“From the very start, we were interested in trespassing that border between stage and auditorium, or the audience, and this is something that has reoccurred in almost every piece of work we’ve made. This idea of connecting with people, taking them with us on a journey. Breaking that comfortable position, that vision of the audience in the dark, sitting there just watching.”
The longer we talk to Luca Silvestrini, Artistic Director of dance theatre innovators Protein Dance, the more clearly we realise that he is a man with a very clear mission: to bring people together and get them thinking, laughing and really paying attention. It’s a goal that the company has achieved over its 27 year history through creative use of setting and space, bringing together community participants and professionals and encouraging a performance style that uses everything at its disposal – dance, text, song, technology and direct audience interaction, to name but a few – to help audiences see the everyday human experience, in its awkwardness, its complexity, its beauty and sometimes its absurdity, in a whole new light.
We are delighted to welcome Luca into the voidspace to talk about how these elements have developed over the history of the company, via heavenly chefs, a brush with death in a swimming pool, and the very particular impact of breaking a cucumber across the knee in anger.
voidspace:
Welcome to the voidspace, Luca. Thank you for coming to talk to me today. Please tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Luca Silvestrini:
I am Luca Silvestrini, artistic director of Protein Dance, a dance theatre company based in London, at Woolwich Works.
voidspace:
How did you come to found Protein?
Luca Silvestrini:
I co-founded Protein in 1997, at a time when I was still working as a dancer for The Featherstonehaughs, directed by Lea Anderson. I had only arrived in the UK in 1995, so it was my first few years in the country.
I was studying dance at Trinity Laban when I met Lea Anderson and, as soon as I finished my final year there, she invited me to join the company to work on a piece called The Featherstonehaughs Draw on the Sketch Books of Egon Schiele.
Around the same time as I was working with Lea, I and a former student colleague of mine, Bettina Strickler, decided to create a short duet for a choreographic platform at The Place called Resolution Festival which happens every year. It’s a platform for new choreography and new choreographers. Bettina and I were getting on very well together and we thought, “Oh, why don’t we make a little piece of work and present it together?”
That’s how Protein started.
voidspace:
Why “Protein”?
Luca Silvestrini:
After various conversations about names, we realised that we didn’t really want to use our real names and we started to investigate words we could use. We came across the word “protean” from the god Proteus and we thought, it was perfect, because we wanted to use the idea of transformation. We’d been looking at words connected to this concept: “transforming”, “changeable”, etc, because we were interested in exploring the everyday, but with a different perspective, bringing up the hidden elements, the less comfortable elements, or the funny side of the everyday. But then we thought, “Protean Dance Company” didn’t really sound immediate and for everybody. Some people might not know what “protean” means. They might need to go and look it up. It’s not very accessible. So, we thought, “protean” sounds like “protein”. And “protein” is about colour; it’s about energy; it’s about movement. So, we decided to call ourselves Protein Dance.
A name is a name. Once you’re given a name, you stick to it. At the time, we didn’t think that there would have been a life or future to the company beyond that first duet, so we just put the name down, thinking, “Who cares? As long as we’ve got a name.”
voidspace:
And now here you are, 25 years later…
Luca Silvestrini:
And here we are, still talking about it!
voidspace:
Someone mentioned to me that they originally thought, when they heard the name that it might be connected to “protean.” I’d said “Oh yeah, maybe. But then it’s spelled differently.” I love the fact I’m going to have to go back and tell them that they were right.
Luca Silvestrini:
Yes, it’s spelled and pronounced differently. Sometimes people spell it “protean” by mistake, which is brilliant. We were trying to start from the concept of mutability and look for a name that could communicate the sense of that idea, but after giving it some thought, we thought that it was a bit too complicated. We wanted something accessible.
voidspace:
I love the fact that that drive for accessibility, that runs through all of your work, was there right from the very start.
