PETER, dance with Lea Anderson

Today we danced with Lea Anderson. Stay in contact with Lea via http://www.leaanderson.com/, @speakingshoes and @leaandersonscholmondeleys.

References:

The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs - http://www.leaanderson.com/works

Laurel and Hardy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_and_Hardy

Laurel and Hardy - Dance Routine - Way Out West (1937) - https://youtu.be/LXCwlO2jnYU?si=yra0RLSojsATBJy0

Hannah Höch - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_H%C3%B6ch

Hannah Höch, Grotesque - https://artofcollage.wordpress.com/2019/09/26/hannah-hoch/#jp-carousel-3017

Hannah Höch , Balance - https://artofcollage.wordpress.com/2019/09/26/hannah-hoch/#jp-carousel-3005

Yippeee!!! (2006) - http://www.leaanderson.com/tag/yippee

Busby Berkeley - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busby_Berkeley

Edits (2010) - http://www.leaanderson.com/works

Sadlers Wells - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadler's_Wells_Theatre

Neu! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neu!

Neu!, Super https://youtu.be/DJ4Pf-WB57U?si=KeP26P39PBHYxRff

Merce Cunningham Company - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merce_Cunningham

Zeitgeist - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeist

The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs: 40 years of style and design - http://www.leaanderson.com/works/birthday-book

Steve Blake - https://steveblakemusic.wordpress.com/bio/

Simon Vincenzi - https://www.simonvincenzi.com/

Sandy Powell - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Powell_(costume_designer)

Lea Anderson, Laboratorio de danza Step by Step, presentación - https://youtu.be/3ztxV4A3_9o?si=du9h0VAkUOTQ3s8h

PETER, dance with Frank Bock - https://stillpeter.com/peter-dance-with-podcast/#fb

PETER, dance with Simon Vincenzi - https://stillpeter.com/peter-dance-with-podcast/#sv

Transcript

PETER:
Hello and welcome you. 

Lea Anderson:
Thank you very much. 

PETER:
Today, we are dancing with Lea Anderson. And I feel in so many ways, you don't need an introduction, because you are so much a part of, especially British dance history, and such a legacy. I feel very honoured and privileged to get to meet you in this way as well, to be in practice in dancing. You're such a wonderful, kind, open person, and so rich and knowledgeable. Last night we had dinner. 

Lea Anderson:
Yes. 

PETER:
And we couldn't stop… Talking. 

Lea Anderson:
I know, I thought I had probably exhausted you. 

PETER:
No, no. It was fantastic. It really was. such a privilege. But in case people don't know you, how do you introduce yourself today?

Lea Anderson:
I know it's hard…

PETER:
I know you do film and all sorts, so.. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, I do I do, yeah, I make dance for anywhere that that it's needed. Yeah. And in all sorts of performance and anything, anything. 

PETER:
And famously we can say that you one of the cofounders of The Cholmondeleys and then later The Featherstonehaughs. 

Lea Anderson:
The Featherstonehaughs. Yes. Yes 

PETER:
A touring well established contemporary company here in the UK. 

Lea Anderson:
Yes. Yeah that’s true. 

PETER:
Contemporary dance. Yeah.

Lea Anderson:
Yeah. 

PETER:
And today, we maybe you can describe it a little bit what we did. We've already done the dancing, 

Lea Anderson:
Yes

PETER:
we can say, because secret was such a big, important part of the practice. So do you want to try and explain for those listening a little bit? 

Lea Anderson:
Yes. Yeah, I quite often am interested in giving tasks to people to dancers, to performers, without them knowing where it's leading and to trick them into not doing what they always do, because I find when I well, certainly, you have a tendency to want to move one way and then do something else on the other direction or spin one way only, or not spin at all, or jump, and I'm trying to find different ways of getting people to move. So I didn't tell you what we were doing. We just copied Laurel and Hardy dancing. 

PETER:
Yep, yeah. 

Lea Anderson:
And we replicated it and treated it as if it were a piece of very important historical dance history and that we needed to save it for prosperity. And that we wouldn't distinguish between “dance steps”, and mannerisms or style or things that arise from people's bodies, certain body shapes and tendencies. And then once you've really spent a long time learning it and you're completely committed to it, we then try and substitute sections of it inspired by collages by Hannah Höch. and see what comes out? 

PETER:
Yes, it becomes a mash up. There's two parts, isn't it, really? There's the first part which is. And it was funny, not funny. It was very endearing. There was almost a role play, like moment where you switched and you like, "So we are. Now Now, Peter, stop messing around. We are now dance historians.” 

Lea Anderson:
Yes, yes, yes, this is a story. This is a story and yeah, people are never quite sure how serious I am. 

PETER:
But it is lovely because then you we're sitting with Lauren and Hardy, this very short dance scene within their thing, and you're exactly right. There is so many elements within it. And we're focused just on the bodies. We're not doing too much to do with the surroundings. We're dealing with the clothing, of course. That was important. And we're trying to copy and pick up exactly each detail and also how to transcribe. Is that a good word? 

Lea Anderson:
Yes, yes. 

PETER:
From video into the room. 

Lea Anderson:
Into 3D world.. yeah 

PETER:
With conversations about like, which side are we standing and is that my left hand or is that my right hand? 

