Angela Conquet

From a Paris Arts Center to Melbourne

Could we begin by having you tell us how you can to be in your present position at Dancehouse? We hear that your previous position was at an arts center in Paris, are you originally from France?

I am born in Romania, and I am from a town near the Hungarian border. From a young age I lived between two cultures, which made me feel that I had roots in a variety of places. I have initially trained in applied foreign languages as I wanted to become an interpreter and translator. I benefited from a great European context which was offering then lots of scholarships to train in this field and I even worked for a while as an interpreter.

How was it that you went from there to become involved with dance?

I gradually began to feel that I wanted to work in the arts, so I got a Master’s Degree in arts management. Then I began working for the company of the choreographer Sidonie Rochon in Paris. Rochon is a choreographer who was strongly influenced by her work with Hideyuki Yano (*1). It was working for her company that I began to gain an interest in Japan.

Later on, I worked for seven years at the independent arts center Mains d’Œuvres (https://www.mainsdoeuvres.org) where I was in charge of the dance projects. It was a pioneering arts facility that was part of the “New territory for the arts” movement (Nouveau territoire de l’art *2) which repurposed disused spaces into arts centres for artists with a view to replace art as part of everyday life, a place where connections could be built between art and the local communities. My job there was to scout for new talent who otherwise had little opportunity to show their work. From there, I moved to Melbourne in 2011.

What led to your being assigned to the position and how long was your contract for?

I applied for the job as Dancehouse was looking for a new director, including internationally, and the contract was for four years. The contract was renewable and I am now nearing the end of my second term. Having a term of four years is a great system, I believe. You have enough time to review and revise the leadership and operational vision, and I believe that four years is the minimum amount of time you need to be able to evaluate the results of the projects you put in place. And in fact, we are now beginning to see the result of the projects we initiated in the last three or four years.

What made you decide to move to Melbourne? Was it from an interest in Australian dance?

I like jobs that are international in nature, and indeed in France I had been working with a European network that supported the movement of artists between countries, so I simply had a desire to experience working in a new place. I also felt that continuing to work in Europe would translate into a Europe-centric way of thinking and mindset, so I wanted to place myself on the periphery of Europe and look at the world with fresh eyes. I took on the challenge of moving to a distant region and working in a different context. I also had an interest in the Indigenous cultures, and I was also certain that in Australia I would find ways of thinking about the world and ways of being in the world that were worlds apart from those of the West.

When I was working in Paris, I had heard of famous Australian choreographers like Lucy Guerin and Russell Dumas and at Mains d’Oeuvres I had hosted some young dancers [from Australia]. I had some prior knowledge, though superficial, but I felt attracted to Australia and what I knew of it. At the time, dance in France was dominated by conceptual dance, which meant that it often lacked movement. In contrast, Australian dance was very physical and full of movement, with many references unknown to me. So, I came to Melbourne with curiosityand interest, and indeed what I found was a great diversity of dance practices.

Could you tell us specifically about some of the things you learned by coming to Australia?

I have learned a lot in my eight years here. For one thing I realized how—if I may use the harshest of words—we have been ‘colonized’ by the Western thought. I realized that, until then, my references were mainly by white male philosophers like Gilles Deleuze, Rancière, Foucault. Being in Australia enabled me to start to understand and use different perspectives. I have learned a new approach to ‘feminism’ through the works of the Australian philosopher Elizabeth Grosz and her concepts like “corporeal feminism.” I have also learned a lot about ‘queer culture’. And, from Indigenous thinking, I have learned about how to look at the world from a perspective that doesn’t rely on concepts of hierarchy. The idea that we are one within a greater circle, an ecosystem, invites us to think differently about the importance of individuality. The experience of seeing all of this reflected into dance has changed me greatly.

Dancehouse and Dance Massive

Now I would like to ask you to tell us about the history of Dancehouse and its mission.

