Totally Cool - Feature interview with Megan Kennedy from Junk Ensemble’s production Dusk Ahead
You’ve been working and conducting research on blindness in Newcastle. How did the process begin on this project?
We started by looking at a lot of photography books – one book in
particular called Abandoned Places. And then we watched movies in the
evening and then during the day we’d practice some of the pieces before
bringing them to the cast, to see if they would stick, if it was
relevant enough. So we did quite a lot of research on blindness and then
invisibility – which took us down a different path, made us develop an
ostrich section about sticking your head in the sand. Which brought us
to the idea of being blind-folded. So we presented ourselves with the
task of being blindfolded in the studio for a day which was interesting
to say the least. Then we brought all of these things into the rehearsal
space with the cast. Before we did that we did a workshop with visually
impaired women in St. Mary’s in Stillorgan. They had the double
disadvantage of being visually impaired and old. It was a really
transformative moment working with them – the things you do in a normal
workshop were no longer possible. We had to describe movements in such a
way that would make sight unnecessary in order to understand them. We
were also doing music lessons and singing lessons and they really
responded that.
The quality of movement that comes from blindness is very
specific. What is it about that quality that attracts you and how did
you teach yourselves to replicate it for the piece?
It really is the movement that comes from not being able to see that
interested us most, as well as the idea of being invisible – we were
reading Jose Saramago. The initial idea is really inspired us was
watching blind para-olympic runners. That inspired us to create this
one-minute dance film commissioned by Dance Ireland called Blind Runner. It
came from what happens to the body when you can’t see, not when you’re
blind from birth, but when it’s been imposed upon you like with a
blind-fold. I was the one running in the video, and your movement is
quite faltering at first, and then you have run with complete abandon.
It’s extremely liberating. That was one slice of interest, then we
became closely connected with the idea of being always attached to
something – whether it’s a rope, or being attached by the lip or by the
hair as some of the dancers are in this piece.
You talk about being dependent and attached to something, and
circumstances being outside of your control, which is funny because you
work with your identical twin. How does that play out?
Yeah, we are very linked, and we’re very in synch about most major
things. The things we wouldn’t agree on are small things. We started off
doing a lot of duets together, and it was very much about being twins,
this ability of having mind and bodies linked. Watch her disappear,
one of the first pieces we did was about schizophrenia, or about this
idea of a disorder of being split and being a twin. As we made bigger
work we’ve started to step out of the work and have taken ourselves out
of it, which makes for better work in our opinion. Anyway if we don’t
agree on something we flip a coin.
Where does dusk come into all of this? In your description of
the show you base it around the idea of liminality and transformation.
It’s the moment from day to night. We really wanted to create this
arc in the piece – from day to dusk to night, to give a sense that this
attachment is so heavy. It’s also that time when you’re not really sure
what you see. We also had this French term in mind, “dusk is the hour
between dog and wolf,” domestic to wild. There’s a certain wildness we
bring in with the performers, things can become un-tame, they become
dangerous if you enter this liminal space. Dusk is the overlying theme –
but what we try to hone in on is the arc. It’s a lot of ideas to put
together but because this is dance we’re given license to not follow a
narrative form. The ideas will come out in your eyes when you see them –
we have no control over it and that’s the beautiful part of creation
for us.
Going back blindness and its quality of movement – what did
you discover when you went to choreograph an entire piece around it? How
did you practice it?
The simplest thing was the blind-fold and even what it should look
like – we went with black, the least obvious one. The movement begins
with this sort of loping very hesitant walk. The dancers actually cannot
see anything for the duration of the piece. They have to watch every
step, they use their hands, and they have to move towards sound,
anything that it is appealing to their senses, like sound. They
inevitably have to use their hands and their arms – that movement is so
unbelievably real, you can’t fake that. You’re not cheating anything,
it’s lack of spacial awareness that is so powerful. The dancers really
don’t know where they are. When you put that in a theatre space you’re
completely on your own, there’s no one to help you. So it’s been about
finding safety measures as well as allowing for that beautiful quality
of movement that comes from blindness.