Lea Anderson:
Are we mirroring them or are we replicating them their right and their left? 

PETER:
Yeah. 

Lea Anderson:
And it makes me realise, I don't know if copying movement from videos or is something that people do much nowadays, but when you see someone stepping into the role of someone else that they've learned from a video, you see the ghost of the original dancer within them. And obviously the ghost of Laure Hardy were dancing in us because you can't, that's what people are there. There's some of their mannerisms and movements.

PETER:
Yeah and even watching Lauren and Hardy, I felt like we were having conversations about their ghosts. So you were often saying, I think, I think Hardy's not picking up the steps well. So Laurel is leading them. And I had a lot of thoughts because I was focused on Hardy, of course, and you Laurel, of, oh, but I wonder, like, this is sort of because the narrative is well that they're trying to portray is that they're almost just tapping their feet, and because they're sort of this clueless, very innocent, beautiful creatures that sort of go into funny situations, that this tapping of feet just, it's sort of casually turns into a dance. 

Lea Anderson:
Yes. 

PETER:
So I was also noticing these layers, and you spoke a lot about layers of meaning, maybe, or not meaning. You didn't say that, but do you know what I mean? 

Lea Anderson:
Yes. 

PETER:
These layers of information that is also in the video itself, as much as we are then embodying those layers and those ghosts of Laurel and Hardy.. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah and also it's kind of fun and silly thing to do, to take so seriously. which can sometimes it's quite good, it can distract people from being, from taking themselves too seriously. contemporary dance can be very. 

PETER:
Well, I mean, Exactly. Exactly. We could maybe talk about that because that was one of the difficulties of doing this with me was the way in which you normally work. This isn't. This isn't a one to one, let's say, of a rehearsal. When you collaborate your working with dancers and you're watching them, take on these tasks and you're using this method to have fun. And we also had a warm-up. I forgot to mention. 

Lea Anderson:
Oh, yeah, the warm-up. 

PETER:
Which was walkinging for 10 and then 9 and then 8, and then 7 and all the way down. So really complicated, making sure you're on the beat, but having to change direction at the right time with the timing always changing. So there's this fun playful invitations that give the dancers normally the space to do those things. However, today, we had the sort of conundrum of we're going to do it together. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah. We did it together. I think that, I've devised this way of working because if people are working in twos or threes and not on their own, if you work on your own, then you can kind of get into what you think is the right thing to do or the sort of tasteful thing or the unusual or special thing. And I quite like to get away from that and find something that you could never, ever find unless you sort of crash some things together and you forced people to respond.. And so  by me sitting outside and people working in twos or threes, they have to negotiate together, but they can't go too far in a direction because they have to discuss it and justify it with the source material. 

PETER:
Right, right, yeah. 

Lea Anderson:
So you have to say, “no, Laurel does this. He doesn't do that.” So you can't where in this picture or in this film, does somebody do that? They don't. and then they say, “oh, yes, but I feel it it's the only way to get.” So you have these ludicrous conversations but the movement that comes out and the relationship that it describes can be something that I could never imagine any, you know, before. and that's what surprises me in and I enjoy it, yeah, because human relationships are very complex. 

PETER:
Yes, right, right. 

Lea Anderson:
And they're not always so sort of seriously about mine. It can get very inward dancing. It can be very about how I feel all the time and the movement that we see and enjoy and is about how we respond to each other and to the surroundings. And to our clothing. 

PETER:
Yeah. Everything. But actually, it's just so great you bring this up because when I started teaching improvisation, I was obsessed with the organization of our we in pairs, or are we working in threes, or were we working as a group, as a whole, or are we working alone, so to speak, alone? And it was fascinating because I drew to this similar conclusion and I was like, I need, or it was beneficial for the class to have them working in twos or threes." And I felt like there was this huge relief of I felt it as my authority didn't become the sort of the singular thing in the room, where everyone's looking to me almost for, like, am I doing this right? And secondly, it was discursive. The room lit, you felt this energy sort of emerge where everyone is talking and discussing and it's playfall and, it's laughing, and there's a sort of joy emerges, whereas when I would teach and I would teach the whole group as one, I would be this thing, and there'd be this sort of silence, and everyone is looking in. It's so fascinating that you. Yeah, you remind me of that. And the irony, I think this is the thing that I've wanted to really point on, because you're talking about dance in general. And there's this irony as something that you do ballet, but in a big class, you with many, many people all the time, but you're extremely alone. And there's this you've not said a word for an hour and a half often and the teacher has just talked to you and yet it's extremely relational. It's an extremely social thing, but we're not working on that often. We're working in this silent way. So by introducing this mode of play, you're including the social as in a way. 

Lea Anderson:
Yes, yes, and I'm also thinking about ballet is almost like a series of, it's got very strict rules and very strict poses which you and which you memorize and learn and move from one to the other. You don't do your own thing. You don't express yourself. So again, it's about how you your ideas of what you're doing and what you're really doing.  Yeah. But also, I think that I just did because I get in more interesting stuff.

PETER:
Yes. Yeah. It was a natural 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah. and people's personalities, you know, you find amazing things that you would never guess. 