Dancehouse is the only dance-specific organization in Australia, and we present dance performances throughout the year. The building is a beautiful example of Victorian style architecture built in 1887, and it is a heritage building. Some 27 years ago, a group of artists got permission to use it from the City of Melbourne which owned it. It thus became a place for artists to work and present work. Since then, rather than being a place representing a single vision, it has been a place for the artists run by the artists, offering dance training, support to create and present work, while also being a place to think and develop dance through discourse, public programs and publications. . In addition we feel it is also our job to grow dance audiences. As such, the core of our mission has three pillars: supporting the dance artists, promoting dance as an art and building audiences.

Where does your funding come from?

We operate with core 4-yr funding from the Australia Council for the Arts (federal) and Victorian Government (state support). Our venue is rent-free as it is offered by the local municipality, City of Yarra. As rental rates are very high in Australia this helps us a lot and it is a proof of the visionary approach of the municipal government to invest in the arts by investing in arts venues. We have three studios that we rent out to the public and they are used for a variety of classes from 6:00 in the evening until 11:00 for amateur dance, yoga and other movement practices and classes which bring a variety of people and artists to our venue. Very often our performances are sold out. The tickets are 15 [Australian] dollars for students, while the most expensive tickets are 25-30 dollars. In Melbourne, a cup of coffee costs 4 dollars and a glass of wine is more expensive between 10- 15 dollars, so the price range of our tickets is easily affordable for people who are interested to come see dance.

What is the social profile of the contemporary dance audience in Melbourne?

It is often said that Melbourne is the cultural capital of Australia. It is also a city with many galleries and universities. Also, Victoria College of the Arts, the equivalent of a Dance Academy, is the one of the few colleges in the country with a dance major course. The dance audience consists of many dance practitioners, artists, teachers, students who are involved in dance in some way or have interest in dance, but the audiences that comes in particular to our festival “Dance Massive” come from a broad range of backgrounds and demographics.

The biennial Dance Massive (*3) festival held every other year in March is Australia’s big contemporary dance festival.

Dance Massive was launched in 2009. It is run jointly by three of Melbourne’s arts centers, Dancehouse, Arts House (https://www.artshouse.com.au), which specializes in contemporary dance and theatre, and Malthouse Theatre (https://malthousetheatre.com.au), which specializes primarily in theatre but is also open to a wide range of other artistic activities. It has been a very successful festival, and in 2019 it celebrated the 10th anniversary of its launch. In 2019 it was the sixth edition with 28 works presented over the 12 days from March 12th to 24th. The program was prepared jointly by the three arts centers and Dancehouse prepared performances at some off-site venues like the old Abbottsford Convent, a tennis court and a gymnasium.

The differing roles of the three arts centers have resulted into a very strong synergy, and by attending Dance Massive you can get quite a clear picture of the contemporary dance scene in Australia. Dancehouse focuses on experimental dances while Malthouse with its big stage is well suited for larger-scale works by companies like Chunky Move and Lucy Guerin Inc, and Arts House features mid-career artists as well as an Indigenous program. Dancehouse also prepares public programs like workshops and discussions.

Securing funding for the festival is always a challenge, but we have such constant audiences and the festival serves a meaningful role with regard to the artists’ careers. It also gathers professionals from the other Australian states and from overseas, which makes it possible to introduce Australian choreographers to overseas presenters.

Since you became director of Dancehouse, have you introduced any new programs?

I started our magazine Dancehouse Diary (http://www.dancehousediary.com.au ) and our choreographic competition. The first edition of Dancehouse Diary was published as a free magazine in 2012, and editorially we aim to connect dance to other art forms and to social, political or economic issues. Until now we have published ten editions. It is edited by myself and Philippa Rothfield, who is an Australian scholar on the philosophy of the body. And for each issue we also invite in a guest editor.

