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Darren
Johnston - Immersing the Audience
Jackie Fletcher
talks to choreographer Darren Johnston about his production Ren-sa
at the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe.
Since graduating from the Laban Centre, Johnston has evolved as a choreographer
into a wide diversity of styles and genres. His award-winning work often
deals with some of the most crucial questions of 21st century western
experience and, while it is abstract and artistic, finds resonances
in popular culture such as the horror film and science fiction.
JF
What intrigued me the most about Ren-Sa
is that you are offering people an experience. But it's a type of experience
that requires them to come to the performance without preconceptions.
DJ
It may sound self-indulgent, but basically I create the type of work
I want to watch. I have an avid fascination with experience. Probably
ever since I was a kid the standard experience of walking into and out
of a theatre wasn't enough. It wasn't sufficiently immersive. I like
that sensation of being engrossed, like you get sometimes with a three
hour movie, when you forget everything, you forget you're in an auditorium,
when you're totally submerged in the experience. I have found it in
theatre occasionally, but not in dance. When I moved to London I missed
it and I started exploring ways of doing that, just trying things out.
I was finding it increasingly difficult in my theatre work. There are
certain restrictions, almost subliminal rules you have to adhere to
when you are in a theatre space. Whereas with site-specific work…I'm
not entirely happy with that term…let's say a 'found space'….it's
a new genre and there aren't any boundaries or limitations or hidden
rules. So the bus ride for Ren-sa is entirely new. It's a big
experiment. The show starts at 7.30 and if you arrive somewhere in Edinburgh,
especially in daylight, you get into the space and it takes 10-15 minutes
to adjust to environment. So when audience arrive in the blacked-out
vans they are disoriented, already submerged, so they're ready to make
an easy transition to a state of immersion.
JF
It seems to me that the experience in the van itself might be different
on every occasion depending on the other people in the van and anything
that might occur. They might experience camaraderie, or be sitting next
to someone who feels inhibited. It might open them up or closed them
off, but it will be different every time.
DJ
I like the element of risk. From early on, the work I starting making
when I graduated was fairly abstract, but there was a lot of depth,
through soundscape, for example. It was narrative driven: there was
no underlying story as such, just enough to carry you somewhere.
JF
Making up stories is an inherent feature of the human race. But your
work allows people to make their own stories. I think that's important
at a time when our society is dominating by spin and disinformation,
that our minds are being channelled. Performance should be giving us
the right to use our own imagination.
DJ
That's one of the things that have fascinated me about my early works.
I've been doing stuff at festivals, for example, and people would come
up to me afterwards and they have made the most incredible connotations.
It blows me away. I almost wished I'd thought of it myself. They have
completely polarised perspectives. I enjoyed the differences so I started
encouraging it. Ren-sa is the most narrative thing I've done.
Within that scope, it's still loose enough for you to interpret any
way you want.
Four people have made the connection with Hiroshima. I'd never thought
of that.
JF
I think that's because the 60th commemoration has just taken place.
And from where I was standing the flashing light was blinding. But someone
on the other side of the gauze might have had an entirely different
perception and made different connotations. It is very generous attitude
for a choreographer to take.
DJ
It's all up for individual interpretation. I know were I'm coming from,
and there is a basic underlying narrative, but I find it interesting
what people are coming back to me with.
JF
It's billed as Japanese horror. Did you have any inspiration from Hideo
Nakata?
DJ
I'm a big fan of his films. I've also watch a lot of other Japanese
horror films. They are the most graphic I've ever seen. Nakata did the
Ring and Dark Water, but I was drawing inspiration from
the whole range of Japanese horror rather than specific films or directors.
It's an incredibly broad genre, and while some are brutally graphic,
others, Dark Water for example, are atmospheric. That's what
really makes the hair stand on end. Some of them have this underlying
narrative in which the characters are so beautiful and serene, and that
makes them all the more scary. There's one film, The Audition,
which is captivating and just like an ordinary, very detailed Japanese
film. The first 80 minutes are quite beautiful and serene. There are
some dark connotations, but it's in the last ten minutes when it switches
around and then it turns dark and brutality comes from nowhere.
That is the sort of narrative structure I used in Ren-Sa. My
inspiration was a Japanese narrative structure with a dark twist.
JF
Japanese aesthetics have long fascinated Westerners, but they have a
fine balance between the spiritual and the material that is basically
alien to us.
DJ
Everything, even watching a film, is a totally new experience for us.
It just works for me. I've always been a bit of a David Lynch fan. I
like surrealism in film.
JF
Is film a major influence on your working either directly or subconsciously?
DJ
Definitely. My vision is more cinematic that theatrical and I like creating
a cinematic experience but live. That's when it's fascinating, to make
it a live experience. I've starting using prosthetics and other cinematic
special effects. It's a different experience when you're just one metre
away from it. Live it becomes more powerful than on film. We all know
we can use CGI on camera.
JF
I liked the immediacy of the experience in Ren-Sa. You couldn't
walk away or sit down or back off very far because the ramp is quite
narrow. It was an intense experience for people. Audiences too often
expect to be safe and passive in dark and it's too easy to squirm out
and walk away. It was much more compelling than all the 'in-yer-face'
stuff that's about at the moment.
DJ
I want people to travel across an emotional spectrum. The other stuff
is just one single emotion. For example, in Ren-sa, the small
girl is dying and mother has these other two children in an incredible
scene of love. So you've got death and love in the same moment. Ren-Sa
has been a big experiment with that sensory capacity; dealing with the
two things at the same time. I enjoy that sort of bewilderment because
it falls between the two emotions.
JF
It has strong images, things that tap you on the shoulder two days later
when you're least expecting them.
DJ
Ren-sa won't let you go, even if you come out bewildered by it.
Some of best film experiences I've had have been initially bewildering.
That's what is interesting. For example, David Lynch's Lost Highway;
I watched it three or four times consecutively to try to understand
it. It s a film that doesn't make sense, and it doesn't matter because
it's all a giant loop. You follow an emotional cycle of events, and
it leads you back to the beginning. We need to make sense of things,
that's what is interesting.
With Ren-sa people are looking for an end or resolution and
there isn't one. I love this, not so much to exactly challenge theatre.
At end you're just left at this state, and the dancers are just there
and the audience can't applaud. To have a curtain call would spoil it.
I had a woman yesterday who said: "Why aren't people clapping?
I want to applaud."
JF
I'd like to ask you about the experience of working with Japanese dancers.
Was butoh an influence?
DJ
It's strange actually. I've seen some butoh but I've never done any
training. I find things more interesting when I don't understand them.
Walking into a butoh performance and liking it is enough for it to be
an inspiration. I like that better than actually studying it. I don't
think I've consciously been inspired by butoh directly. I've spent a
lot of time in Japan and was around the culture a lot. I made a film
of a butoh performer, so I have a greater understanding now. But when
people ask me if this is butoh-inspired I've said no. I can understand
why people are making the link.
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