Not What You'd Expect

“Dance is the most extraordinary thing you could do with your life professionally or non-professionally: it can engage you on every level of your being.”

This is certainly true for Robin Dingemans, the award winning choreographer and dedicated teacher who constantly strives to get more people involved in dance: not just as a finished product, but as a creative process.

Earlier this year, Dingemans provided an opportunity for twenty-eight individuals to experience this process. The participants came to Dingemans’ studio, one at a time, for a day-long session in which they used his body as a tool to express themselves. Dingemans guided them into a state of creative flow with questions and tasks, such as “If you could change one thing about humanity or history, what would it be?”, “Try to use me to express something you feel is impossible to express” and “What is your dominant mood right now? If you could imagine a person on stage, how would you get them to express that?”.

The answers and results have been distilled into one cohesive performance: Not What I Had In Mind. Some answers take the form of projected text, while the results of the movement-oriented tasks are performed by Dingemans who faithfully relays the contributors’ intentions: “Most of what I perform is exactly what the participants asked me to do, I even visualize the studio that we were in, the state they were in when they were directing me. There are elements that have been created out of people’s words and not choreographed by them, but none of the movements that they did make have been altered. My number one concern was making a show worthy of their generous and extraordinary contributions.”

Although Dingemans is passionate about involving more people in dance, he constantly has another goal in mind: “My main concern is that I want to see dance develop as an art form. It is already very broad and there is a lot of work being made without strict definitions, but most of it is not getting much exposure in the UK. I would like to see the scope broadened, push the boundaries.”

Dingemans fuses dance, theatre, live art, low-fi video and humour, and earned an award from the Bonnie Bird Choreography Fund, which supports innovative choreographers. The inevitable consequence of pushing boundaries, however, is that some people will not like the result. Not What I Had In Mind, which portrays raw, unedited personal experiences, has led to the occasional walk out.

Knowing that his work wouldn't appeal to everyone, didn't deter him: “Awkwardness and discomfort are very common human experiences, so having moments like that just feels honest to me. Even a few reviewers I know, think it’s good to have a few walkouts. I’d rather create something of high value to a few than of mediocre value to many, even if I risk losing some of the many. I would only have tears for the fact that people haven’t been given the opportunity to develop the ability to engage with more challenging work.”

Hopefully, with more performances by Dingemans and the growing number of progressive dance artists in the UK, this will soon change.