Listen to Seke

Although, Seke Chimutengwende studied Contemporary Dance for 5 years, people still thinks he is an actor. Not that it stopped him from doing his thing: he recently performed in DV8's production, 'To Be Straight With You'. BELLYFLOP met up with him over a cup of hot chocolate.

So what did you want to interview me about? I still haven't asked...

Well, I just thought it'd be interesting to hear, you know, your story...

Okay.

When did you start dancing?

I was 22 when I started studying at The Place. Before that I went to Lewisham College for 2 years, and before that I'd done some dance classes for fun for a couple of years as well, but I didn't think I was going to be a dancer. I just suddenly decided.

So you didn't start dancing till you were, what, 18?

Yeah, and I wasn't very good. Ha ha. Some people are still surprised that I'm a dancer. Even from knowing me as a performer, they think I'm an actor, but in fact I've hardly done any acting training and I've done 5 years full-time dance training.

That's quite ironic.

What was your experience as a student at London Contemporary Dance School (The Place)?

I felt, and now probably even more, there was too much emphasis on technique in the traditional sense of the word. I think it's quite a weird thing to do, doing those kinds of classes, I mean they're good, but it's strange to put so much emphasis on copying movement and trying to be something that you're not. I think that's a big part of dance training, especially at The Place, and I have a bit of a problem with that.

Were you a bit of a rebel?

No, I just think if you want to dance then that means you can dance and you can add to that by being able to do more movements or move in a safer way. I think it would be interesting to focus on what people are interested in and what they can do already and build from that rather than just impose stuff on people.

When you graduated - what did you do to continue dancing?

When I was in my 3rd year I auditioned for Edge and Transitions because I'd thought I would like to do that, but then when I didn't get it, I thought: 'I'll probably move to Brussels or something', but then as soon as I left The Place I kind of got involved in projects here in London. I did an apprenticeship with Arc Dance Company, which doesn't exist anymore. Their Choreographer, Kim Brandstrup, he did our graduation show and he had this company called Arc for 20 years and I did an apprenticeship for a few months with them.

Did you ask Kim Brandstrup to do an apprenticeship in his company?

No, he asked me. It was kind of unofficial, it wasn't through The Place and I didn't pay and they didn't pay me, but then the company stopped sort of while I was there. I also started working with Rick Nodine, and through Rick I got involved in lots of other projects actually. I found that nearly all the jobs I got were through knowing someone from The Place. I mean, I got one job with a company called Alias in Switzerland just from auditioning.

Was that the first job you got through an audition?

Maybe, yeah. Yeah that's the only job I got where I didn't know anyone at all involved, but with everything else I knew people some how.

So you working with Lloyd Newson in DV8 - that wasn't a lucky break-through, it was via someone you knew?

Yeah, I guess because Lloyd was looking for very specific kinds of people for this show, he was looking for specific ethnic types and he was also looking for people who could do work with text and with movement in some kind of way. And I'd done a workshop with Wendy Houstoun at The Place and she was also involved in working with Rick, so yeah I think he kind of knew about me from people that he knew.

Did you audition at all?

I didn't audition, but he invited me to do a 5 weeks research project for this show, and then he selected people from that.

Including the work you did with DV8, almost all of the work you've done has been Physical Theatre based and you always seem to get to talk a lot? Yeah, for some reason. Is that something you purposely tend to bring to the work?

I don't know, I find it very easy to talk in front of a lot of people - I enjoy it and it's natural to me. Yeah, but I think I kind of got, maybe reputation is a strong word, but I think it's not really something that I wanted to prioritise or push for in any way. I think people just knew I could do it and thought: 'oh, that would be good for this piece'.

You did a beautiful euphoric dance in the last scene of 'To Be Straight With You'.

Yeah, actually I did that movement in an improv in the first or second week of the workshops in the research project and then Lloyd couldn't, it was quite close to when we premiered, and then he couldn't work out how to end the piece and then he remembered this image from a video.

It looked very authentic.

Oh, good. Because everything in the piece is really detailed, like in terms of if you're looking here, or there or if the arm is here or here. So it's good that it looked spontaneous.

How was the experience of working with Lloyd Newson?

It's quite hard to sum up the experience... It's very much his work... It's collaborative, like we offer ideas and he uses people's different skills, but yeah everything sort of has his stamp on it. I guess it's a bit of a contradiction in a way because all the material and a lot of the ideas in everything come from other people, but he kind of controls everything.

But isn't that typical for a choreographer to take upon that kind of a leadership?

Yeah, but I think he's sort of quite extreme in terms of control... he uses different people's skills to get something that he wants. There's nothing democratic about it. I felt like, as opposed to other things I've done, I felt like it was his piece completely - I didn't feel like it was my work, even though I contributed material and whatever time.

So, in your career have you experienced that the relationship between you as a dancer and the choreographer has varied a lot then?

I guess, in other things I've done I've felt more equal creatively... not in everything - I mean, in some projects the idea is very clear and they don't ask me for any input and just say can you do this, this and this...but yeah, with devised stuff I normally feel more equal.

What are you doing now? Do you just take one day, one week or one month at a time?

Yeah, what am I doing? Now I have like two months where I'm not really working much, I'm doing my own stuff - I work with people and we practice improvisation and that's fun, and then I'm doing a project in Austria end of March with a company there and it's a site-specific piece, it's got improvisation in it...

Is that where your heart is? In improvisation?

Yeah. Yeah, I think improvisation is my favourite thing. But it's strange as well because you can't hold on to it in a way. If you have an improvised performance there's nothing to think about before.

Well you could get a little bit nervous and afraid of not being able to do something.

Yeah, but you can't go through anything, you know, try to remember movements or words, corrections. When you're not doing it there's not a lot to think about in a way. I mean, you could theorise about it, but that's useful only to a certain point. Yeah, I would say it's my favourite thing, but I don't know how far it can go - I don't think it's something you can sell.

What do you mean?

I mean there's nothing to sell, there's no product until after. I think it's quite an offensive idea to a lot of people as well, that you don't know what you're doing.

If you hadn't decided to become a dancer when you were 22, what would you have become you think?

I was trying to decide between dancing and acting, and I decided dance, and everyone said, no not everyone, a lot of people said: 'you should have been an actor'. But I like abstraction, I'm not that interested in taking on another character in that sense. But I'm open-minded about what dance and performance is.

Okay, let's stop here. Thanks very much.

You're welcome, I hope it was useful...it was fun and thanks for the hot chocolate.

No worries. Thank you.