Luca Silvestrini:
We started with the idea of creating work that could be appreciated by a wider audience, and of reaching out to people, regardless of their awareness, or knowledge, or experience of dance, and with the intention of taking ourselves a bit less seriously. We felt that dance around us at that time was quite navel-gazing, and not for the masses, but more for a specialised dance audience.
When we started, most of British contemporary dance was quite intense and dark. Most work seemed almost like a study of how you can manipulate bodies in space, with lighting and the first appearances of digital technology. Very technical and experimental, but not very easy for the wider audience to access.
voidspace:
You already needed to know something about it to be able to appreciate it.
Luca Silvestrini:
Exactly that. We thought, we want to do something different. We were both passionate about physical theatre, dance theatre, and we wanted to use movement and text. We wanted to connect to the everyday, to popular culture and life around us. To reflect upon the silliness sometimes, the awkwardness or the surreal aspects of the everyday.
In fact, our first group piece was all about us as private people in a public place: how much of it you let out, how you control your urges, your needs, how much the public environment allows you to be yourself, or the extent to which you are influenced by conventions and traditions.
When I look back at that time, to the early days, I see that some of Protein’s core interests and themes were already there. Of course, then there’s a long period of development in between. And with Bettina leaving the company at some point, I stopped performing and began to choreograph by myself. But I think the core elements of our initial investigation continued to this day.
voidspace:
How did your first piece as a company play out?
Luca Silvestrini:
Our first piece was a duet, about 17 minutes long, called Duel. It was about me and Bettina, an Italian man and a Swiss woman, dealing with language.
One of the last sections in the work was supposed to be set in a lift, in a very confined space, with the two of us fighting for each other’s space and eventually finding compromises to coexist in the same space. But, as it turned out, the piece ended like a duel, with Bettina and I back-to-back, walking out of a square of light, which then goes to dark. We don’t see what happens to these two people in the moment that they turn towards each other. It was a funny kind of exploration, of a relationship between a man and a woman from different countries.
voidspace:
Can you tell me more about your mission statement: “connecting people and everyday life through dance”?
Luca Silvestrini:
Someone else came up with that phrase. You have to find a way of summarising what you do, squeezing the information into a few words, which is kind of impossible. There is truth in it, though. That’s what we do, try to connect with people. I sometimes describe what I do as very people-centred, people focused. Because the subject matter of the work is about people, and it’s about us. It’s about the world around us. Those are the themes and topics that most interest me, that make me question and struggle with.
And then, of course, our work is about reaching out to people, because we want people to find the same interest in the work that we do. It’s about feeling connected. So that’s how the word “connecting” in that summary ties into what we do. As a performer first, and now as a choreographer and a director, my interest is in seeing people feeling connected and provoked by what they see. Hopefully, then, they are not just consuming a show in the hour and a half that they’re watching our work, but they’re able to go home and carry on thinking about it, debating about it, feeling unsettled by it.
That’s what most interests me. If that’s what happens, not for everyone of course – you can’t please or provoke everyone – but usually when there is feedback, when I read about what people think, or I hear about people’s reactions to a show, I think, “That’s exactly it!”. Even if only one person, out of a few hundred, or out of a thousand, has been provoked, then I feel I’ve achieved my goal.
voidspace:
It’s interesting that you say that provoking and engaging are on an equal footing. It doesn’t have to be a comfortable reaction, or a reaction necessarily validating whatever it is you’ve said or shown.
You don’t necessarily have to agree entirely, as long as you’re thinking about it.
Luca Silvestrini:
Absolutely. Protein’s work started as, and always is, about providing a good and meaningful night out. “Entertainment” is never a word I’d shy away from. I think it’s important that the audience feels entertained, but not entertained for the sake of it. It’s not just about having a good night out, seeing something and forgetting all about it by the time you’ve left the theatre. My ambition is to make sure that there is enjoyment in the moment, but enough provocation to make you think about it once the performance is over, once you look back at what you’ve seen. So that it’s an experience, something more than just sitting down passively.
