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This is The Place by David Mead
The Place is 40 years old. The building, in a quiet side street near London’s Euston Station, looks so unassuming, especially when approached from the original Duke’s Road side. Yet it has now been at the forefront of modern dance for four decades. Home of the London Contemporary Dance School, the list of choreographers who have trained or created work there reads like a British contemporary dance Who’s Who: Robert Cohan, Siobhan Davies, Robert North, Jonathan Lunn, Richard Alston, Jane Dudley, Matthew Bourne, Russell Maliphant, Shobana Jeyasingh, Darshan Singh Bhuller, Wayne MacGregor…And that’s just for starters. Until the company’s demise in 1994, The Place was home to the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, which did so much to popularise contemporary dance throughout the UK, while today it is home to the popular Richard Alston Dance Company. The story really started in 1954 when British hotelier, art collector and dance lover Robin Howard first met Robin Cohan, a dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company. Howard was a fan of Graham’s work and wanted to popularise Graham-style modern dance in Britain. In 1966 he finally set up his own small school, later enlisting Cohan’s help to run it. But he knew that to really achieve his aim he needed more space. Three years later he found just what he was looking for -- the headquarters and drill hall of the 20th Middlesex Artists Rifles Volunteer Corps. The gunnery range (now part of the café) and officers’ mess (today known as the Founder’s Studio) made good studios, while the drill hall itself was the perfect size for a theatre. It was an immediate success. The London Contemporary Dance School quickly became a centre of excellence in training and a hotbed of modern, experimental dance. The development continued under John Ashford, director from 1986-2009, who was keen for The Place into somewhere young choreographers could showcase work. He even found space to give a young Wayne MacGregor and Shobana Jeyasingh office space. Another Ashford innovation was “Resolution!”, the six week open season that gives a platform for new choreographers Activities were not confined to the building. The London Contemporary Dance Group was quickly established as a performing company. Soon renamed the London Contemporary Dance Theatre it not only toured widely, but also helped popularise modern dance through a programme of residencies and workshops. It has not all been plain sailing. The LCDS remains hugely popular and supports professional and non-professional dancers alike. The worth of its vocational courses is recognised worldwide. They are always massively oversubscribed. Between 1999 and 2001 the building was extended and fully refurbished, with new, airy, light studios created. But it has not all been plain sailing. The 1980s saw LCDT experience one financial problem after another. Cohan retired in 1989, and LCDT finally folded in 1994. In some ways it was a victim of its own success. Its pioneering work had made contemporary dance so popular that there was now a host of other companies competing for funds and audiences in what had become a vibrant and diverse sector. But a new shoot quickly appeared, and out of that loss came the Richard Alston Dance Company, which continues in LCDT’s footsteps.
If truth be told, the programme did not get off to the best of starts. Hanna Gillgren and Heidi Rustgard’s “Attention!” was oddly out of keeping with the rest of the evening. Performed as a prelude -- mostly in the bar -- it was terribly devoid of imagination. Drawing on the history of the building, it consisted largely of out of step marching, incomprehensible shouting and pretending to fall down dead. As it happened, most of the audience missed it as they were standing outside soaking up the altogether more enjoyable evening sunshine. They were the lucky ones. But once in the theatre things picked up immediately as the dance and memories came thick and fast. There was a true sense of occasion. As is always the way, some pieces survive the passage of time better than others, but it was fascinating to revisit pieces and faces that have not been seen on stage for many years. It is always important to focus on the new, but it made one regret that so much contemporary dance is created, performed, and then simply committed to the archive. Right from the start, an excerpt from Jose Vidal’s forthcoming “Loop” that reminded some of us of Twister -- the game with the board on the floor that resulted in bodies being twisted in to one sculptural mass and into ever more difficult positions -- we wanted more. Robert Cohan may not have put in a live appearance, but prominent among the highlights was the almost primeval duet from his “Forest” (1977), performed by Sonja Peedo and Pierre Tappon, both from Alston’s company. It had a wonderful quality; so full of grace and poetry. It spoke volumes. Equally stunning in its beauty was Davies’ “Sphinx” (1977), danced here by Angela Towler. There was speed and precision too, no more so that in “Hands” from Wim Vandekeybus’ “What the body does not remember” (1987). Stunning in its simplicity, the two dancers hurled their bodies around the floor in response to their ‘conductor’s’ instruction with remarkable precision and timing, and an all-round togetherness that is rarely seen. Speed and grace were combined meanwhile by Ankur Bahl and Mavin Khoo in Shobana Jeyasingh’s “Configurations” (1995), the work that marked her move to a fusion of Asian and British styles. And this really was a celebration of The Place as a whole. Collins even found space for youngsters from The Place’s Saturday Young Dancers Programme, including an excerpt from Jane Dudley’s “Preludes” (1993) and Helen Clarke’s new “The Chase,” a rather lively and amusing cops and robbers number. And so the finale. Richard Alston and Kenneth Tharp, formerly of LCDT and ARC Dance Company and The Place’s chief executive, were joined on stage by all the dancers in a reworked version of Victoria Marks’ 1988 work “Dancing to Music.” As the performers stood and gazed around the space, this simple dance encapsulated perfectly the sense of awe and wonder at everything the amazing building had seen over four decades. Wonderful.
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May 22, 2010 -- Robin Howard Dance Theatre, The Place, London
How on earth do you encapsulate all that history in around two hours? That was the problem facing Aletta Collins, director of The Place at 40, a programme that marked the culmination of the birthday celebrations. She solved it brilliantly, putting together a programme of excerpts of works old and new, mixed with archive film and recorded reminiscences from luminaries past and present that really did walk us through 40 years of history. It was all as appropriately friendly, warm and welcoming as the building always seems.