Following its 2013 Place Prize finalist Duet, which won the Audience Vote seven nights running, H2DANCE returns with Staging Ages, a new work that looks at how people meet and interact across generations.
The show draws on the performers’ own memories and what they imagine it will be like to grow older, looking at the gaps and overlapping of generations and covers themes of dignity and pride as we age, society’s expectations of older people and the prejudices and taboos that exist around aging.
Dancing in the show alongside dancer, choreographer and academic Dr Emilyn Claid and established international dancers will be four children aged between 9 and 15. Youth and experience will be contrasted on stage in a collaboration which challenges the dance world’s approach to dancers’ ages, bodies and expected career span.
Speaking about Staging Ages, Heidi Rustgaard said, “having recently worked with children’s choirs in our work Say Something, we got excited about how the children changed the aesthetics of the work. Hanna and I are now both well into our 40s and questions around age in relation to being dancers regularly comes up.
"It became important to us to present a range of ages on stage to look at what each age group brings to the work. We are interested in real stories and reactions and asked the dancers to think about how we perceive and act our age, as well as remembering their past and projecting into the future.”
Dr Emilyn Claid is a pioneer of contemporary and experimental dance in the UK through her work with Extemporary Dance Theatre and as editor of New Dance Magazine.
Her career spans over fifty years: she started with the National Ballet School of Toronto and trained at the Martha Graham School in New York before moving to London, where she co-founded X6 Dance Collective and was then made Artistic Director of Extemporary Dance Theatre, working with choreographers such as Lloyd Newson, Michael Clark and Richard Alston. She is now Professor of Choreographic Practices at the University of Roehampton.
Performing alongside Dr Claid will be London-based, Australian dance performer Darren Anderson who has danced with Candoco Company, Nigel Charnock and Vincent Dance Theatre among others and London-based German dance Laura Doehler, who has previously danced with Companhia de Danca do Norte (Portugal), Perform(d)ance (Germany) and Shane Shambhu (UK).
The dancers will be joined by four children, two onstage for each performance: Sean Dodgson (9), Sandro Gillgren Bonfanti (9), Honey Codrington Makwana (13) and Ella Sophoclides (15).
Speaking about H2DANCE, Heidi Rustgaard said, “interdisciplinary practice is something that is recurring in our work and I think comes from the feeling that dance is not quite enough.
"There is also a sense of wanting to learn new things and collaborating with other disciplines really challenges how you work and how you see your practice. We like to explore dance through other mediums.
"In Say Something, we tried to give the sound and movement equal weight. This was followed through into Duet, where we explored the relationship between text and dance.”
H2DANCE was established 16 years ago in the UK by Hanna Gillgren (Sweden) and Heidi Rustgaard (Norway). Since then, the company has made 11 interdisciplinary dance performances, 2 dance films and numerous commissioned pieces for organisations across the UK and Europe.
The company is currently collaborating with composer Sylvia Hallett, movement/theatre artist Wendy Houston and lighting designer Andy Hammond.
Saturday 3 October sees it at Norwich Arts Centre, and Friday 16 and Saturday 17 October at The Place, London.