And that’s why, over the years, I have been interested in provoking through the presentation of the work, not just letting the audience sit and watch it in a more traditional way.
voidspace:
What you say really resonates with us at the voidspace, particularly our interest in interactivities in the arts, because I think quite often those sorts of experiences do stay with people, resonate with people, provoke people in a stronger way than if they’ve just sat and experienced something quite passively.
Can you tell me how that element of interactivity has developed over the years?
Luca Silvestrini:
I remember even in that first duet, Duel, there was a section where Bettina was addressing the audience, asking them to support her, to take her side. And I was doing a counter-scene at the back, asking them not to listen.
Even in a very embryonic way, there was already an element of really trying to go beyond the fourth wall and take away that sense of separation. From the very start, we were interested in trespassing that border between stage and auditorium, or the audience, and this is something that has reoccurred in almost every piece of work we’ve made. This idea of connecting with people, taking them with us on a journey. Breaking that comfortable position, that vision of the audience in the dark, sitting there just watching. It’s always been something that’s been there, and it’s led us to exploring and discovering different ways of presentation.
Even the first duets that Bettina and I made in the beginning, up to 1999, were performed in so many different places. I remember Portrait With Group and Duck – our first group piece – was performed by a swimming pool at an outdoor festival, Dies De Dansa in Barcelona. The festival was, as one would expect, all about performing in urban locations and they offered us the Olympic swimming pool; in the end, this was an international performance opportunity for us, and we had to adapt to it. The piece we had created was not meant to be performed in an outdoor space, especially by the side of a big swimming pool, with an audience sitting in an Olympic rake.
voidspace:
A working swimming pool? With water still in it?
Luca Silvestrini:
Yes!
That was an interesting experience. It was stressful, because, of course, very naively, we thought that there would be a few people sitting around the swimming pool, but actually the whole audience were sitting to one side of us. So even if we faced the dance to the front, we had to look round to one side, to the audience. It was very weird. We adapted the ending, so that I jumped into the swimming pool at the end, dressed in a suit.
voidspace:
You’ve got to, if you’ve got a swimming pool. If it’s there, you’ve got to use it.
Luca Silvestrini:
Yes! I remember we couldn’t really try it in rehearsal, and I can’t actually swim very well. I struggled. I thought “Oh, my God! I’m not going to come back out of here alive, in my shoes and suit!” But that’s the kind of thing we did at the beginning.
Sometimes, we were forced to present the work in small places, with the audience not just sitting to the front, but sitting all around, in non-theatre spaces. We welcomed that without any problem, and it led us to start cultivating an interest in breaking away from the traditional end-on presentation.
voidspace:
What are some of the more memorable spaces that you’ve worked in?
Luca Silvestrini:
In 2001, we were commissioned by The Wapping Project. It was an old hydraulic power station in Wapping, that had been turned into an arts centre, a beautiful space. It was a gallery and a restaurant. Sadly, it doesn’t exist anymore.
They commissioned us to make a piece on a spiral outdoor stairwell, seen by the restaurant only through two doors and two windows. The challenge of creating work in response to such an unusual site, and having to think about what the audience was seeing from where they were, was really interesting.
The series of pieces that the Wapping Project commissioned was called Stairworks. Our contribution to the series was a pivotal piece of work for us, as we really had to think about the context in which we were performing: This is a restaurant. People are sitting, eating, and watching, and we are on a stairwell. What does that mean?
The space looked like a cathedral. So, we made a piece where we imagined we were chefs, and the stairwell was paradise. There were people, chefs, who no longer existed. We were all beyond, in another place, in the outer realm. It was during the foot and mouth disease epidemic of the early 2000s, so we imagined that all the chefs had been culled because they had been infected, from handling contaminated meat.
The chefs had been culled, and therefore the stairwell space was where the departed chefs existed. And I was a living chef, starting from the restaurant, being accepted by these angels – chefs – behind the door.
For me, this piece has all the elements of what Protein is, because it’s about something contemporary, something that people were thinking about at the time, something imaginative and provoking, and also offered us the best sort of challenge, turning a stairwell into a performance space.