PETER:
Yes, exactly. Exactly. No, but I think what I'm trying to say, I think, because I overanalyze everything, and I'm looking at it as almost like, oh, this is interesting as a choreographic method. Because I believe you then are. I mean, because of course ballet has expression and it has social things. You're like, of course, like, in some regard, but by centering the social in the creative part, you are then amplifying that a little bit and bringing it to the foreground, which is so curious and interesting. And we were working from material, which is essentially from Yippeee!!!. Am I 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, I used this method to make little duets in Yippeee!!!, which mostly was, for sampling Busby Berkeley material, but also other things from the '30s. and other movement stuff. So the performers that I was collaborating with were just working with film and the images all the time until they got it was they got so amazing at it. 

PETER:
But I remember watching it, so this was one of, I think this was the first performance of yours I saw Live and I did write down the date, but it would be like 2000 10 or 6 or 

Lea Anderson:
2006 Yeah. 7, I think 

PETER:
Yeah, 2010 that was Edits. I made it this song. So and I saw it at Sadlers Wells and it was it really was this, it was weird, but it was so. meaningful. It's the thing I'm looking for maybe later. It had. There was so much in it. Like I was seeing so much. There was these relationships that were sort of entwined and embedded into the little duets and trios and sort of quartets and different things, that sort of emerged during the thing. That I remember. I mean, it really struck me. I vividly remember it as one of the most spectacular performances I saw of my life.. So it's such an honor to get a little bit closer and to see,

Lea Anderson:
Oh, that's funny you’ve seen it 

PETER:
Yeah how those things really resonate at least for me, they did, yeah. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah. No, that was that was yeah, there was something really quite perverse and interesting to get sort of dancers, ask dancers to copy that kind of musical stuff from the ' 30s and the facial expression, because famously contemporary dancers not, yeah, it's not famous for its range of facial expression or that your face isn't really anything to do with the rest of your body. and you mustn't distract, but to get people to sort of do eyebrows lifting and 

PETER:
I remember the faces were extremely a characterful and like they had so much animation and drama. They contorted and strange and weird and beautiful. Yeah, exactly. You’re playing with your lips with your teeths out, 

Lea Anderson: 
Yeah I’m just trying to imagine all the the faces that they had to do. 

PETER:
Yeah. But then let's talk about the mash up part. Oh, yeah You used that word, right? So then we went to the collage and we added 

Lea Anderson: 
the collages from Hannah Höch. So you have to make, yeah, so you have to. Yes, trying to put something that's too dimensional into something that that you've made into three dimensional and but keeping a really strict structure. And maybe pulling your brain into two different directions. 

PETER:
Yeah, yeah. And doing both at the same time as well. So I don't know how well this translates 

Lea Anderson: 
No you can’t

PETER:
But because it is complicated but so you have the dance from Laurel and Hardy in the background and then we take the collage images and because they're a collage, they're also multiple. It's not a single image and they're not moving, so then we have to bring it into a time dimension as well. And exactly as you say, there's this tension between the running, the continued running of the Laurel and Hardy dance we've learned, and then morphing and mashing and melding that with the collage, and to just to add the, to demonstrate the increased mash up element of it, then we added music from 

Lea Anderson: 
Oh Neu!, yeah To change it more. But you've got the ghost of it. It's like if you keep moving it and changing it, the germ of it where it came from still exists somewhere in it. But you can, how far can you go? Like you could keep changing the music and keep adding more things.And you'd still, if you've been on that journey, you still have the origin somewhere inside you. 

PETER:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And it's also something that you can work on together. Like it's an object. It's almost like a sculpture. Like it becomes material where we can almost stand around and look at the dance and then say, okay, but where is that from? What part of the video or from the colleague is that? 

Lea Anderson: 
Is that eye, that weirdy squint from? 

PETER:
Yeah, or what beat of the music probably as well? Is that hitting and it's somehow takes the dancer away from this thing that's in our heads and it becomes real. 

Lea Anderson: 
Something else. But most importantly for me is that if you if you're in the audience and you watch this, you don't know anything about all of that and it's not important. What's important is this very, very strange relationship that these two people are demonstrating and it's kind of ludicrous. And but it's not, not playing for laughs. There's a lot more to it and it's complex. But you don't really register. It's just bonkers, really. 

PETER:
Yeah. Because we can recognise are there's something between these two people. But not knowing.

Lea Anderson: 
Yeah, what's going on? 

PETER:
Because yeah, that's very clear. Like, we spoke about the secret that was important to hide from me of what's going to come next, what images and things. And that must be the case for the audience as well, I mean they don't know, it's Laurel and Hardy person.. Exactly. So it's material becomes the social almost, in a weird way, the relationship. 

Lea Anderson: 
No, and they don't need to know. it's not important. It's important for the performers and devisers to have something that's really going to be engaging and all encompassing that they can do something really meaningful with. And that is the hard bit is finding the source material that speaks to them. But it's not about what the audience sees the audience will come in and think, what the hell are they doing? Is it this sort of dancer or is it that a sort of dance? Which I quite like. 

