Blog
A Theatrical Landscape - Dane Hurst
Posted by: Dane Hurst on 18 March 2011
The most comforting aspect of going on the road with a dance company is having the unique opportunity of experiencing a beautiful theatre filled to the brim with passionate people. From Plymouth to Inverness, and London to Manchester, our travels with Rambert Dance Company take us up and down the country on a regular basis.
Our tour truck is large and white but there is no name on it; we come and go incognito, entertaining those in the know and the possible stray every now and then. To many our job seems pointless and tiresome, putting on make-up and costumes and living out of a suitcase; but to some it is magical and otherworldly, communicating without speaking and inspiring without knowing. We travel mostly by train, stay in houses of people we don't know and sometimes make a friend or two, but mostly we drift in and out taking away an echo of a town and leaving behind a trace of our presence.
Every city we visit affects our behavior and slightly alters our energy but what transforms our performance is the impact of the theatre and the indelible imprint it leaves on our minds and bodies. As dancers we find ourselves lying in all sorts of corners and on all types of floors, we sometimes create habits and patterns of entering and leaving the theatre and upon revisiting we re-create old scenarios and develop personal rituals that might or might not help us in our craft. Of course this is not true for everyone, sometimes people just show up and leave unaffected and I find myself to be only partly habitual and mildly superstitious. There is however an old fable that I adhere to and it says that every time you enter and leave a building you leave a part of yourself behind, therefore if you enter by the front door you have to leave by the front door and not the back, this way you show your spirit, or a part of it, the way out if it so desires to leave. For many years I just automatically did this and never really gave it much consideration. I always thought my grandparents were just keeping tabs on our whereabouts, making sure we didn't escape out the back door and now that I think about it, this makes a lot of sense because it is realistic. But I prefer to believe in the trailing spirit version because it makes things seem a bit more than what they usually are. I therefore walk off the stage the same way I walked onto to it thereby making sure I take a really good performance, if it happens, with me to the next venue. Also, when I return to the same stage a year later I won't find an unhappy part of myself on stage, incensed and disconnected because I left it in the theatre for a year.
A Theatrical Landscape is therefore a series of poems written for the theatre, inspired by the theatre and is ultimate homage to everything about the presence, structure and purpose of a building and its offering as a place where magic takes place and people are transformed. This series will include poems for theatres visited by Rambert Dance Company, highlighting aspects of the dance pieces performed in the relevant theatres as well as bringing to light the energy created and taken from each venue. It can become quite a lonely journey, hopping from pillar to post, but I think that metaphysical bonds are created when we re-visit the same buildings over a number of years, in ways that are remarkably rewarding and that inspires the creation of stories and memories that will not be forgotten for a very long time. These places have become my home and I feel the same sense of calm and comfort as when I return to the many homes I lived in whilst growing up in South Africa.
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