Choreographer Gary Clarke: 'As a child, I had passion and drive. Adding technique gives you longevity'
From humble beginnings in Grimethorpe, choreographer Gary Clarke has carved out an impressive career in dance. He tells Kate Wyver about his ‘bonkers’ new 15-minute film But Living for a venue close to his heart – the Lawrence Batley Theatre
When Gary Clarke was caught sneaking into the dance studios at school, he thought he was in huge trouble. Instead, the teacher asked if he’d perform in assembly. So he took his little boombox on the stage, “gelled my hair back, put on a tracksuit and some sunglasses and just threw my body around”, he recounts over Zoom, grinning at the memory. “The school went wild.”
Clarke was a child during the miners’ strike of 1984, and a teenager in Grimethorpe in South Yorkshire, an area devastated by the mine closures. “It was really hard to live through,” he says. “The village was full of a lot of tension and violence, so everyone had to deal with that in their own different way. Mine was through art and creativity. I’ve always thrown my body around, but I never knew it was dancing.”
Classes weren’t available, so he just did it instinctively. “This was before Billy Elliot,” he says. “Going to ballet class if you’re a boy in the 1990s in a mining village is just not something you do.” Instead, he would put on loud techno music in his bedroom and just move his body. “It was a very guttural thing,” he says.
Unlike Billy, the protagonist of Lee Hall’s 2000 drama, Clarke was never picked on at school for being into dance. “Times were tough,” he says simply, “and I gave people a reason to smile.”
He is hoping his newest piece of choreography will have a similar effect. His 15-minute dance film, But Living, is part of a trio of performances with the Lawrence Batley Theatre, an institution Clarke has had a relationship with since he was 16. The works respond to the coronavirus lockdown, with Clarke’s piece focusing on the intense roundabout of emotions the country has been through over the past six months. “I knew I didn’t want to go down a political or depressing route,” he says. “I wanted the work to be hyper-theatrical – entertaining, fast-paced and fun.”
Positivity is one of his takeaway feelings from looking at the dance sector throughout lockdown. “I was really proud of how quickly everyone’s living rooms, kitchens and garages became their studios,” he says, “how quickly we sprang into action. It’s amazing what you can fit into a one-metre square.”
Now that the sector is slowly being allowed to take up space again, Clarke is thrilled LBT is the first theatre he’s back working in, as his links with the venue go right back to his training.
’A male dancer from Grimethorpe? It just wasn’t done’
The teacher who had first seen him dance at school called the local performing arts college, Barnsley College, and they immediately sent down representatives to meet Clarke. “I think it hit the papers,” he says. “A male dancer from Grimethorpe, it just wasn’t done.” While studying at Barnsley, Clarke went to his first show at LBT, a performance by The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs, whom he would later go on to work with. “It inspired me to become a dancer.”
He studied at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, before forming his own company – Gary Clarke Company – and through it all, the theatre has been a core part of his career. When he toured his award-winning 2016 show Coal, a visceral piece that dealt with the pit closures, it sold out at LBT. “Dance is renowned for not doing very well in terms of ticket sales,” he says, “but Coal did remarkably well.”
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Q&A Gary Clarke
What was your first non-theatre job?
I started working when I was 13. I was a paperboy. I’ve been working for a long time. You have to when you’ve got no money in the family.
What was your first professional theatre job?
It was with The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs directed by Lea Anderson. It’s the company I saw at the Lawrence Batley Theatre, which inspired me to become a dancer.
What’s your next job?
We might be touring Wasteland next year. From September, we’re going to be running a programme on Gary Clarke Company Digital, which is five weeks of online activity.
What do you wish someone had told you when you were starting out?
Save up for your taxes. I didn’t have anybody talking to me about the business side of things and it’s so important. Taxes come as a shock every year, even now.
Who or what was your biggest influence?
Life. Working-class communities. The anarchic political work that came out of the 1980s and the dance scene. I’m like a sponge.