PETER:
Yeah. It's beautiful. And I often use this as a sort of like reference point in my own like understanding of dance and in how it functions for the audience or can function for the audience, of I saw Merce Cunningham Company once, and I think they were doing some chance procedure, I suppose they had randomized the music, I think, at the beginning of the show. And it's and you can see all the movement very little flow or you know, it's all sort of this staccato going from Arababesque to a thing. This contorted shapes. And the thing that really struck me was the expressions of the dancers, because you think it's, oh, it's abstract, it has no meaning, you know, it's all randomized, but then to see the dancers struggling, actually, and negotiating the dance steps, of doing trying to get into those shapes and things, whereas I feel you've gone even further than that, and included the struggle of doing it together and the relationships that are built and the knowledges that are shared between people, because in Cunningham's work, it's very individual. Like, each person has got their counts running in their head, and they're all in their own head of like, "O that step, that step. At least as I remember it. 

Lea Anderson: 
No, know what you mean. 

PETER:
And this is such a pleasure to see almost the person on stage and not be too concerned with what it is that they're doing, if that makes sense. 

Lea Anderson: 
Well, it's interesting you talked about most Cunningham, because I feel really strongly that there is no such thing as abstract movement.. 

PETER:
Of course.

Lea Anderson: 
Because everything really has, like, you read it, you read it as this person that's ignoring everyone else around them, no matter how close they are and is purposefully doing whatever the hell they're doing. So everything is readable in that way. So the more layered of the meaning that you can give, because humans, we're pretty good at reading each other and we're quite serious and clumsy and we're also quite ridiculous. as well. So, yeah, it's it's nice to be able to refer to all of that. But it's really tricky. I mean, it's taken. I've tried out lots of different ways of trying to do this. And also because it's not it' can be quite confusing because I don't need people to know what it is. I don't know why people behave in the way that they do or why their mannerisms are such and but they're all quite enjoyable. 

PETER:
I know what I mean and that's the that's the pleasure of doing it with you. You know, we're trying to condense this into like to get a taste or a flavor or a feeling for the experience. And you have so much wealth. I mean, we sat down to start recording and you're like, oh, and there's also this, I do show practices. So it's I can see that and it and at the same time, I feel you're still developing it. It's still something you're 

Lea Anderson: 
Because you've got to find more ways of... It's about misunderstanding, a score. I mean, we mentioned dance historians and how, “how do you know what people were doing and how they danced on what, how they held themselves?”, “How do you know what people did thousands of years ago when they were except for the fact that they were human too, and so they were all dancing.” Yes. And making music. But I love the idea of Missreading to make something new and different that's the product of us now and looking at imagery. And I'm yeah, and I really like trying to trying to persuade people not to do what they always do by watching it looking at pictures. So all these different things that you said that they're all different practices, but for me, it's all the same thing. 

PETER:
Of course. 

Lea Anderson: 
You just need to make a visual score that we're going to follow and not be allowed to deviate from. and interrogate and see what does it actually say? What does it suggest and then show it to someone and see what they. If they're agree. 

PETER:
Yes, yeah I mean, and I mentioned earlier, that it reminds me of. It's almost as though we are channeling into the zeitgeist, in a way. I don't know if that's fair to say, because I mean, in all these materials we're from a similar type. No, no, sorry. 

Lea Anderson: 
Yeah, these are from '30s, so 

PETER:
Yeah. But the music was from the ' 70s. 

Lea Anderson: 
Yeah, yeah. That was a location link, 

PETER:
yeah. Yes, I see, I see Germany. No, not Germany. 

Lea Anderson: 
It's Switzerland. 

PETER:
Switzerland's But but all these things, this sort of, they live with us because you speak about that Yippeee!!! Was working with 1930s? 

Lea Anderson: 
Yeah yeah. 

PETER:
There's of course, a calling back to old footage and stuff and you could consider it sort of archival, but we're still living with the consequences of those things and how they are in relationship to each other. And it's so beautiful what you just said now, how do we how do we organize that? How do we deal with it? How do we make it make something new. 

Lea Anderson: 
Something make something new, yeah. But that we all understand because we're human, but with Busby Berkeley, because Busby Berkeley came from the military and from drill, like drilling soldiers. So you can see, obviously, the relationship between. So he was kind of like. looking for a job and choreography and he dealt with it in that way. So he used that model to make this dance, which I copied to make or someone else. So it's like you've got these generations of copies. There are nothing, total misunderstanding of what they're supposed to be, by all of us. To make something different, which is the same. 

PETER:
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It's this difference and same that's sort of exists in tandem somehow. There's a quality as well of, I'm often obsessed by, but what was their intention? 

Lea Anderson: 
Oh. 

PETER:
in order to do that in the first place? What was the sort of motivation for those choices and things? And what's really nice is we have our own intention to use their the results of whatever they were intending to do as a sort of material, and you also start to I feel as though I'm almost starting to channel into a singular intention that we all have, that is maybe less defined as we're gonna make a show. or it's so that you can see my face or you know, they' really sort of practical intentions, but it's more like, because I have to dance. Like you said, we're humans, so then they were human then so therefore there was dance and there was music. I love this idea that to be human is. 

Lea Anderson: 
It's to dance. It yes, exactly. And to have, yeah, music. Yeah. Yeah. And to draw pictures, I guess. Yeah, they're all the same. It's all the same. Yeah. 

