Boston Gallacher x GroovyDancy
-You are an amazing artist. How did you develop your artistry along your dance journey?
“First of all, thank you. I had to look up what the actual definition of artistry was because it’s used a lot and there must be some specific wrinkle to the definition that would help me relate it to myself but I found it just meant creative skill.
Developing my creative skill has always been a driving force for me. Meaning that since I decided to be a dancer when I was child (which is one of the craziest things about being a dancer: that you commonly decide to pursue it as a literal child) I knew that there was a difference between being an athlete and being an artist. Which is overly simplified because of course there’s arguably a lot of artistry involved in being an athlete and I don’t discredit that, but there is a certain and obvious difference in the approach to practice. I would see other dancers approach dance as a series of identifiable goals that could be attained in order to progress and I just didn’t feel satisfied by that.
You know how your brain isn’t fully developed until you’re 25 and until then you can fall back on the assumption that you’re too biologically young and stupid to know what you’re doing. I think that because I'm an artist, that reliance on immaturity towards personhood will last my entire life. My artistry has developed so far because every time I think I’ve realised something it’s immediately refuted or subverted. Creative skill as a general concept is hard for me to relate to because I think the essentiality of creativity is that it can’t be skilled into existence, it just is. The tools that you use to access it and share it can be honed, but I believe the spirit of creativity just exists. Whether or not you can recognise it in yourself is just a matter of personal perception or ignorance. There is a boldness to choose to recognise it in yourself and I think for me that requires a lot more intentional upkeep than the creativity itself.
If I were to think about my developing artistry over my dance journey in a way that would somehow offer advice I think I would just explain that I experience a lot of self doubt, here is a list of my neurosis:
Not feeling that my thoughts are original enough to be shared.
Being scared that I can explain anything away, discrediting any actual real artistic merit.
Absolutely paralysing myself with overthinking, then under-thinking as a reaction to that.
Feeling misunderstood by outside forces, bending to appease them, sometimes entirely crushing my intended vision and sometimes just enough to fool them until they forget what they said and I can get back to what I wanted.
Not developing a strong specific personal style and staying within those confines.
I guess I listed that just now because even in the face of those mostly self-induced barriers, for some reason I still have the desire to create and be seen doing so. I think for me the development lies predominantly in the overcoming of those thoughts.”
-What interests you about dance the most? When do you feel really fulfilled?
“I think dance has the potential to escape the prison of language. It allows us to succumb to the instinctual and sensual knowledge of the body.
All of that to say I feel drawn to dance because it exists right now, in my body and yours, and never again, not the same.
Marina Mascarell, once grandly proclaimed to the studio: “Music wins.” No, she just said it, like a person. Out of the art forms, it just wins. The power it holds over us, the accessibility of it, the infinite possibility of creation and perception of sound. So if music wins, how do I interpret that? Dance. In the moment, improvised physical hallucination. Ephemeral, carnal, wilfully abstruse and yet glaringly simple. The fulfilment of a physical manifestation of feeling… it’s so delicious to live a life in pursuit of it.
I get very excited by:
the unexpected,
the absence of a chaos section,
the presence of a female bodied duet,
honesty,
risk.”
-Which qualities are important in order to embody so many different choreographic styles / ways of working physically and during a creation process?
“I think a certain willingness to be moulded is useful. There’s always an internal battle of: how much of myself do I give? Do I want to? Have I been forced to? Have they guided me there with skill and care? It’s different for every creator, but entering into the process with no expectation or personal vendetta helps. Ultimately I believe I am capable of giving myself entirely to the artist that earns it. Which sounds like a grand assault course of psychological testing, but it’s actually the tediously simple meeting of respect and trust.
Which actually doesn’t always happen, and then you find yourself in the territory of having to just do it anyway. In any case your lived experience, the infinite library of movement and associations, will be enough for any creator to draw from. Something that I’m not always good at, or feel comfortable with the process of, is allowing myself the time to learn what the choreographer wants. It takes time to assimilate the physicality or understand the world from which the movement is being drawn from. It takes focus to discern what quirks are absent minded and what is non-negotiable. Are the thumbs always splayed because that’s how their hands just are or is it what they actually actively want? Essentially understanding each person's connection, and potential misgivings, between mind and body and language.”
-How important is the individual process of improvisation and research?
“I think the importance of this varies over time, like any artistic process it comes in waves of inspiration that you can either ride or haul from the depths with great effort. I think there’s value in pushing a routine but I also think it’s useful to let things get a bit rusty before cracking open again. Understanding what personally excites you is an example of a thing someone answering this question might say, but I think sometimes “understanding” goes against the nonsensical nature of dance. The importance of individual research is individual and can only be discovered by trying. There is no academic quantification for artistic merit when it’s just you, unless you are a scientist at heart, in which case there is.