The motivation behind publishing this magazine was the sort of frustration I felt after having moved to Australia from Paris. I felt that Australian artists were not thinking necessarily about physicality as a reflection of society. A person’s physicality is very strongly influenced by the cultural and social aspects of their life environment in the world. For example, we can readily see that the way people walk on the streets in Australia, Japan and France are not the same. If we observe carefully, we can discover phenomena hidden within the different environments that influence physical habits, and it is important to connect physical being to ethical and political factors. In our magazine, we pursue concepts from the standpoints of specific contexts, which means that people from fields other than dance can also find interesting things in it. Melbourne is one of the few cities in Australia where people can study dance as a major course in university, and many people have doctor’s degrees in dance here, doing research on a very high level. However, there are very few platforms outside the academia where the results of this research can be connected to the actual dance practice. Although our Dancehouse Diary is not an academic journal, it does serve to support this kind of articulation. There is no dance magazine using this perspective so we can say that it is indeed a unique project.

Would you tell us about your choreography competition?

In Australia, about 90% of the private support for dance goes to ballet. However, the Keir Foundation has a profound understanding of and interest in the contemporary dance scene, and we were able to receive support from them to establish the Keir Choreographic Award for choreographers. The award jury is made up of noted international choreographers and programmers and the first stage of selection is done on the basis of videos from applicants, from which eight finalists are then selected to create new works of up to 20 minutes to compete for the award. The competition was launched in 2014 and is held every other year in the off years from our Dance Massive festival. It has been held three times until now and the next edition will be in March of 2020. The fact that it held as a competition draws a lot of attention from the media and the general audience, and it has been so popular that the tickets are always sold out. It Australia dance tours rarely to other cities but as part of this competition, we have formed a partnership with Sydney-based Carriageworks, one of the largest venues in Australia and the former railroad car factory.( https://carriageworks.com.au).

How is the judging conducted?

The competition is open to Australian artists, and it is possible for foreign artists who have become residents of Australia to apply as well. The first stage of application involves submission of a 5-minute video. It is a video about an idea to make a new work not a dance performance video, more a verbal presentation of the idea behind the choreography. The finalists selected from this video application stage are then given support from the partners (Dancehouse, Carriageworks, Australia Council and the Keir Foundation) to create the actual dance work. The number of dancers in each piece is limited to five, and each applicant is given 100 hours of rehearsal studio time and technical support. The finalists then compete for the award with their resulting 20-minute pieces. For the previous edition in 2018, the jury consisted of six people, including international choreographers Meg Stuart, Ismael Houston Jones and Eszter Salamon, and from Australia choreographer Lucy Guerin, while the remaining two jurors were programmers and presenters from Belgium and Hong Kong. Our policy is to include one Australian artist and the rest of the jury is international. We have come to include during the competition public programs featuring our jury members, so the competition has developed into a festival-like event that covers about ten days in all.

It is interesting that you chose to use videos not of actual dance performance but presentations about the idea behind a proposed work for the first stage of application selections. In Japan, especially with young artists, they are weak in the area of taking an objective perspective so they tend to develop [work] from a personal subjective perspective, which often results works that are hard for the audiences to understand. Your choreographic competition format appears to reduce the risk of that.

It came be the case in Australia. Our efforts to get young artists to be able to talk about their work led to this selection format we use. It is important that they be able to explain what inspired their work and how they can be understood not only by the people they work with but by the audience as well. Artists need to adopt a methodology for their thinking and be able to apply it effectively. When I came to Australia, I found that many artists lacked the kind of analytical approach that could give them a method for positioning themselves in respect to others and to formulate their references. That made me think that embedding pathways for criticality in the process of making dance would be helpful and thus we created a program at Dancehouse where we would invite artists in residence to be in dialogue with critics and dramaturges or to give workshops that would not explain a dance work but would give tools to look at dance from a critical perspective.

So your focus was on how critics can play a creative role for the artists and audiences, didn’t you?