PETER:
Yeah. Yeah, we talking. Yeah. Yeah. And I think of one of the really fun experiences of doing this today was actually when we first watched Laurel and Hardy, I was a little bit intimidated I was like, ohh, gosh, it's actually, it's quite a dance, you know? I was like, I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to remember the steps, get the steps correct, I was really sort of like concerned that, oh, I might be out of my depth. And what was really joyful, actually, was, maybe I, maybe it is, you know, I have danced for a long time, maybe it is that, but there was, as a second we started doing it, I was like, oh, oh, this is really joyful. It's really easy. And you can feel it in relationship to them doing it, no longer becomes this spectacle, because it is quite spectacular, beautiful footwork and patterning and everything. their facial expressions and stuff. And not saying I was doing it perfectly, but still, I felt I was doing it well enough to feel like, oh, oh, this is, I can do this, and it's not too far away. And it made me relate to them in the imagination of them just dancing. And even though you felt like maybe Hardy was having a hard time remembering the steps, there was still a joy, I think. I felt in what I understood of his reason to be doing those dances.. 

Lea Anderson: 
Also, when else in your life would anyone force you to copy Laurel Hardy? for fun? I mean, no one would you and do that in the million years. It's only because I've made you do it. 

PETER:
No no. And I mean, and it was what was clear as well, you don't do this. 

Lea Anderson: 
No. 

PETER:
It's not your way of preparing, say, for a rehearsal. You wouldn't put the video on and do it yourself. 

Lea Anderson: 
No, but I've watched it. It happen so many times that there was a sort of germ of it in my brain that, yeah, that I know it. But I do think it's, I quite like being in the position to make people do things that are actually really quite joyful or fun.  And only because it's part of a you're making some work. So therefore you'll have to do it. 


PETER:
Yes Yeah. But there's two things from that that I found it interesting is because you said, “oh, and normally, because we're getting tired now we do some singing.” I think you said that.

Lea Anderson: 
Yeah.

PETER:
And also you made a really, maybe I've already said this, but a really important thing of need a night's sleep to really do this work. To settle. So there's a great joyful way of approaching it because exactly if you were to set yourself the task to sit down and learn the steps of Laurel and Hardy, it's excruciating, but you're doing it in a way which is actually so generative and playful and joyful. 

Lea Anderson:
And doing it with a partner with someone else. I mean, that makes a lot of difference. You both sort of have to try and get it right and one can't remember something that the other doesn't two different ways of thinking about things. And because it's so county and precise and precision is really important, you can't just sort of blur it or mess it up. You have to be in focus. It's to get in focus. So sleep is such a marvelous thing because the next day it's better. 

PETER:
Yeah

Lea Anderson:
it's it's better to do it in little bits. And then see how how it goes. And then actually, because I've done this a lot, I've done this several times, I kind of know, I've got certain expectations from how things will go. But quite often I don't know. I'll say, let's copy this and it will be a real surprise to see if the bits that people pick up on the bits of people don't pick up on and how well people deal with it or they're going to get really annoyed. So it's also an experimental for me. 

PETER:
Yeah, of course. 

Lea Anderson:
I try something anything, it's not working. Maybe I'll think of something else. So we'll drop that yeah and I'll have a different film. So Lauren Hardy probably wasn't the first film that I found. 

PETER:
No, of course. 

Lea Anderson:
But other things weren't so. There was just something about that that people are happy to spend time with. 

PETER:
Yeah. That's interesting in itself. And it is, there's something, you say experiment, but there's something very rewarding by working in a way which has a kind of researchy equality where we're discovering things together, we're discovering exactly as you say, a nuance and things. And then additionally, which which I brought up during the exercise, I was saying how “my body is so different shaped”, but you were like, “well, that's brilliant. I love that.” 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, because then you have to take, you know, you can't assume that he's moving like that because of his body shape. 

PETER:
Exactly. 

Lea Anderson:
You have to analyze it and then find a way of, you know, referencing that in your own movement. Which might make a different style of moving, which might have something about it that's really, really interesting or funny or sad. I don’t know it’s...

PETER:
Yes Yeah. And it's this sort of melding because also one of the things of learning dance and watching dance is this thing of it's sitting in our nervous system in a way, and what was interesting was you kept on using the other foot to the one that was. And that really felt like it was an echo of from watching you have it

Lea Anderson:
Yes, yes. Yeah, I was I watched it from the other way around. 

PETER:
elsewhere in you, even though in this moment you were using your brain to this, this, but your body already was like no, no, no. 

Lea Anderson:
there's a ghost, a memory ghost. 

PETER:
Yeah. Yeah. It's just really beautiful for it to emerge like that. It was such a pleasant encounter perhaps with ourselves as this sort of amalgamation of each other and all the references. I mean, even for me, Laurel and Hardy were a big influence as a child, and I haven't watched them since. So I think you asked, like, “oh, you must know this,” because I mentioned that I was a big fan, but I didn't recognize it at all, but the second we started doing it, all its floods of emotions almost, actually, of of their mannerisms and the play we've mentioned the thing with the tie. And it really connects to a core part of me, you know, I don't it doesn't really belong to them. It's my watching from when I was a kid and seeing that you can be that kind of playful with your body and humorous and that things aren't so serious. It was, yeah, quite emotional, really.. 

