DV8 Essay

This is my first draft of my DV8 Essay!

DV8 Dance
Alice Norris, 10G
BTEC Performing Arts

Introduction to DV8DV8 Physical Theatre has been running since 1986 and was formed and is still run by Lloyd Newson.  They have put together 16 pieces that have toured internationally and have produced 4 award winning films for television. The company is funded by the Arts Council England, they are also associated with the Artsadmin. DV8 has also been supported by The British Council. DV8 is a member of the ITC and Dance UK.
DV8 StyleDV8 style is a mixture of theatre and dance. They want to put across their ideas and feelings through dance. DV8 are a company who don’t dance for money or profit they just want to get their message across to people. They put a lot of thought and effort into creating their projects. DV8 produce pieces that aren’t technically perfect but they want to make sure they meaning gets across to the audience so they can understand. DV8 put they performance onto video because they want as many people as possible to see they piece with a message. The dance company have a reputation for thinking outside the box and taking risks to produce pieces of dance that look at the roles of men and women in society. They don’t mind challenging the traditional way of dance and what it should be like. The company don’t have set dancers, they bring in different dancers for different pieces so they always have fresh faces that suit the roles in the piece. At the moment the DV8 website has information about open auditions and for this project which is about censorship and religion they want males and females dancers with Middle East or South Asian backgrounds.  

Lloyd NewsonLloyd Newson was born in Australia and studied psychology at university but this made him start thinking about how people can express themselves through dance. He travelled over to London and was able to get a scholarship to the London Contemporary Dance School. After that he danced and choreographed with a few different companies in different countries. He then decided to form his own company which was DV8. He believes in his work so much because of the way it tells stories so he knew it would work well on film. He was proved correct because films of his work have won many awards. You can’t put his work into a category because it’s so original and doesn’t come under anything like ballet or even really contemporary. Lloyd Newson says classical ballet is like “flower arrangement” he says it looks very pretty but he wants his dance to make people think about what the story his dance is about.
 
Inspirations
Martha GrahamThe Martha Graham Dance Company comes from America and was founded in 1926 by Martha Graham. It’s a contemporary dance company and dance school where people travel from all over the world to study. Her works are so famous and have been performed by many successful dancers such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, Liza Minnelli and Rudolf Nureyev. Martha Graham is one of the most important creative influences in contemporary dance in the last century. You can understand why she was such a good inspiration for Lloyd Newson. Lloyd Newson has taken his ideas a lot further and where as Martha Graham had a set dance company, he changes his dancers depending on which piece he is doing.

Isadora DuncanIsadora Duncan was born in America in 1877. She started teaching when she was 5 and she would get all the girls in the neighbourhood together and taught them to sway side to side to look like waves. She was very unusual for a woman of her time, she encouraged people to dance in their own style. She said “The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the human body. The dancer will not belong to any nation but to all humanity.” I think this quote would have inspired Lloyd Newson because his work is all about letting your body flow and go in natural directions. It’s all about feeling the music and expressing it through your body. Isadora is said to be the creator of modern dance. She wasn’t afraid to take risks and break boundaries, which is what Lloyd Newson does with his work.        

Merce CunninghamMerce Cunningham danced in Martha Graham’s Dance Company from 1939 to 1945. He formed his own dance company in 1953. His work has been performed by many international ballet companies and has been used in several films. He’s won lots of awards for his work. Merce’s dance company include dancers, musicians and artists. The company created a computer software called DanceForms. It’s a software where you can sketch out a dance and see it come to live in a 3D image. Lloyd Newson might of been inspired by this because it’s a new thing and they taken a risk which he likes to do. His style was ballet and contemporary.     

Works
The Cost of LivingThe Cost of Living is a piece of physical theatre. It was made for channel 4, it’s a thirty five minute piece and it’s won many awards such as The Rose d’Or and The Time Out Live Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance. It’s about two disillusion street performers called Eddie and David. David is a dancer with no legs but it shows that anyone can dance and move gracefully no matter what they are like. It’s a very physical piece and it shows Eddie and David meeting other people and seeing their reactions.

Enter AchillesThis forty five minute piece was made for the BBC in 1996. It’s also won several awards including a Emmy. It’s set in a typical English pub and all the men have pints of beer in their hands. At first it appears that all the men are being manly and showing off in front of each other but things start to change. As soon as any of the men show any emotion or their feminine side the other men start to pick on them and they do something after to regain their manly hood. It’s shows how difficult it is for men to show their vulnerability.

Strange FishIt’s a fifty minute video made for the BBC in 1992. It’s also won some awards. It’s about people searching to find someone to love and someone or something to believe in. It shows how people find it hard if they think they don’t belong and how people are afraid of being alone. This is a very physical piece and pushes the boundaries of dance including humour and religious issues.