What’s your advice for younger choreographers?
Take your time. There’s such a rush to become successful and I think we’ve forgotten the power of growth. Start small and tinker away. Know what success looks like for you.
If you hadn’t been a dancer, what would you have been?
I wanted to be a Redcoat when I was younger. When I was training and being a really serious conceptual artist, I went and became a holiday rep. I really wanted to do that. But I believe this is it. I don’t think this is a choice. Believe me, if I had a choice, I would have a big house in the Maldives.
The full trilogy of dances – Locked Down. Locked In. But Living – has been made entirely by creatives from the north. It comprises two contemporary pieces and a ballet, with Locked Down made by Studio Wayne McGregor, choreographed by Jordan James Bridge, and Locked In created by Northern Ballet’s artistic associate Daniel de Andrade.
Clarke’s piece, the third in the trio, uses the emotions of lockdown against the backdrop of Disney’s 1903 Alice in Wonderland. He was binging on Netflix and YouTube clips when he stumbled across the 15-minute film in the BFI’s online archives. “There was something about the decaying edges of this film, and about this girl lost in this labyrinth, that I immediately linked to lockdown,” he says. Disney’s silent film, which draws on 19th-century theatrical traditions and is the earliest known film recording of Lewis Carroll’s story, sees Alice chased by the white rabbit, crashing through a variety of set stages. “The idea of being locked down, trying to get out, all kind of chimed,” Clarke says.
The original story’s young female protagonist is replaced by a lonely older man in isolation, with movements borrowed from familiar elements of lockdown – keep-fit videos and night-time binges – while lockdown birthdays are moulded into the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. “It’s a bit of a black and white, upside down, silent movie, German expressionist version of Alice in Wonderland – via lockdown.” Clarke bursts out laughing. “I know, it sounds bonkers. But it was bonkers. We were locked in this maze. We all went a bit crazy.”
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The emotions match the intensity of his full-bodied style of movement. What he describes as the way he’d “thrash around and exhaust myself” as a kid has been honed into what a Times critic described as “vigorous, urgent and heroic”. Part of that honing process came from his time at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, where he learnt ballet for the first time and was taught discipline.
“I was 18 and I was in a pair of tights being told to behave, to stay still, to not be expressive,” he laughs. “It took me a while to understand discipline. They knew I wasn’t a naughty student – I just came from a different background.”
With the continuation of coronavirus safety restrictions, But Living was always designed to be watched online. Clarke has experience with film from working as a movement director on big blockbuster movies with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, and says that working with a screen alters the process of choreographing. “I knew this had to be a dance for camera rather than a dance film,” he says. “For me, a dance film is a dance piece that doesn’t have a film in mind when it’s being created, so you create the work in the studio and only after you’ve created it do you start to think about how it will be filmed. Whereas, a dance for camera is where you choreograph through the lens. So everything I was choreographing, I was doing through my phone. I was looking at angles and proximity and speed and where things would be filmed from and length of cuts and rhythm, because that’s all choreographic.”
Throughout his career, Clarke has never strayed too far from that child dancing freely in his bedroom. “What I was doing as a child was the passion and the drive,” he says. “That matched with technique and discipline gives you longevity. I’m making the work that I want to make, and I’m in no rush – I’m in this for the long haul. I enjoy the ride.”
CV Gary Clarke
Born: 1980, Barnsley
Training: Performing arts dance degree, Northern School of Contemporary Dance (2001)
Landmark productions:
• Coal, UK tour (2016)
• Wasteland, UK tour (2019)
Awards:
• UK Theatre award for achievement in dance (2016)
• Critics’ Circle National Dance award for best independent company (2016)
• Summerhall Lustrum award (2017)
• Honorary Fellow at Northern School of Contemporary Dance (2017)
• Herald Angel award (2018)
Locked Down. Locked In. But Living will be available to watch on demand from September 28. Details: thelbt.org
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