Memory and Forgetting

One of the many strands that run through Dance Base’s programme is the excited interplay between dance and other art forms. Language and movement are often characterised as being distinct and even oppositional. Indeed, many choreographers are interested in what the body can say that the tongue cannot.
At the same time, literature often provides a stimulus, and parallels have been observed between poetry’s abstract, suggestive flow and contemporary dance’s struggle to find new ways of communicating.
A world premiere performance, originally named A New Remembering Esenin now re-titled Remembering...Forgetting is the collaborative work of Nigel Osborne and Michael Popper in reflection to their 1984 choreographic response to Osborne’s chamber work Remembering Esenin – formed from “a love of the writings of the great Russian poet” as Popper explains.
“Nigel Osborne and I share a love of Sergei Esenin, and in 1984 had worked together on a choreographic response to Nigel's chamber work Remembering Esenin. Our new work reflects on this, and on the poetry and life-force of Esenin himself, looking both backwards and forwards from today across the shifting political and artistic sands. After a great deal of discussion, the work itself was made very quickly...suddenly, rather brutally, it was there as if it had waited a long time to burst out. I hope that some of this rough readiness will remain in the performance of it.”
As a hybrid piece of work for choreographed bass voice and cello, the performance leaves “music and dance inextricably bound together” and although the show is billed as “stripping away all that is not vital”, Popper is making a serious attempt to articulate his enthusiasm for the poet without simply telling the audience what they ought to think. He prefers a more allusive and gentle tone.
“I think the new work communicates simply and directly, but is not in any way didactic: it could be seen as a series of suggestions and provocations,” elaborates Popper. “ I think also that audiences can celebrate their emotional and intellectual independence, and enjoy theatre without their response to it being primed by its creators or critics.”

Another theme within Dance Base is the individuality of each company and performance: the strategies on display range from butoh through to contemporary ballet, taking in Indian traditional and aerial magic. Popper doesn’t so much define himself by technique or school, but by an underlying attitude.

“Anyone familiar with my work will know that they cannot know what to expect. To those unfamiliar with it, I would say, "Expect the unfashionable!"”. This, of course, is one of the delights of dance. It can be unpredictable and challenging, and incorporate all manner of influences and styles in a comprehensive pleasure.

Yet Popper does not lose sight of his intentions. “There is a humanity at the heart of the work, and this is its desire and invitation to connect openly and immediately with its audience.” Again, this elegantly dovetails with the aims of Give Dance A Chance, proving that contemporary need not be incommunicative or pretentious, but offer an easy medium of communication.

Esenin is perhaps best-known in dance circles as the husband of Isadora Duncan, but his poetry spanned the period of the Russian revolution, beginning with great political hopes but slowly becoming more melancholic and despairing until his suicide in 1925. By turns socially engaged, blasphemous and spiritual, his words were unpopular with the Communist government, and it was not until after the Second World War that they were readily available again. His numerous love affairs and ambivalent relationship with the Bolsheviks were perhaps contributory factors in his alcoholism and periods of depression: yet he remains a popular poet in his native land, and his death triggered a spate of imitation suicides.

With such a diverse range of styles, Esenin is an interesting choice of inspiration: many of his poems are firmly rooted in a historical context, while others glisten with ahistorical meditations on hopeless or redemptive love. What Osborne and Popper choose to exclude will be as critical as what they include. Equally, they have taken on a serious challenge by sourcing such a protean writer.
What remains clear is Osborne and Popper’s passion and enthusiasm for the new work: in the lead up to the debut Popper feels “a combination of excitement and a certain calmness, the excitement of sensing the power and vitality of the work, and of wanting to share this...and the calm of preparing voice, body and mind”; somewhat understandable considering how the work emerged rapidly after an extended period of definition and debate. Whether you’re a relative virgin to the world of dance, or a veteran to Dance Base’s doors, Remembering...Forgetting is one not to be forgotten.