Lea Anderson:
That's interesting. But it is really, it is how humans hold. I guess when people are watching sports and they kind of move, they have sort of sympathetic movements with their and they know what's going to happen when I don't know, one's got a ball and they're going to and it doesn't happen. We've got this. It's quite complicated. 

PETER:
Yeah, it is. 

Lea Anderson:
how we move and how we our knowledge and experience and memories of moving 

PETER:
complicated and simple at the same time. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, it's simple. It's what we are

PETER:
so readily. in us, yeah. 

Lea Anderson:
It's no big. Yeah. 

PETER:
It was nice because I've been reading your book. Remind me the name. I think it's good. 

Lea Anderson:
It's just The Cholmondeleys. 

PETER:
Forty years. 

Lea Anderson:
Forty years of style and design

PETER:
It's this beautiful book with all these amazing images from the things and Steve Blake? Yes. Steve Blake the musician you collaborated with. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah Composer, and Simon Vincenzi is in it. He's a designer and choreographer and director. and Sandy Powell was also a designer and yeah, lots of yeah, 

PETER:
I will list them in the references in the notes because it is it's a great book full of so many fantastic creative minds and the way they articulate things. But it was I think Steve Blake, that said that dance is so visceral and readily available, and that's sort of what we're talking about. It's so simple, it's one of the art forms that it's so there, and then he goes on to say, but somehow it gets so elitist, perhaps because dancers spend so long training and then it becomes that thing. But I almost wonder if it's not even that, but I understand where he's coming from it. 

Lea Anderson:
But it has got a strange a reputation as being sort of different and not for everyone. Whereas it's probably the art form that everyone hears music and they tap their foot or not choose not to, but everyone dances at weddings and parties and whatever. Or yeah, or nightclubs. It's that's the most immediate. 

PETER:
Yeah, and if if it works in the way that I feel you're describing through this, well, not that you're describing, but that you've given me the experience that it exists through just watching Laurel and Hardy. It's in us. We feel it. We might not be able to execute it per se as well, but.. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, Who cares? 

PETER:
Exactly. Then that thing of, well, it's my body and everything else that I'm dealing with in it. Yeah. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, and the fact that Lauren Hardy, these comedians who were on making films had this background from the stage and the history of that, and that movement comes from a certain kind of comedic dancing that everyone recognised. You don't have to, what are they trying to say? It doesn't really matter. They' just they're just having fun and it's warming or repulsive, whatever, but it's something. 

PETER:
But actually, if if I mean, we weren't really focusing on that, but it is contextualized in that there's some musicians playing and then these silly fools end up dancing, which is sort of used as a comic devices, “oh, how ridiculous”, isn't it? And they almost, they tear them on, in a way, but at the same time, they're laughing at them, and there is this sort of centering one of the central tensions, actually, with dance, this humoristic sort of, well, it's bizarre that you would do that, but we do do that. 

Lea Anderson:
And that's if you're playing music, that's what people are going to do, aren't they? They're going to dance. It's just normal. 

PETER:
Exactly. And here we are in North Devon in the community centre and at one point I think you said, oh, was that a farmer? But it is this, what if they saw us? What if they saw us? doing these ridiculous things? The thing? 

Lea Anderson:
Oh, it's Laurel and Hardy. 

PETER:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly 

Lea Anderson:
It’s  Laurel and Hardy. 

PETER:
And they would, they would recognise parts of it because those, I mean, there were steps in it which we were saying, like, that is such, it's almost a trope. They're doing this walking upstairs and then taking steps back downstairs. It's so iconic, and you feel it in you, you don't even need to think. You're like, oh, yeah, yeah, that. Th that cultural moment. And the farmer would have perhaps recognized those things as well. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, I' bit the dance. 

PETER:
Yes. Yeah. But somehow, it's policed, isn't it? It's a sort of like, oh, but you shouldn't do that, or that's a waste. 

Lea Anderson:
Or difficult. It's difficult to understand. Yeah, “what are they are they trying to say?” They're not saying anything. 

PETER:
No. How could they? How could? 

Lea Anderson:
Not a word is being uttered, Yeah, but it's not meaningless. That's the other thing that I. 

PETER:
No, no, absolutely not, yeah. It's extremely meaningful, but partly because it's almost because there's not a coherent meaning, it's more meaningful to do because you're doing it regardless. It's like it's like you were talking about working in Peru when you you meet someone you can't communicate with verbally. The fact that you continue to spend time with them and try to be with them, which will include a lot more physical body language and stuff. It's more meaningful, not more meaningful, but it has a great meaning. 

Lea Anderson:
It has meaning, yeah, yeah. 

PETER:
Because we know that we're not doing the sort of easy.. 

Lea Anderson:
But if I wanted something that was that kind of communication, I would have written something. Or said something. 

PETER:
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's not like choreographers and dances can't speak. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, exactly. And I want to tell a story. 

PETER:
Yeah, I’ll do it. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, I can just tell you. Yeah.. 

