Mr. Bruce, you have been many times to Prague, do you remember your work with Prague Chamber Ballet?I don’t remember quite exactly how many years ago it was, but I had a good time with them, it was a lovely company. We made a piece called Sergeant Early´s Dream, to mainly Irish folk music, Scottish and also American folk tunes and songs. How old are the creations you staged now for the National Theatre?
The oldest piece is Rooster which was created for Geneva ballet in 1990, so it’s twenty one years old already. Moonshine I think was premiered in 1994, and Dance at the Crossroads was made in 2007 for Ballet Meinz in Germany. Moonshine was made for NDT III. Where do you get inspiration for your work, where have you been getting it from for so many years?
Well, there also have been years when I just had no idea for something new. I spend my time staging existing pieces quite often and when I don’t do that I spend the time in my garden or playing with my grandchildren, trying to make up for the time I missed when I was on the road as a dancer and choreographer when I was younger. But there were also years when I made as many as five pieces. Later years I’m making fewer new works, mostly staging existing works.
And the inspiration, it comes often from music that produces an idea, the next new work I am doing is a work being commissioned for programmes that accompany the Olympics in 2012 in London. So there was just the idea of the Olympics, the sport itself, especially the athletics, and the relationship to dance that came into my mind as an idea for the piece.
The idea can come from a piece of music, a piece of literature, the book I’ve read, it can come from the newspaper, it can come from a painting, the idea can come from anywhere. How much freedom do your dancers have in the process of creation? Do you prepare the choreography in detail beforehand?
I don’t prepare a lot of material when I come to the studio. I’m clear what the work is about and I have a rough idea of the structure of the piece and a few movement ideas I will demonstrate in the first minutes of the rehearsal. I very much work with the dancers; I’m inspired by them, by what they do with the material. They give me further ideas and I react to their personalities, to the way they move. Do you also use improvisation?
I improvise but basically the dancers are to work with the material I give them; however one dancer will not do the movement quite in the same way as another, so in a sense there is a difference in the way the movement can be created. It’s just like with the musicians, when one has a different sound from another soloist, even when they play the same instrument, everyone has their own individual character, their own “colour”, if you like, and so choreography in the dance is a live thing. Even though it can be recorded, it’s interesting that in piece of dance every interpret will be a little different every evening, every performance. But I don’t usually set the dancers off to improvise. Sometimes I do it and pick up something from it, but basically, I don’t use this way. Some choreographers set dancers to create the material and then they sample it directly, I don’t do that, I create my own movement. I’m very proprietary in some sense. Are your current choreographies based more on classical or contemporary technique?
Movements I use come from all the experiences I had, but I think the foundation, the basis of the movement comes from Martha Graham training. I use the classical technique a great deal but I use any form – social dancing, jazz, tap dancing, acrobatics, and vaudeville or musical, I use the material that is appropriate for the work I am making at the moment. And I think within this evening, there is a range of movement. Dance at the Crossroads is a much more based on a kind of free flowing modern dance language, Moonshine is more based on theatre and personality of the actor and choreography is very simple, it’s pantomime in some places, and Rooster again is full of character, but it is in the movement. In my pieces the movement and the images say everything.
Would you call yourself a storyteller?
I think my work is set next to narrative, but not a narrative that is fixed, I think what is the interesting thing with dancing is that it is so ambiguous, you can interpret it in many levels, so the narrative that one member of the audience see may be quite different to the person sitting next him. The movement and images create the world in which the piece exists, I like to create a little on stage that engage the audience; there is always freedom for interpretation. Have you also created full-length ballets?
There are only two of them. I created piece called Cruel Garden, together with Lindsay Kamp, and I also created piece called God’s Plenty based on one verse of Geoffrey Chaucer, which were both created for Rambert Dance Company, the former in 1977 and the latter about 1999. My other pieces last from eight minutes to some that have about an hour, my Requiem to Kurt Weil´s music was about an hour long. It depends on the piece of music I choose or the idea, usually the average are about 25 minutes, a fine time I usually have to say what I want.
How about the British audience, is it rather conservative or open to new things?
There is a very, very knowledgeable audience in Britain. We have audiences for different art of dance, very strong audience for variety of contemporary dance work, we also have hundreds of thousands people who love to see classics, so yes, there is a conservative audience, but there is also a very knowledgeable audience. What is going on in England is very rich, great deal going on, there is a lot of good choreographers, sometimes struggling, as it is not easy with money ensure. I’m full of admiration for these people who get their companies together, with very little funding and even having only a few evenings of performances in a year, it’s very hard.
Why did you start to dance? Not a typical activity for a boy…
I was eleven years old when I started to dance. I had a brother and two sisters, our father had a friend who was a harmonica player who knew a ballet teacher. One evening they were sitting in a pub and over few pints of beer they decided it would be great if we children were interested in dance career, my father decided to give the opportunity to his children to become dancers and he told us so right away in the evening. But there were a few reasons for it. My parents lived through the depression in the 30s, and I think my father wanted to avoid firstly the unemployment for his children, the hard work in the factory. I came from an extraordinary but working class family. I thing he was seeking a way out of this for his children, maybe for a more interesting life. But also I had polio as a child and I was crazy about football. But I was always limping to my right leg and father thought the dance classes would strengthen my legs and maybe give me a chance to become a professional footballer. I didn’t start with the idea of becoming a dancer but I was interested more and more and then I was recommended for audition in London for Ballet Rambert School, two years later from when I started to dance.