The piece also had to interact with an audience sitting at tables, having dinner. We started at the bar with the ITN news jingle, and a newsreader – played by an actor – saying that the government had announced that all chefs needed to be culled because of the spread of foot and mouth disease in restaurants. And then you see me with a piece of raw meat in my hand, looking around, coming out of the kitchen and thinking “Oh, God! They’re talking about me!” And then the doors open, and there are these beautiful chefs in white towels, looking like a gay sauna, calling me in.
Then the piece starts, and the chef-angels try to convince me to stay. What looks like a paradise turns into a nightmare, into hell, and I escape and return to the restaurant, with a real chef saying “Where have you been? We are completely swarmed by work! Where have you been!?” And I’m trying to say, “But look, it’s there!” and he says “No, come on. You are such a daydreamer!” And that’s it, what emerged from the everyday goes back to it and the stairwell returned to being populated by real, working chefs and the piece is over.
voidspace:
It’s properly site responsive as well. Starting with a stairwell and a restaurant and ending up with a story about ghost chefs in a sauna heaven, that turns out not to be, all because of that configuration of the space. That is great.
Luca Silvestrini:
Yes. I have to say that over the years the one element of my career that I’ve enjoyed the most, is when someone offered me a challenge. To create a work here in this space, for this audience, with these limitations. I feel like that’s where I have felt at my most creative.
voidspace:
We love a creative limitation in the voidspace. That tension is just the most interesting thing. What was your favourite challenge in that regard?
Luca Silvestrini:
Stairworks is where it all started. Many choreographers were commissioned, all young choreographers starting out. They said to us: “This is the space. You can decide where the audience are going to be.” They could even be outside. The only limitation was that the piece had to be of a certain length, had to be performed ten times and had to be on the stairwell. That was it. Everything else was up to us.
The ideal scenario for me is when the commission doesn’t offer you all the elements, but just some clear limitations, a clear brief, something that allows you to be creative. You don’t need to tell me everything, just give me some kind of limitation that sparks my ideas, my creativity.
In Stairworks the audience couldn’t see everything we did backstage, they just saw a portion of it, what we wanted them to see. This allowed us to do all sort of tricks to make it look magical, surprising. If you were to ask me which was my favourite piece over the years, I’d say Stairworks was one of them.
The other favourite of mine was (In)visible Dancing, commissioned by International Dance Festival Birmingham. They wanted me to create a piece that could be put on outdoors, and that could grow every day, with each iteration, so that it would go from being very minimal and incidental to something bigger and more choreographed. Out of that brief, I created what then became (In)visible Dancing, which we toured for ten years, on many different high streets around the country and internationally.
voidspace:
That was the one, wasn’t it, when the dancers started off mingling with the crowd in plain sight and then, gradually started doing something that was more obviously a performance?
Luca Silvestrini:
Yes. We realised that as a way of following the brief – something that grows every day – we could include more and more participants. It started with fewer performers, then it grew, with more performers joining every day. It started with one musician, and we finished with five musicians. The way it grew was by accumulation and repetition. The piece happened at the same time every day, but each day it developed further, becoming more choreographic: from movement that appeared to be incidental to something that was thought-out, planned and choreographed.
The piece centred around the idea of growing in size, growing in intention, growing in visibility: that’s why we called it (In)visible Dancing. It was something that started off as invisible, and that progressively turned visible. That was a really satisfying brief, which gave me the opportunity to pull together a lot of things that we were already doing as Protein into one commission.
Then there was our first intergenerational piece, Creola, which came from when I was asked by Inteatro festival in Italy to make a piece with the local people of a small rural village called Polverigi. This was in 2000, so we’d never done anything like that before. Our community, participation and intergenerational work started from there: from this brief, from this challenge.