PETER:
I always say that to most students. So I always say, well, if you want to say that, just say it. Don't… 

Lea Anderson:
Sounds like… It’s that simple

PETER:
Karaaraoke. oh no not Karaaraoke. Charades. 

Lea Anderson:
Charades. 

PETER:
But how was the experience? Because you have these fantastic. 

Lea Anderson:
Oh, my cards. Yeah. So, yeah, I make these little cards with an image on each one so that you can make a storyboard. So you can either copy film and try and copy that into a three dimensional space like we did with Laurel and Hardy. Or I make a storyboard, which takes the form of little cards with images on that usually share an aesthetic, or they come from one particular one particular source. And depending on what the show is at or the work is that I'm doing, or the people that I'm working with, I'll choose cards. But I'm not always right. best to have several packs. so that you can try different languages. Quite often it's just it's you don't have all the information about what the body's doing. It might be just a hand or a a leg and then the dancer has to from their experience imagine what the rest of the body was doing. 

PETER:
Exactly, yeah. 

Lea Anderson:
But yeah, so problem solving rather than being expressive. Expressing yourself, yeah. And hopefully something different emerges and something with some. I like some sort of humour. Because we're for a humorous humans. 

PETER:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, actually doing this today, yeah, really, of caused me to think, or to struggle properly with, what is humour? I think it's something I've been dealing with personally for a minute, because I was sort of getting really exhausted of doing meditation as the only thing to do if I get I can't sleep at night or if it's the only thing to do to sort of calm down and get in my body and a sort of a what more humorous or playful or silly or daft, or naive, non serious? I'm not saying that meditation can't be all those things, but for me, I was getting stuck in that mood of like, oh, I've gotta be serious now. And yet, yeah, humor is so integral. It's so important, but I can't name it, I can't nail what it is. 

Lea Anderson:
But what you just said then, I think is quite something that I think is important, but I don't generally confess this because not many other people agree, is that that maybe a depth of feeling might come from surface, that as many. Yeah, many surface. The more you copy something, the more you the deeper it goes into you. So it's not about something that's in you coming out. It's just many, many layers going in until you sort of in, I don't know, ingest it. 

PETER:
Yeah, yeah. Or like like clay or something that you sort of, informs gradually. Because the idea 

Lea Anderson:
Baking it. 

PETER:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. 

Lea Anderson:
Changes it It's not going that way yeah. Or copying people

PETER:
paper mache almost layering on the thing. 

Lea Anderson:
Or how a child copies mannerisms and and gradually it becomes theirs or not.  You take it on. rather than there's some little germ that's in you waiting to come out. It's just all just clothing put on. 

PETER:
Yes, exactly. And it is something about the direction, isn't it, of we're trying to be really precise, but we're meeting with the absurdity of that impossibility, maybe all. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah. Well, it's two dimensional images. 

PETER:
It's true, yeah. 

Lea Anderson:
And what we, and as we said, I'veve already said, we're physically nothing like the people that are trying to copy. So it's because it's compromise. There's always a compromise. 

PETER:
I mean, I don't know why this this comes to mind as a sort of sensorial thing, but walking is that is really just falling, isn't it? You know, you're just catching yourself continuously. But we would never we would never give into that sensation that we wouldn't allow ourselves to fall. We were always catching ourselves and there's something about the the sort of, I mean, even just our attention. I can't focus on the face of Hardy and the legs at the same time. I need to choose one. And then the rest of the body is almost doing the thing of walking, of catching myself from falling. It's just running regardless while I focus on the face or something.. is something. Yeah, interesting about that meeting we're always going to be dancing almost. But it's only. It's only when we really get into the detail of it that we sort of discover what kind of dance we're doing. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, if we ever find it out. 

PETER:
Yeah, exactly. 

Lea Anderson:
Exactly. 

PETER:
Yeah... I'm tying myself in knots in thought. 

Lea Anderson:
I try to just set up a situation and see what comes out. And if it's if it's satisfactory, whatever that might mean, 

PETER:
and so where does it go now? I mean, we're so, this is such a luxury, because today we get to record and we discuss and it's a kind of archive of a moment where Peter Mills met Lea Anderson and it got a little bit closer to what Lea Anderson has been dealing with, all your career and stuff, but where does it if we were going to make a show, you would then be watching and starting to refine and. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, so we make a show. What I would be doing is that I would probably researching it for a long period of time and think, okay, so Busby Berkeley. as time goes on, I get more confident about, I know that if we copy something long enough, something will come out, whereas I didn't used to know that. So I prepare lots of different tasks that have some sort of connection and I call them strings. So they like strings of investigation. So each each day you might start a string. And then sometimes some you discard because they're not really doing it for me. They're a bit boring. a bit to something or other. 

PETER:
And is it's not only personal, sometimes it might be the group isn't resonating with it? 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, but usually I work with people that I know are going to be up for this kind of work, because not everyone wants to do this. No. It's not, you know, it's not everyone's cup of tea. So people, and it's great when there are people that I can work with that are some people are so deep saying, look, there's a hand in the back of this here from the, there's hand, and you haven't been looking there because you're busy looking at Laurel and Hardy or whatever. If we're copying this, then somebody should do that at that moment. So if you've got people. So things that you would kind of can get out of control with the detail and the and then you have to look at it afresh to think, well, what have we got here and how is this going to be useful in this whole collection? So structure and all sorts of things come through just trying out a series of different tasks like these. And seeing where they go. And then there's other limitations that are also. So usually before I start, I'll have a, like we might decide like a simple example might be that music will never start at the same time as movement. 

