Exploring Englishness through the medium of dance
A new work from Anthony Lo-Giudice
Tonight’s the night for Anthony Lo-Giudice’s new dance work (or it is if you’re reading this on Wednesday, September 24). Middlesbrough Town Hall is hosting the premiere of The Guest.
Don’t worry if you can’t be there. Other interesting venues await on the tour itinerary – and a follow-up, taking Anthony’s multi-talented company to Iceland, is pencilled in for next year, funding permitting.
Dance is a fabulously broad church. It can accommodate ‘Strictly’ and it can accommodate this, although it would be hard to imagine them in the same room.
In the performance space at Dance City just a week ago, one of the final rehearsals was taking place.
Anthony, ever the perfectionist, was making sure the elements of what appeared to be an ambitious undertaking were gelling nicely.
That his cast of dancers and musicians seemed in tune with his thinking, offering reminders and occasionally seeking clarification, must have been gratifying.
Anyone wandering into the middle of it – which is to say me - could perhaps have been excused a little mystification.
Someone was clad in a suit of armour, others were sporting rather grotesque fish headpieces. To the side lay the body of a mighty fish, or perhaps a whale.
At the back a musical trio waited patiently. Hannabiell Sanders, best known for her trombone, sat behind a steel pan; ace percussionist Brendan Murphy was on guitar; singer Andrea Jones was seated magisterially between.
Andrea, who lives in Gateshead, was soon to demonstrate her fabulous voice. Eminently versatile, her CV includes an appearance on Top of the Pops. Check out a dance version of Bridge Over Troubled Water performed by PJB featuring Hannah & Her Sisters: September 26, 1991.
Here, arguably, we see her back in troubled water as part of Anthony’s new dance creation which focuses on a stranger washed up on an English shore.
In a rehearsal break he explained that he’d wanted to explore Englishness. What could be more topical at a time when its definition is under such intense scrutiny?
What had motivated him, though, was less the sight of baying marchers under the St George’s Cross than the experience of his own upbringing, son of an English mother and a Sicilian father.
This he explored in detail in Roma, his last beautifully eloquent piece which embarked on a tour of atmospheric venues in 2022.
“This is more challenging than Roma in many different ways, although I feel Roma was maybe a stepping stone,” he said.
“I had to go through lots of processes, shedding ideas and finding new ways of working.
“I feel more confident this time.”
The earlier work had been inspired by his dual cultural heritage. Prevented by Covid lockdowns from visiting Italy, which he’d dearly wanted to do, he felt he had nevertheless created the piece more from an Italian perspective, going “more into the Italian aesthetics of it.
“So when Roma went on tour, I remember thinking I’d like to bookend it with something about Englishness.
“If Roma was about Italianness, I wanted to explore England with similar themes such as belonging, heritage, identity and the nature of home - but through an English lens.”
It appears he has left no stone unturned. Anthony Lo-Giudice, I have come to realise, is not someone who rushes at things or fails to think them through. His dedication is all-consuming.
He read books, took note of what the media were reporting on and organised conversational workshops featuring groups from different communities and backgrounds.
“I wanted to pose three questions to lots of different people: Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?”
Immigration came up in every session. He knew it would have to feature in the piece but he couldn’t help feeling we are “guided by the media” in the things we deem important.
Hence his piece also has an environmental theme.
“I feel there’s a deep irony in defending a place where nature is under threat, about people being really nationalistic but not caring about the natural world which they claim is theirs.
“Why aren’t people going on marches about that?”
The ideas swirled around in his head but then two of them, from disparate sources, came together and pointed a way forward.
In the Faith Museum, in Bishop Auckland, which has partnered in the piece, Anthony came across the Old Testament story of Jonah and the Whale, in which Jonah spends three days and nights in the belly of the beast before being spat out.
It brought to mind the story a fisherman had told him in one of the conversational groups, remembering his time on a whaling ship when a whale was cut open to reveal its unborn calf.
“It triggered something in him. He said he experienced this overwhelming sense of guilt when he went home to his wife and child.
“When we were in the Faith Museum I had this idea of tying the stories together. It was a ‘Eureka! moment. We did a bit of imaginative play where Jonah is spat out on the shore of England.
“He enters this island community and then has to confront its attitudes to a changing world.”
For Jonah in The Guest, a title which comes to seem increasingly ironic, things eventually take a turn for the worse when he is framed for a crime he didn’t commit.
Anthony said the piece isn’t religious although it reflects how some people turn to spirituality to navigate difficult times.
Others retreat into fantasy, which was Anthony’s means of escape during the troubled years of his youth.
“I think that daydreaming fed through into my art and my dance and it’s probably why we have a random knight and mermaid on stage.
“But it’s also to do with this character’s response to the trauma of being washed ashore after being uprooted. He processes it with magic and fantasy and maybe by putting on rose tinted spectacles.”
Anthony, keen on creative writing, produced the script and peppered it with old English, meaning The Guest’s twin title is Se Gæst.
Challenges aplenty for his cast, then, with even the dancers having lines to deliver.
One who professed to be enjoying it was dancer Caroline Reece who also performed in Roma and has been a figure on the North East dance scene for many years, notably with balletLORENT.
Hugely experienced, she said she had had a speaking/dancing role when in her twenties and performing with Emilyn Claid, a prominent figure in dance now working as psychotherapist and ‘movement practitioner’.
“I had to talk about horror films and I really loved it. It was amazing for me because it opened up another side of dance, using your voice.
“There’s definitely an art to it, how you move and talk at the same time.
“It’s lovely seeing the age range in this piece. I can’t leap around in the way I used to but this is something else I can bring to the table.”
Clearly the piece has evolved considerably with Caroline and the rest of the cast having an input while committed to the choreographer’s vision.
“One image Anthony wanted was that of a knight and an astronaut to represent the past and the future,” said Caroline.
“He’s got such lovely ideas.”
Whatever the merits of The Guest, or Se Gæst, it does appear to demonstrate the health of the North East dance ecology. Caroline at one point taught Anthony who in turn has taught Alex Thirkle, dancing the part of Jonah.
After tonight’s performance at Middlesbrough Town Hall, you can see The Guest at Seaton Delaval Hall (September 27), York Minster (October 9), Queen’s Hall Arts Centre, Hexham (October 18), North Shields Fish Market (October 25), Auckland Palace (November 2) or Dance City (December 11).
Ahead of the North Shields performance, the audience will also see various community groups perform This Boat Must Hold Us All, a new piece devised by composer Bridie Jackson, Anthony Lo-Giudice and the performers. Proceeds to charities including The Fishermen’s Mission.
I love Dave’s writing and enjoyed this piece. Were I closer I’d be booking tickets. What an interesting piece from Anthony and a fantastic cast.