelandic musicians such as the now Oscar-winning Hildur Guðnadóttir, supporting local choreographic talent, as well as working with many of Europe’s leading international choreographers such as Ohad Naharin, Jiří Kylián, Alexander Ekman, and Damien Jalet. As a result, in 2000 Katrín was awarded the Order of the Falcon by the President of Iceland for her contribution to the dance community in Iceland. Alongside her career as an Artistic Director, Katrín is a prolific choreographer in her own right, having created work for Iceland Dance Company, companies in Germany, Austria, Sweden and USA, and for musical productions and television, notably choreographing for Shakira’s 'Did It Again' music video, and working with the BBC TV show So You Think You Can Dance. Since 2016, Katrín has been the director of Sweden-based GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, the largest Nordic dance company. Ahead of the company’s double bill of works by Damien Jalet and Sharon Eyal at London's Sadler’s Wells from 11th - 13th May, Terpsichore talked to Katrín about the Icelandic Dance scene, transitioning to her role in Sweden, and her vision for the company’s future.