I remember Bettina and I spent a month knocking at people’s doors, going to markets, going to shops, going to rural music festivals and asking people to join in, recruiting people. Saying “Oh, that looks really beautiful, what you’re doing! Why don’t you come and join us?” Then we put together an intergenerational cast of 50 people and we created a piece about social dancing and traditions of dance, outdoor, in a park.
It’s hard for me to choose a favourite challenge. I can talk to you for days, because there were many experiences like that. I could mention Japan, for example. The commission had to do with the opening of a new international arts centre in a small spa town, Kinosaki. They needed an artist who could help the inhabitants of this village to feel a sense of ownership of this centre. They knew I had made similar intergenerational work with community participants before, and they got me over to run a month-long residency that turned into a successful full-length piece of dance theatre created with and for the people of Kinosaki.
voidspace zine:
One element of Protein’s work that really stands out for me is how you mix media. You have a lot of spoken text, you have song. There’s a mix of dance and physical theatre. What would you say about that interdisciplinary aspect of your work? What does your creative process look like?
Luca Silvestrini:
We never meant, or wanted, our work to be “interdisciplinary”. It just happened that the language of our work has developed that way.
We never thought about any one particular way of conveying our work. From the very start, we were very open to whatever would best and most effectively express the themes investigated, and interested in performers who had the capacity and the skills to be good at everything.
I continue to work without putting any borders, without saying: “This is dance, this is theatre, this is musical, this is opera, this is digital work.” The whole idea of Protein is about breaking those boundaries. Not specialising in any one discipline, but being open to any performance language. Sometimes, it’s about the collaborators you bring in. Sometimes, it’s about finding the best way of making what you want to make.
It’s never about making a piece which is all about song, or making a piece which is all about digital media. It’s about how these different languages support and complement each other. I’m more interested in the idea of complementation than isolation. How can the words complement the movement? How can the movement complement the words? It’s not about keeping them separate, saying that this is the spoken part, this is the dance part. Rather it’s a matter of asking: how do they interact? How do you make a new language? A new way of reaching an audience? I’ve explored that throughout my career.
voidspace:
I’d like to ask about the use of humour in Protein’s work. There’s a playfulness to it, which I think can sometimes be underexplored and underutilized elsewhere.
Luca Silvestrini:
I’m not sure where this idea came from, that Protein makes comedy. It has never been intentional. We never set out to make comic work. Whatever you call it – whether it’s humour, playfulness, accessibility, lightness – it’s never been a planned thing. I believe it’s just a spontaneous way of
taking things with a pinch of salt, even the most serious things. And knowing that playfulness – or comedy, or humour – allows you to say the most important things, the darkest things. It gives you the
permission, or validation, to provoke any kind of discussion or deal with any theme, even the most uncomfortable ones. You can turn anything around, see it from the other side, from a less serious side. For me, it opens up possibilities.
Humour is a language that is sometimes unexpected. It’s surprising, provocative, uncomfortable. Because you realise you are laughing at something you should not be laughing at. Sometimes, it’s nervous laughter. This goes along with the idea of holding up a mirror, so that people can see themselves; laugh at themselves. It can let people say: “Oh, that’s me!”, or, “I’ve done that!”.
voidspace:
I was re-watching your piece, May Contain Food, when it was streaming recently, and I was thinking about how you’ve got some very serious points to make about where our food comes from.
And I was just thinking about how if you tried to engage people on the issue of where their produce is grown in a serious dance piece or whatever, it might have an impact. But the spectacle of a guy bouncing a plum across the stage, or breaking a cucumber across his knee in anger, that stays with you. And then also the reason that he’s doing that, the reasons behind it, stay with you too, in a different way.
Luca Silvestrini:
Yes, absolutely. That’s very interesting. I think you can laugh at what is not meant to be funny. People sometimes laugh at that moment, when the performer breaks a cucumber across his knee and throws it, swears at it, calls it names, and compares the plastic wrapping to a condom, because it’s funny. However, how often do you question about vegetables being wrapped in all that plastic? It is ridiculous. Why does a cucumber need to be wrapped in cellophane? You’re left with a moment of reflection. You can laugh in the moment, and that pause for thought afterwards arrives with more impact because it has a reaction, an emotion attached to it.
