David Dawson: An English Choreographer Returns to His Roots

LONDON: David Dawson trained in London at the Royal Ballet School. He danced with the Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Dutch National Ballet and Ballet Frankfurt. Wayne Eagling, then director of Dutch National Ballet, gave him his first choreographic assignment.

Dawson later took up the post of resident choreographer at Dresden Semper Opera and the Royal Ballet of Flanders and now works as a freelance choreographer.

He has created more than twenty ballets which are performed by major international companies and this season he created his first work for the Royal Ballet in London; The Human Seasons. He speaks to Dansportalen about the experience.

You once said you remembered sitting side stage and watching Kenneth MacMillan work. Now you are the choreographer standing centre stage – how does that feel?
It’s coming back to the beginning, but it’s all changed. In that corner of the Opera House there is no seat now, it’s just crew and computers there.

But is the ghost of MacMillan still around?
Yes, very much but more as a kind of guiding light than a scary thing, more supportive in a sense – though that is probably just my imagination.

Your opportunity to choreograph for the Royal has been a long time coming. Are there good things about waiting?
Yeah. I think now is the right time for me: I’m more confident. When you’re young you want everything, it’s kind of exciting and you want to be sort of recognised but with that comes a lot of pressure. Having the time to find myself was a good thing rather than having my growing up period as a choreographer on display.

I said to you once that I thought it was good to fly under the radar. But I’ve been really busy; it just hasn’t been in the English press.

And if it isn’t in the English press then it hasn’t happened?
Almost!

Kevin O’Hare contacted you when he knew he had the post of director of the Royal Ballet?
Yes. He’s been amazing, really supportive and welcoming. He said, ‘we want you to feel at home’ and ‘home’ is a word that meant a lot to me because I’ve felt like a gypsy all these years although I was born in this city, at University College Hospital, just five minutes from the Opera House.

And in The Human Seasons, you’re working with your ‘home team’?  
Yes, Yumi’s (Takeshima) is doing costumes, Burt’s (Dalhuysen) is doing lights, Eno (Henze) the set and Greg (Haines) has done the music.

Tell me about the music? Is it orchestral?
Yes, and it’s gorgeous and very transient. The Human Seasons is like the passing of various life experiences. It’s like experiences happen to you just when they are finishing. Relationships come and go, they begin and end. Sometimes you’re happy and sometimes you’re sad.

Human emotions are like a kind of kaleidoscope. There are four seasons in the year but many, many more human seasons. You can experience all four in one day, literally in the weather but also as a person, so it’s a little more open to interpretation.

Was John Keat’s sonnet ‘The Human Seasons’, the inspiration?
Well, I came up with the idea for this title before I even knew there was this poem. What is weird is that my family home is in Hampstead near Keat’s Grove Library where I went as a child and Keats was always this great figure to me. So there was this lovely connection too.

But I also had other ideas like alchemy and the secrets of creating gold. There is a miracle in alchemy and also in dance, this incredible mind over body. It’s this alchemical miracle to me. So, on top of this transient feeling of passing of time, everything has a formula and a science behind it.

One scene we called ‘platinum butterflies’ because of the metallic compound and because of the effect I wanted from these dancers: so it became romantic and scientific at the same time. Of course, the ballet is also me getting to know the company and to make my ‘Royal’ Ballet. I didn’t really know most of the company before.

Is it inspiring to work with new people?
Well, it works both ways. It’s easy and not so easy. If people know you too well they can lead you down a path where you’ve been before and if they don’t know you at all you sometimes have to really point them in the right direction. So it’s all going to be a work – as it should be. But they are really, really good dancers.

It’s amazing watching the ballet happen. It is also becoming a display of the company and who they are today. Everyone gets their moment, everyone represents something within themselves. I’m looking for dancers with personality so I can create a journey even though it is an abstract ballet.

Is London different now from the London you knew, is there a different approach to life?
All I would say is that from my point of view, coming back to London after 20 years  … I have been away so long that I feel like an alien in my own country. I don’t feel I have a real place here. I think London is quite a hard city, it’s very busy, lots of people and it’s very fast. Emotionally there is a little less sympathy around for others; everyone is too busy. It’s a big city and I’ve been out of it. I’m out of practice in living in this kind of hardness.

And Berlin offers you a more creative environment?
Yeah. I can relax. Berlin is as big as London but it’s quieter. I find people are more polite and kinder to each other. It’s not that I’m not welcome here, it’s more that I’m now a different person.

Maggie Foyer
12 January 2013