I recognise my body and mind and soul as an infinite library of stored information and emotion. Like a chest of drawers, except one drawer is shaped like my ribcage and it’s filled with scorpions. I don’t think I’m like most people. But I do think there’s lots of people like me. Who, when they pick up a glass, might do so with the exact physicality and thoughts of a woman in 1940’s New York who’s husband is away at war, but he has left behind exactly the clues needed to discover his infidelity. A glazed internal rage filling her eyes, and a muted destruction fuelling her drinking. Research is a constant state, it’s inescapable and I want it that way. When you live like that, you can find useful things everywhere. I can save your walk for later. Or document the accidentally genius composition of general crap at the harbour, the concrete migraine of highway overpasses, or the way curtains blow in the wind when they’re sucked out of a high-rise window, fifteen stories up.”
-On the other hand, how do you define “technique” and what is its importance?
“I find technique is commonly used as a synonym for “the way we want you to do it so we can compare who’s better and who tried harder” which is definitely my dance trauma™ kicking in so don’t take that as my definitive response to that word. Not to generalise, but I have encountered a lot of classically trained people who value the outward appearance of positions more than the sensorial impact of movement, which is not my personal disposition, so it tends to hit a sore spot with me. Of course contemporary techniques have this pitfall too, the curse of codification! Basically whenever people talk about “the way things should be”, I get scared.
Not to say I don’t value it and the endurance of the human spirit to achieve is beautiful and a marvel and something to be celebrated. I just simply cannot and will not relive the childhood experience of ballet class for one single second of my adult life. Ballet is an absolute gift from heaven above, “technique” as replacement for “personal comparative worth” is not.
I have taken ballet class every day for the past 15 years. Barre is my favourite part of class.
I get to: know pretty much all the moves and fully invest in the fantasy of the moment. I get to hold onto a long wooden pole, fracture my body and be supported. Which is rare for male bodied people! we don’t recognise the emancipating power of the barre over males enough! Hurray for more power to men!!
When I watch a true technician dance, I feel such a sense of wonder and confirmation and also pain because they look like someone who is experiencing a lot of pain and trying to hide it.
Luckily for me, I spent years as a child caring a lot about my technique because I wanted to be a better dancer, to have more tools at my disposal. And because I wanted to prove I could. Now, I think this is a pretty simplistic view, as most children's views are. If you become so heavily specified at a young age towards one school of thought, everything after that will always be in relation to that. Are classically trained people living in context to their training? When someone who has done ballet for 15 years walks into a room, can’t you tell? It’s this loss of the true neutral human presence that I mourn, every time I am reminded that my ribs stick out and my left foot is sickling.”
-You are a multidisciplinary artist. How do you relate to other art forms?
“It’s taken me a while to recognise myself as an artist, I think dance is so entangled in physicality that the athletic part of it can scream louder than the artistic value, especially when you’re younger and desperately trying to hone your skill. But now I feel confident in describing myself as an artist. I relate to the world in a way that feeds creation. I think in essence every artist is multidisciplinary, it’s sort of unavoidable. Of course then it gets into the actual output and skill level.
I recently saw The Seagull, a play in London, and the character of a writer monologues that his life is spent in relation to his writing as though “I am eating my own life.” This cannibalisation of your own life is sort of unavoidable I think. Everything goes somewhere, filed away for use later.
I’ve spent a long time dancing, but nowhere near the same time composing or sculpting or writing. I feel like an expert in one discipline but a novice in others. But there’s an overarching sense that allows one interest to feed the other. Personally, I feel a magnetism towards the generally instinctual. For me the spirit of improvisation will always win.”
-As a choreographer, what are you interested in? And, what fascinates you in creating?
“As a creator I am interested in impossible things becoming possible.
I’m interested in very long drawn out introductions and third act reveals.
I don’t want to rehearse a lot, unless there is something that needs to be perfect, then I want to rehearse until it is and no more.
I’m interested in surrealism and dream logic. The acknowledgement that real life is better than movies and that acting is just doing.
I think every detail should be considered, unless it’s suffocating to do so and then it should be up to the wind.
I’m interested in working with geniuses who know what they’re doing, who respect each other and know what to question. Artists who care about their work but know when to let go.
I think it should be interesting to look at, subvert clichés but also sink deeper into them.
I think a general irreverence is mandatory.
I’m seeking to rebel.”
-What do you think are important qualities today in order to be a contemporary dancer?
“This is a scary question but I think a contemporary dancer is anyone who says they are or wants to be.
Moving forward, I would like the human race in general to find a way to supersede the strangling hold of the institutions of gender and wealth and inequality in general, just sweep the deck there. Which, for me, comes through the radical change of the way we do things.”