That was more of a classical education or did you also have modern techniques?
I was trained mainly in classical style. In my very first lessons I did ballet, tap dancing and acrobatics, then when I came to the Rambert School, this was about classical ballet, but I did also modern dance, basics of Graham technique, but my main Graham training became later on in the Ballet Rambert after 1966. We did also character dances, so I had very full run training in the end.
When did you start with choreography?
It didn’t interest me in the beginning, I was more interested just in dancing, so it was in 1969 as I was 23, when I started to make my first thing. I started to dance professionally in the company when I was seventeen, so I did dancing about five years before I started to choreograph. I just suddenly felt merged to try some steps, and it was so difficult, that when I finished I just thought to myself – I will never do this again. But I had another idea and made my second work and found it more and more interesting.
Which of the occupations is the hardest from your point of view – being a dancer, choreographer or a leader of a company?
All of these are difficult, all very hard, but entirely in their own ways that can all be very rewarded in a very different ways. So I wouldn’t try to separate them. For me I think dancing and choreographing wasn’t this way the hardest. I enjoyed leading the company but I found it wasn’t something I naturally wanted to do or felt determined to. But I felt privileged that I could do it, to direct such a great company as Rambert is. How did you manage to balance your personal life with work?
Thanks to very strong and organized wife. I think I regret I had spent so much time away from home. So I am trying to make up by now sitting home and doing a lot less work actually. This is funny time also for my children’s children that they very much enjoy.
Do some of your children dance?
My son’s three children do, and also my eldest granddaughter. She does gymnastics; she is only six but is extraordinary.
Don’t you miss your own company? Having dancers who know your style around…
No, it is a terrific responsibility. When you have your own company you have to be totally dedicated to it and it will cut a lot of your other interests in your life. I liked working with my dancers but I’m doing it anyway as I return to the companies a lot. I’m associated choreographer in Houston in America, I work regularly for the Rambert Dance Company, so there are companies I return to, they know my style and I am used to them. Of course it is difficult to go to a company for the first time. That’s why I make rarely new work for a company I have never worked for before. I made a few ones like in Mainz the Crossroads. But I already staged a piece for them before so I knew them and I had an idea that would suit them. That’s how I work usually.
How about your work with the National Theatre Ballet?
They have been great, their technique is great. Some of them might have found some of the material difficult at first, but they got adapted, got used to it and now they are taking it. They are running with it. I find Czech dancers a bit different (I know they are not Czech all in the company but I feel it). I find this company very enthusiastic, they have very strong dynamic, sometimes too strong so that I have to calm them down. And they have a very strong sense of theatre so I thing they are used to playing roles and become characters, on stage which is what is called for in particularly the two works. I haven’t seen them in a full piece, just in one evening of short works, but it was very useful, as it gave me the idea of what I can do, as there was such a variety work for the evening. I can say I’m satisfied. CHRISTOPHER BRUCE Born in Leicester, England, on 3 October 1945. He studied at the Benson Stage Academy in Scarborough and at the Ballet Rambert School in London. In 1963 he debuted as a dancer with Walter Gore’s London Ballet, in the same year he joined Ballet Rambert and became a leading dancer in modern roles within three years. From 1969 he created choreographies for Ballet Rambert (Rambert Dance Company since 1987), becoming associate choreographer (1975–87) and associate director (1975–79). From 1986 to 1991 he was associate choreographer for the London Festival Ballet (today English National Ballet), resident choreographer for the Houston Ballet (1989-98), then associate choreographer until the present day. From April 1994 to December 2002 he was the artistic director of the Rambert Dance Company.
He has also staged works for The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet, Scottish Ballet, Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company, Munich Opera Ballet, Gulbenkian Ballet Company, Australian Dance Theatre, Royal Danish Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Tanz-Forum (Cologne), Nederlands Dans Theater, Geneva Ballet, Culberg Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Zurich Ballet, Basle Ballet, Ballet Krefeld-Mönchengladbach, Ballet Mainz, Deutche Ballet Berlin, Dusseldorf Ballet, Kiel Ballet, Canadian National Ballet, Ballet Gyor; The Washington Ballet, Alabama Ballet. He has worked as a choreographer/producer of operas, musicals and TV programmes.
His accolades include Evening Standard Awards (1974 and 1997), the Prix Italia (for a television production of Cruel Garden, 1982), the International Theatre Institute Award for Excellence in International Dance (1993), the De Valois award for Outstanding Contribution to Dance at the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards (2003), the Rheinische Post Theater Oscar for ‘An Evening of Works by Christopher Bruce’ at the Theater Krefeld-Mönchengladbach (2004), Best Choreography, Critics’ Circle Awards (2009). Christopher Bruce was awarded a CBE in 1998. He received the titles Honorary Doctor of Art from De Montfort University (2000) and Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Exeter (2001), where he has been Honorary Visiting Professor since 2009, and Honorary Life Membership of Amnesty International (2002).
Josef Bartos
Thank you for your thoughts. One got stuck in my mind – that passion makes us different from AI. Just yesterday I read…I am a dance critic. I am a member of an endangered species