I personally read a lot of criticism in order to interrogate my own way of understanding dance. Criticism helped me polish my ability to understand and appreciate dance. When I first saw dance works of Xavier Le Roy, I didn’t understand them at all. But after reading a lot of critical discourse about his works, I found that after a while I was able to understand what he was doing. I felt that I wanted to share that experience with the audiences in Australia.

When I presented Xavier Le Roy’s work Self Unfinished at Dancehouse, I felt it important to properly explain the context first. So, I organized a public program introducing key ideas of French conceptual dance through discussions and workshops as well as film showings of the main dance works part of this movement, in order to introduce audiences to this different perspective on the moving body and connect it to the local context. Creating opportunities for a dialogue between artists who come here to present work and the local context (community) is to me an important part of our work as presenters and curators. This series of programs turned out to be very successful. And, by inviting panel speakers like architects and urbanists into the discussions contributed to broadening people’s perspective.

Without this kind of groundwork, Xavier Le Roy’s work would not have been perhaps fully understood. I think we live in a society that forces us to get results immediately or to understand something immediately without making any effort. In the case of dance, where there is sometimes a need to pause and look hard into it in order to grasp its meaning, there is a tendency to disregard the importance of perceiving a dance work from a sensorial perspective, to let the imagination unfold. Sometimes it’s not about seeing and understanding but feeling and for those with no time for this, it is hard to even approach a dance work. Sometimes these works bring in sophisticated philosophical concepts but it is still about being curious and persisting in connecting with the works. Because of this, it is hard to present dance pieces that are conceptual and abstract in nature, but we have to make it our responsibility to invite audiences to see challenging dance works that require some effort, that would not come to you If you do not go to them.

For geographical reasons, Japan is a difficult place for audiences to experience Western dance other than on a personal level. It is hard to see dance with the broader perspective that includes its historical continuity.

This could be true for Australia as well. The famous Australian choreographers like Lucy Guerin and Phillip Adams were strongly influenced by the communities they were part of in New York in the 1980s, and in the case of Russell Dumas, as he was working with Tricia Brown, he has clearly influenced dance making in Australia from a post-modern dance perspective. In Australia, there are many travel grants for which dance students can apply to study abroad, but rarely do they get to work with several choreographers while overseas. Most dancers in Australia work with one of the 4 or 5 major dance companies which often will influence their own style later. Sometimes, inspiration circulates in an interesting way and we Often see a lot of works in the similar style to some incredibly influential choregrapher or piece. In recent years there has been a trend toward working with a lot of elaborate sets or props, or an excessive focus on costumes. For this reason, there is sometimes less attention to embodying physically an idea, the ideas are on the body rather than within the body.

That is why I think one of the main purposes of our training programs at Dancehouse should be to teach dancers how to find their own methodology and style that fits their interests and taste without succumbing to predominant influences.

The contemporary dance scene

Are there any choreographers that you place special importance on? And would you tell us if there are any artists that you especially want to support at Dancehouse?

For the Dance Massive festival this time, we focused on three senior choreographers of Australians dance: Russell Dumas, Hellen Sky and Jill Orr. Orr comes from body art performance, and she is one of the pioneers of body art. She will presen a very politically oriented work on our board people who die at sea because Australia would not welcome refugees in.

Rosalind Crisp and Sandra Parker are mid-career artists that are considerably well known, but not seen on our stages as much as they would deserve. In Australia, artists over 40 aren’t eligible to apply for many grants, but many artists in this age group continue to make wonderful work. So Dancehouse is keen to give support to artists like these.

