TSOTA meets the National Youth Dance Company (NYDC)

[All images credited to Tony Nandi] 

The National Youth Dance Company (NYDC) returns for its third year in Leeds with a new line-up of 38 talented young dancers, including Yorkshire locals such as John-William Watson (17, from Leeds). TSOTA’s Rich Jevons talks to John-William and NYDC Director Jane Hackett.

I wondered what had first led John-William to pursue a dance career. He recalls: “A couple of years ago when I started high school my teacher got me into dancing, just by encouragement. They told me about Phoenix Dance Youth Academy in Leeds. The moment I started with them I knew I wanted to go into dance. With Phoenix it’s all about what contemporary dance can be and it’s really helped me both technically and creatively. It’s broadened my outlook on dance, what dance can be and what I can be as a dancer.

“When I first started I thought contemporary dance was just lyrical things, whereas at Phoenix there is so much energy and drive that it got you excited about dance. That energy was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Now with NYDC we’ve been working with this year’s Guest Artistic Director, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui over nine or ten months and he has worked with us directly, which has been a wonderful and beautiful collaborative experience.”

Frame[d] is a collection of pieces – Babel(words), Puz/zle, Loin and TeZukA – Sidi has done over the past few years put together in one piece. So what’s the story? “The narrative is not specific, it’s more in the creative process: building barriers and fighting against barriers other people put up against you. So it’s a frame or wall restricting your beliefs.”

The premiere at Sadler’s Wells is described by John-William as “a wonderful experience, we felt each other’s energy and were all as one as a company, not individuals. The feeling afterwards was mesmerising, indescribable – we were all crying and holding each other. It was really quite beautiful because we’d put all our heart and soul on stage. A wave came over us.”

But how has it been taking the work out on tour at such a tender age? “The tour is a challenge but it is exciting. It is quite difficult to adapt to each venue and to recreate the energy that we had at the premiere of the show. In Leeds I’m performing in the same building where I do my training so I have performed with Phoenix Dance in that theatre before. So it’s going to be a wonderful experience to bring this piece that I’m so proud of back home.”

NYDC Director Jane Hackett is filled with a similar enthusiasm and exuberance. “Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s starting point was taking sections from four works that he’s made previously,” she explains. “He did that because he’d already done all his thinking around those works and what they mean. He doesn’t want to spend any of his time with the young people to pursue his own thinking and development. He wanted all that time for them. So he brought that in as a framework to start and taught them these.

“But he was really aware that this group are unique and bring something special with them compared to the trained dancers he normally works with. They’ve got a wonderful raw energy and they come from all different backgrounds. Some have had quite a bit of training from a CAT scheme or they’ve been to a dance school, or been with street dance groups or taught themselves.

“So once he’d taught them the basic framework he then went back and got the dancers to improvise which then got worked into the framework. So they have a real ownership and it’s really engaging for the audience and it’s just amazing to see the reactions of the audience who might not normally have seen contemporary dance. It’s just a really engaging and powerful piece.”

So what is the real difference about the way NYDC work? “The difference between working with a normal professional company and NYDC is that you have a different responsibility. With a professional company the attention is entirely on the work and the dancers are almost like instruments. But NYDC is about what they want as young people and developing artists. For example, they might need more time to explain the context. So as much as it is about delivering the piece it’s about the dancers as well.”

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Frame[d] plays at Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre, Leeds on Sunday 12 July, as part of a national tour.

Rich Jevons