Dance International Glasgow Returns

This April, the second biennial festival Dance International Glasgow (or DIG, pronounced as ‘dig’) returns to various venues around the city, and features established artists such as Siobhan Davies and Shobana Jeyasingh, as well as a new commission from Scottish Ballet, alongside work from both Scottish and international artists.

"It all started four or five years ago", explains programmer Tim Nunn, when Tramway decided to make two-thirds of their programme dance. "Crucially, there is no theatre in Scotland focusing on dance. Obviously the big stages in Glasgow get the likes of Rambert, there’s the Edinburgh Festival, bits and pieces here and there at Citymoves. But we didn’t have a stage where people who wanted to see dance could see ‘what’s on’ next week."

Part of this proposal was to create DIG: it was made biennial to avoid ‘dominating’ the programme. He stresses the importance of establishing a local audience, and particularly an audience who wouldn’t normally go to dance. "There is still a common perception that contemporary dance is people flouncing around in coloured leotards. The reality is that a lot of it is has gone beyond the postmodern into what is now a very direct and open communication with people. Lots of the work is really funny: Eleanor Sikorski’s work, for instance, is virtually stand-up!"

One of the main reasons they decided to focus on dance at Tramway is because "there are an increasing number of amazing dance artists who are now based in Scotland. This is completely the reverse of what was happening even ten years ago: people would train and go.”

Is there a particular ‘Scottish’ dance scene, then? According to Munn, once audiences keep coming back, "and the artists stay in Scotland, able to share and tour. Only then do we really find what it is that Scotland has to offer for the art form." He lists a wave of current, successful artists based in Scotland, many of whom are at the festival: Joan Clevillé, Saffy Setohy, and Simone Kenyon, amongst others.

"I’m not a curator who goes out really looking for a theme, but when you get bombarded with things, themes come up," Nunn says of the programme. On the one hand is a visual arts emphasis: "The reason we picked dance as a form to focus on is due to the interest among visual arts curators in dance. At Tramway, one side is a gallery, the other side is a theatre. We wanted to look at how those forms cross-fertilise, and at the work done by dance artists not alongside visual artists but that is taking along some of those ideas." On the other hand, Nunn outlines recurring themes of "land, geography, notions of state, territory or environment." Many of the works are staged outside, from the disused Larkfield bus depot to the Neilston Wind Farm.

Does he ever feel that contemporary dance feels the need to justify itself conceptually, resulting in works that are inward-facing, and lacking any audience connection? "I know the extreme of what you’re saying," he replies, "and I think those works are actually just not very good… You can say exactly the same thing for any art form.” He recommends Frauke Requardt, who has been making "outrageous and in-your-face performance work for ten years."

Is DIG even a contemporary dance festival? "I don’t like to hear it called that. The idea is to be able to draw in very different audiences, to experiment. Other festivals may have a very cogent artistic identity, DIG is where we are at the moment, with really great entertaining work, work that is challenging.” We finish on that note, as Nunn rushes off: “Try doing health and safety for a motorway flyover…"