There are several examples of those sorts of moments in different works I’ve made, for Protein and for other companies, where one minute you feel like laughing, and the next minute you feel really bad because you recognise yourself, and things you’ve done/thought/felt. Then you feel upset, you feel sad, or ashamed. For me, this is life.
When you pass that into the medium of theatre, which is all about pretending, you think that theatre is about making it up, make-believe. But then as a performer, you start to wonder: Where is the truth here? Am I doing this for real or not? And how much of it is me? How much of it is a made-up character? How much does the audience think is me? How much does the audience think I care about it? Or do they think I’m just being told what to say?
You can start playing with all these ideas of authenticity: how much of a performance is scripted, how much is improvised. This sort of thing interests me a lot, in terms of performance and delivery.
voidspace:
Is there a lot of room for improvisation in your work?
Luca Silvestrini:
There is often an element of improvisation in many of my pieces. I’m a very controlling person, in terms of creative control. I want the show to be immaculate and perfect, and exactly reproduce this effect, that laughter or that reaction. So, in a way, the performance is very set, but I do allow performers some freedom.
For instance, if there’s a moment of audience interaction, even if it’s kind of scripted, I’m always encouraging performers to pay attention to what is happening in that moment of interaction. Whether it’s about timing, whether it’s about wording, there are elements of freedom in which the performer can give their best by listening to the audience, noticing what’s happening in the moment, and reacting to it. Because I think sometimes, as a performer, if you go on automatic pilot, you’re not listening; you’re not in tune with what’s happening.
However, you can’t expect the audience to always be the same. I usually tell performers not to expect the same reaction every night, and not to be affected if things turn out differently to how they expect. And then, of course, in some shows, like May Contain Food, which is a cabaret style performance, you have to interact with the audience: You have to send something back to the audience, take their reaction, send it back, but also be able to hold the performance in your hand so it doesn’t go beyond what is scripted.
voidspace:
Once you bring in that direct audience interaction, you almost need a very different skill set, don’t you? Because you do have to have a certain degree of reactiveness.
I’ve noticed that dancers seem to be very suited to very interactive work, I’d guess because that skill of being able to read the person in front of you and work out how to respond in a way that makes aesthetic sense is actually something that you’re training in all the time, aren’t you?
Luca Silvestrini:
I think dancers can be well suited to this kind of work because they are much more connected: because dance is body, mind and emotion working together. While some actors might forget that they have got a body, dancers are completely immersed in the performance, because it’s head to toes, it’s all connected.
And of course, feeling the emotions inside is all part of the body’s experience. It’s much easier for a dancer to understand that. But in any case, I always give the performers the task to allow the audience to think that their performance is free and spontaneous, but to hold on to the structure, the rhythm and the rules of the piece.
You’re still in charge. Don’t let the audience take over. Give that space, but take it back as soon as you need to. Don’t let the audience take control: you are in control. Even if you play with that idea of letting the control go for a moment, ultimately, you are the one in charge.
It’s quite a subtle thing. Not all performers have the same capacity to do that. Some are a bit scared, some don’t know how to do it. Some people have it naturally, by instinct. Some become better at it over time.
voidspace:
I think the audience can often sense that control. It’s almost like horses. You know how a horse can sense if its rider is confident or not? I think I’m comparing myself to a horse, not the performers, so that’s okay!
Luca Silvestrini:
It’s very true. Of course, as a performer, you need to be powerful and in control, in charge, but what is most important as an audience member, is to see the vulnerability of that performer. I want to see your vulnerable side. That’s what attracts me.
If you see too much confidence, that pushes you away, or makes you feel less interested. You need to fall in love with a performer, basically, for the reason that you, as an audience member, need to be passionate about wanting to know more.
