Final DV8 Essay

I gave in my first draft of my DV8 Essay and I got a pass. Miss Dolan gave me loads of feedback and told me what to improve on. This is my final essay with all the improvments.

DV8 Dance
Alice Norris, 10G
BTEC Performing Arts

Introduction to DV8
DV8 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, are a group who invest and develop in artistic experiences that enrich lives. Their overall aim is to develop, promote and invest in the arts in England. The Artsadmin also funds them, this organisation,  producers, supports and promotes contemporary artists. They offer free advice and bursaries. DV8 has also been supported by The British Council they are the International Cultural Relations Body which means they work across countries and cultures. They allow different countries and cultures to work together and share ideas. 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 their performance onto video because they want as many people as possible to see their performance 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. They don’t really use counts and set steps, it appears that their pieces are very natural, flowing and not choreographed. 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. Censorship and Religion can sometimes stop a person from being who they want to be and expressing themselves sometimes verbally and physically.

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. He likes to be creative with his work and be different. She was the founder and creator of contemporary dance and the inspiration for many contemporary dancers and groups. Her work is different and pushes the boundaries which is exactly what Lloyd Newson does in his dances. 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 Duncan
Isadora 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. Merce Cunningham says it’s all about the dancer expressing them self through the dance and not the choreography by someone else. It’s all about individual expressing them self through dance. This is a quote from Merce Cunningham – “If a dancer dances – which is not the same as having theories about dancing or wishing to dance or trying to dance or remembering in his body someone else’s dance – but if the dancer dances everything is there... Our ecstasy in dance comes from the possible gift of freedom, the exhilarating moment that this exposing of the bare energy can give us. What is meant is not license, but freedom..”  If Newson read this he would probably agree and he may think it’s something that he’s even said. 

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 disillusioned 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. Lloyd Newson challenges peoples opinions and people can generally think that disabled people can’t join in with what normal people do. It’s unusual to see disabled people dancing with able people. In many activities disabled people have their own category but DV8s style of dance they mix the two together.  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. Many people think men should be tough and not show their emotions but they are human as well, so why shouldn’t they be aloud? This makes us think about our prejudices, we as individuals need to think for ourselves and not go along with what the majority of people think.

Strange FishIt’s a fifty minute video made for the BBC in 1992. It’s also won some international  awards like the Prix Italia Special Prize  . 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. Because some people are insecure and don’t believe in themselves they find something or someone else to believe in. Which means their not actually being themselves which is worse because they are never going to be secure with themselves. The characters in this piece are over exaggerated which means that to start with it can cause people to laugh. The seriousness of the message comes through to the audience.
 

The theme throughout most of DV8s pieces is about making people think about things that happen in everyday life and the way we think things should be done.