I am also drawn to the work of choreographers whose works may not be spectacular in appearance and are thus difficult to get opportunities for presenting work but are nonetheless very important.We like to introduce young artists who work with less spectacular areas of research. The newly emerging artist Siobhan McKenna, who just recently began to show her works, uses speech and body sounds. Others include Nana Bilus Abaffy who creates performative works playing with notions of beauty and re-creates scenes from Renaissance paintings. She creates very fascinating works that challenge the canons of art and the reality of the body. The fact that she has studied the Greek Tragedies for years gives great depth to her artistic quests.Although it is not easy, we try to give these artists support that sometimes spans several years. Atlanta Eke is an artist that we have supported from the beginning of her career, and she has become quite established now. For Dance Massive this time her work is presented on a tennis court. She is constantly being chased by and hit by tennis balls. Her work is influenced by feminism and is very dynamic, and she is an artist who surprises us each time with her new creations.

How does Indigenous Australian (Aborigine) culture influence the dance scene in Australia?

The Australian arts world is, like in many parts of the world, very white-oriented, and only recently we have seen a focus on supporting Indigenous arts and culture and Indigenous-led artistic initiatives. Gradually, there is an increased awareness of the Indigenous artists’ work which has become a more visible presence, though, and in Melbourne, we had for the first time a “First Nation” festival that features Indigenous only arts only last year. But Aboriginal culture is deeply rooted in music and dance storytelling and both the traditional and contemporary approaches are very interesting. But as presenters, we need to ensure we know how to avoid exoticism and tokenism when working with Indigenous artists and that we listen and that we respect all the relevant cultural protocols. Even if their work may prove challenging sometimes for the ears of the white audiences, we have to accept that their art just like their lands has suffered from years and years of colonialism; and to accept that we deal with complex stories and territories.

To give an example, we recently presented an Indigenous artist named S. J. Norman who, as part of her performed installation, recreated an English colonial style kitchen and invited the audience to have tea and scones, which is a well-known English ritual. As they were about to taste the scones, she explained that they were infused with her own blood – a reference to the poisoned flour given by the white settlers to the Indigenous populations. Then the audience was asked whether they would eat the scones or not. There were people in the audience who broke down in tears. But because we need to understand our colonial history and its consequences, it is important to present works with such a message.

Recently in the Japan art world, there is a trend of researching local traditions in order to create new works, and in the contemporary dance scene there are choreographers who are studying traditional Japanese dance and others who create collaborative works with traditional folk artists. Is there a similar trend in Australia?

There are contemporary dance artists and artists in other disciplines who visit the remote Indigenous communities and artists and sometimes work collaboratively together. But, it is not possible for non-Indigenous people to learn the indigenous traditional arts. Indigenous arts are passed down by word of mouth, and stories, music and dances are different with every tribe and people. Also, as Indigenous communities have been massively dislocated from their original lands, much of the language and the culture is lost sometimes. So, it is indeed urgent to support Indigenous people to hand down to their younger generations their ancestral arts and storytelling and knowledge so that we can also be inspired by them.

Issues going forward

Having worked now at Dancehouse for seven years, is there anything you find particularly difficult about working in Australia.

The fact that it is very difficult to tour dance in Australia is one big challenge. To begin with, Australia is huge and when it comes to travel expenses, it is less expensive for us to get from Melbourne to Japan than it is for us to get to Perth in the west of Australia. The fact that we can’t do tours has a big effect on the dancers’ work, on the longevity and visibility of their projects.

Although there are many beautifully equipped presenting venues and theatres around the country, Dancehouse is the only dance specialised venue to present dance. In Sydney, there is Critical Path (http://criticalpath.org.au), a center dedicated to research and development of choreography, but they don’t have a theatre to present performances. And STRUT Dance (https://www.strutdance.org.au) in Perth sometimes presents dance in collaboration with local theatres, but it is mainly a research and residency facility. Both are dance-specific arts centres, but they don’t have performance spaces.