Even if you hate the character that you see the performer playing, you still want to be drawn in, so that you think: “What motivates you to do that?” A performer achieves that by showing a vulnerable side as well, or a lack of confidence, or uncertainty and confusion, whatever that is.
So, this idea of being in control as a technical element, because you’re holding it, doesn’t mean that you have to be cold and frozen and impenetrable. You need to be penetrable, to be able to have that connection with the audience, that interaction, and that empathy. I need to feel for you.
voidspace:
We already talked a little bit about the engagement with the community element of your work, about how you started working on intergenerational things and how that’s led to lots of opportunities to bring in communities around your works. I’m wondering if there was anything else you wanted to say about how Protein works with community participants.
Luca Silvestrini:
The whole community engagement and participation element of our work goes back to the opportunities that were offered to us. I think our interest in communities and people, runs throughout Protein’s body of work, starting from some of our earliest commissions. These commissions included making a piece with the locals of the village I talked about earlier, running a dance project for young people in a children’s hospital, and working with older people.
Looking back, the list of commissions and opportunities we’ve received is huge. And all of this was probably because the work was and is people-focused, accessible. Sometimes ”accessible” feels like such an overrated word, and a word that’s misused; but because of the nature of our work and its capacity to reach different people- the wider audience – I think they saw in us the opportunity to involve people, engage people. Our inclusive programme, Real Life Real Dance, includes work with and for young people excluded from mainstream school, children in hospital, refugees and migrants. The community part of what I do is completely connected to my choreographic practice. I don’t have a practice for professionals and one for community participants. It’s a practice that of course I adapt according to different needs and contexts. I remember in a very early interview many, many years ago, I said that what I learn in community settings really informs my professional work, and what I do with professional dancers and performers, I bring back into that community focussed world.
So, it’s never been a matter of schizophrenia: one minute you are a community choreographer, and another minute you are a professional choreographer. I always hated those labels: for me it’s just one practice, one approach. They influence each other and feed each other. I wouldn’t be the choreographer I am if I hadn’t met certain groups of people or worked in certain settings. And vice versa: I wouldn’t have been able to be the practitioner I am in certain community settings if I wasn’t the professional choreographer, or the artist. For me, this relationship is much more complex, and less black and white.
It’s important because, for instance, Border Tales started from investigating identity and migration with real people, before I went into the studio with the professionals. I did a lot of investigation and action research workshops with immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers all around Europe, Palestine and India. Only after that did I select a cast of professional dancers who I felt had something to say. In the end, Border Tales became about the performers’ stories, rather than the stories I’d heard from others, but it was fundamental to start and be guided by such a multitude of different, yet related, lived experiences.
So, the two components – community and professional – integrate and complement each other, are part of one layered practice, and I feel very blessed about that.
voidspace:
What advice would you give to aspiring creators in your field?
Luca Silverstrini:
Feel passionate about what you are interested in. I know in, in our profession, it’s about being in the right place and at the right time, meeting the right people. But I think ultimately you need to be driven by what interests you.
Don’t try to take routes that don’t spark your interest. Don’t just go where the money is.’ Don’t think, for instance: “There is funding in this area, and so I’ll go into that direction.” You’ve got to be driven by what really interests you, what your passion is, what your ideas are, your voice. Follow your voice more than the trend, or where it’s easier to start from.
I understand sometimes you have to make compromises, but ultimately, I think it only pays off if you are true to yourself, and to what you’re most interested in. What interests you now may not be what will interest you in a year’s time, two years’ time, five years’ time. So, I’d also say: stay flexible, stay open. Because we’re not fixed. We don’t just go one way. We’re not just one thing. We are made up of many different things: different interests, different emotions, different perspectives. For me, it’s about remaining curious, remaining open, remaining alive to the possibilities about what you can come up with. But it all starts from this passion, this interest and these emotions.
Find out more about Luca Silvestrini’s Protein here
A film of Stairworks will be exhibited at voidspace live (in association with Theatre Deli) on Sunday 9 June 2024