PETER:
Okay, yeah, yeah. 

Lea Anderson:
Never and never will two things or they will. Or nothing will ever, when the music stops, the movement won't stop. Or it will. Or, I don't know. Or the musicians are actually copying the movement. 

PETER:
Oh, wow. 

Lea Anderson:
Well, yeah. So that you're we all have very strict rules before you start in order not to fall into doing what you did last time. Because that's really boring. And you just repeat yourself or you do something a bit, it's slightly different. I'm not saying it stops you from being boring or whatever, but the desire is to never go down the same pathway. 

PETER:
Yeah keep it alive. Because also you have costume and set and lights usually play a big role in making it harder. 

Lea Anderson:
Make it harder, yeah. So if you decide before you start where the lights are. Yeah, then you might find that you've made it all in the dark bit or. Yes. And you're not going to move the lights because you've decided that they're there. Or that the costume will stop you being able to do quite a lot of the movement that you. So you then have to rework it with the costume. Otherwise, you just end up wearing.. 

PETER:
And just out of curiosity, would you work like this right up until premiere? And or is there a moment where then it's like, oh, no, now it's rehearsal and we repeat exactly the same. 

Lea Anderson:
Oh, you would yeah, the the difficulties would be making sure that the costume was properly used. So that it doesn't. So you wouldn't sort of take away a massively huge, or you might cover other face completely. I mean, that's happened. And so the dots can't see where they are or the edge of the stage. So they might have to relearn it all by just steps alone. 

PETER:
Yeah. Five step forward, five step back. 

Lea Anderson:
Yes. And an emergency procedure in case someone's going too near the edge of the stage. But because then that makes it, you're not you're not doing something that's simple and easy and that dance isn't the most the movement movement is complex that you move in your costumes in a space with people and that is part of the meaning of it that we understand. So it's I like to have all of that. You know, people aren't always in a bright light in a leotard. Their body's really clearly. 

PETER:
Yeah. And I mean, and you're working with so many different designers and set designer, maybe a lighting designer a costume designer, like Simon Vincenzi, all those, and then music compositions. So there's you're somehow also figuring it out with them as well, I suppose.. From these initial research materials. 

Lea Anderson:
Yes. Yeah.. 

PETER:
It's marvelous. It's such a play for journey of bringing alive these encounters, almost, of what happens when Hannah Höch? Hannah Höch and Lauren and Hardy meets. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. 

PETER:
And sort of mash up. And us, dancers and the composer and the set designer, then the audience and you know, this is sort of real, beautiful sort of We're all here sort of vibe to it 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, it's sort of quite complicated, but it's also yeah. 

PETER:
So normally at this point in the record, I would, I mean, it's a little bit different because we would have paused and danced and come back. But we've reflected and so. but I would ask, so what's coming up? What's future? But it can also ask if you have anything else to sort of say. And yeah, how can people get in touch with your work? Do you have anything you want to share or... 

Lea Anderson:
I haven't really thought about this. I've got. Oh, I've got Vimeo.. 

PETER:
I'm sorry. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, there’s things I' Yeah, I can things, yeah, 

PETER:
I can give all your links. 

Lea Anderson:
I can and think. 

PETER:
You have some links. Yeah. Because you are still working. Yes. And your work is existing in many different places. You're talking about collaborations in Peru and Finland and all sorts of things. 

Lea Anderson:
Yeah, I'm doing a few things this year, but at the moment I was just sort of R&Ding and Ding them. 

PETER:
But yeah. But then we tell people to at your website we'll look at your website, your Instagram as well. 

Lea Anderson:
Oh yeah, Instagram 

PETER:
Instagram and all that. Jazz. This was such a pleasure to get into the weeds of it and really play so wonderful, because I've worked with Frank Bock and I've worked with Simon Vincenzi in different ways. And so and also they have episodes like this so people can see the sort of and there is a beautiful relationship. I would I don't think I could sort of draw a complete parallel, because of course, you're all very different. 

Lea Anderson:
But yeah, we've worked. We've all worked together quite a bit, yeah. 

PETER:
It's such a pleasure, and I think also, I'd like to say thank you, and one of the things I'm really grateful for these days is how optimistic and inspiring and excited about making art and dance you are. It's such a gift to be with you and it's so hopeful. I really, it's really warming. Maybe you maybe that's my interpretation. Maybe you don't feel like that, but it's.. 

Lea Anderson:
Well it's easy to be glum about it, but we’re only in it for the fun. 

PETER:
Yes,

Lea Anderson:
I think. Otherwise we would have done something more sensible. 

PETER:
Yes, it's true. It's true. All. But thank you. 

Lea Anderson:
Thank you. 

PETER:
I know, I can't stop because I want to talk more. We didn't mention your first startings in punk and stuff, but that would be more a biographical podcast. 

Lea Anderson:
yeah, exactly. Yeah, 

PETER:
thank you. We'll see you again soon. Bye bye.