Sydney is more famous for its performative practices. Carriageworks presents sometimes large-scale dance works by world-renown choreographers. One of the organisations in residence at Carriageworks is Performance Space (http://performancespace.com.au/) whichjas dedicated its yearly festival Livewors to experimental works from Australia and the Asia-Pacifica region. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide all have major festivals that sometimes invite famous dance companies, but they rarely tour to other cities as they have exclusivity clauses with the festival presenting them. In all of these contexts, it is difficult to focus on smaller scale independent artists. For venues that don’t have dance-specific programming, it is essential that they have an audience that will come to see the performances as well as audience-outreach programs that can invite the audiences to discover, understand and appreciate the works they see. And as all this is not an easy task, very often only productions that are more mainstream or entertaining are presented rather than those which may be less spectacular and dealing with challenging subjects or themes.

Is there any national or local government support for improving that environment?

More needs to be done, because efforts to support and promote dance as part of a national cultural policy are still insufficient. France has succeeded in instating government-led funding programs that contributed to de-centralising the arts in the region and which also supported nationwide networking, but in Australia the arts can be supported generously at a state level but at a federal level, arts policies and priorities can change completely with each new government. Several years ago, the then Minister for the Arts decided to allocate half of the arts grants funds managed by an independent department to his own ministry and distributed these funds in a discretionary manner to projects that he supported. The result was devastating for the independent sector and its consequences can still be felt today. Australia has some excellent artists [and not only in dance] and there is an audience that is genuinely interested in dance. But Australia doesn’t yet have the right funding system for supporting efficiently all the layers of the arts ecology. Specifically in the field of dance, funding is necessary to allow artists to tour, to invest in the right infrastructure to be able to present them. Funds should be allocated to devising specific public programs and community engagement initiatives as well as upskilling opportunities for programmers and presenters to have access to training and travel grants to be able to discover the artists.

What is the situation regarding international collaboration in creative activities and productions?

In Europe, such programs have been successful, so I believe we have a lot to learn from such successes. With the proper context and resources, I believe collaborative creation and touring of the resulting works is possible. There have already been successful examples for large scale cross-national productions commissioned by international festivals, but it has only involved famous companies and it is very rare for such projects to involve the kind of independent artists I work with.

We are already looking for potential partners for international collaborative projects. From Australia, it is clearly easier to attempt tours into Asia, but we do have a network of European partners who have presented Australian work. I wish we could develop or be part of something similar to the European dance network Aerowaves (*4). More efforts are needed to get Australian artists into international networks. Currently, most of the Australian artists who are successfully active overseas have established independently their own networks within European countries.

Listening to what you have said thus far, I find many aspects that are similar to our situation in Japan. You are currently here in Japan on a one-month research program at the invitation of the Saison Foundation. We would like to know if you have found any artists that interest you.

This is my third visit to Japan since I first came in 2014, but it is my first extended stay, and it has helped me to understand more about how the Japanese context and dance are reflecting Japanese society. For some time, I have been interested in how contemporary choreographers here incorporate traditional Japanese dance into their works. In Europe where there is only a very linear concept of time and space, there is little discourse between the traditional arts and the contemporary. I have been inspired by Akira Kasai. His dance is Butoh, but it is such a contemporarised approach of butoh. I feel that every day he is reinventing Butoh. I found it very interesting how in his work Kafun Kakumei (Pollen Revolution) he recreates traditional dance in a punk-like context. I also find Kyoto’s Yasuko Yokoshi very interesting. I am also a big fan of Saburo Teshigawara, and I appreciate the way that Rihoko Sato appears to have brough her own creativity in her recent solo work I saw. Among the younger artists, I am interested in Ruri Mito. Despite her youth, I find her pursuit of dance to have a very solid core. I also liked Chelfitsch very much. Although it is not choreographed work, the choreography of the constantly moving bodies skilfully translates a text that shows us how we have lost our humanity in our mechanized lives. The text is so skilfully done that I’m sure it would get the same response if it were performed in Australia. I also like the way it contained a political message as well.

It contrasts society in a positive way and produces a very interesting friction between tradition and technology. And I felt that when the body finds a place on that boundary it introduces traditional forms. I believe that Japanese artists have a lot of language that they can speak to the world with.

Thank you for giving us so much of your time today.