-Have you ever had an injury? If yes, how were you able to keep your motivation up and boost your recovery time?
“I have been injured so often. In many different ways. The less I dance the less injured I tend to become. Alice’s interview where she talks about having to pretend that you’re not in pain really resonated with me because it so simply expressed what I had always felt.
Basically it’s up to you, you’re the only person in your body. The process of being alive is itself an act of degradation, only you can decide how much pain is worth it. If you’re torturing yourself for the thing you absolutely love to do and have carefully thought of all the options and you just can’t live unless you dance this one time then that’s your own personal reckoning.
I will say that as I mature I find myself becoming very comfortable with knowing where my limits are and upholding my personal boundaries. I think dancers can very easily compromise their relationship to themselves. But I am slowly building trust there. I now know, from experience, that if I dance on an injury it will take longer to get rid of it. I also know that if I start stretching, and doing exercises, and talking about it all the time, and focusing all my energy on getting better, and coming back even stronger!! It will consume my entire being and I’m no longer a person: I am an injury. There’s balance.”
-How can the gender approach be improved in the dance world?
“Yes, the big gun question, I don’t have the answer. As a non-binary person, I am struggling to see myself in society. What I mean by that can be as small as “Ladies and Gentlemen” or as large as being physically attacked on a busy street. If you fail to see the problem with the former, then you fail to grasp the weight of the issue. Gender permeates our world. Therefore: dance world. What the dance world, as a microcosm of the actual world, has the potential to do is: act under entirely different rules. I believe that if “the artists” (of the world) can agree that there is a place for non-binary people to function as artists in a way that is recognised and respected as an equal and independent entity of male and female, then we’re absolutely capable of revolutionising the entire gender approach of the world.
Diversity and inclusion is not something we strive for, it’s something we just do and are.”
-Is there something you would like to change or challenge in the current dance world?
“The absolute torture of reality: change takes time. If I could have been born 900 years in the future, when trans people are so normal it’s boring, the earth will be an arid ball of fire and my dance practice won’t be so relevant anymore.
It’s comfortable for me to believe that just my presence in the dance world is enough to change or challenge it, but it’s hard to believe that. Somebody give me a Pulitzer because, get ready: change comes from discomfort. Okay I’m being showered with roses as we speak. I think there’s a lot of discomfort in seeing bodies that don’t look like how they normally should look on the stage. The way the bodies relate to each other is another thing. So many artists are looking at gender as something to be composed with. Balance the feminine with the masculine. A dancer is inexorably stricken to answer to both. In the pop quiz from hell: Are you a boy or a girl? Are you supporting or being supported? Are you dominant or submissive? Are you a girl who is tall? Are you a man with skinny arms? It’s not actually about strength, it’s about coordination, why are you crying?
I wish to see rebellion. I wish to see nothing of what has come before. Most importantly, I wish for an audience that sees importance in the boldness of discomfort.”
-What is the importance of dance in our social community?
“Dance is community. Community is the oft forgotten basic human need. Food, clean water, housing, sanitation, internet (debatable), community. If we don’t have community we have nothing, therefore if we don’t have dance we are nothing, I’m a genius.
Watching dance is one of the most special and confusing parts of the human experience. It sits firmly in the list of activities that are neither consumption or production, along with having an argument or walking in a circle. A truly perfect and anti-capitalist act? No, not at all. Of course it isn’t, nothing is. But it does have the potential to defy logic. Anything where you can look at something someone painstakingly created, over weeks of physical and emotional toil, and say “…bit weird” is so important to our community. We must must must protect our right to look at someone spinning on their eyebrows and say “wow, that is an option”.
I’ve found myself on the strange soapbox of: dance is weird! But I think I’m sticking to it.
I think a lot of people don’t understand dance because they think there is something to understand. If you delight in making spreadsheets, and can’t wait to optimise the cupboard storage space based on the combined volume of the exact amount of corn cans you buy, you’re probably not going to appreciate watching me enacting a vision I had of a robot making toast that sees a white horse gallop over the horizon. You might enjoy Forsythe or McGregor, but still there’s a disconnect of reality and the willingness to accept a new reality that is required of an audience. It is this relaxation of personal beliefs that makes people who enjoy art, dance specifically, capable of enacting enormous social change. If you can connect to the childlike wonder of seeing magic in front of your eyes, you might care less about who should or should not wear a dress.”
Can you give advice to dancers?
“Um, post reels? Aha jk, There’s some standard advice that I think is useful like: Question as much as you invest.
There will always be kids who push to the front, some people at the front like that, some people find it repulsive. Only you can answer what kind of dancer you want to be, but know that it’s within your control.
Sometimes, actually most of the time, you have to just play the game by the rules. If you’re stuck in a ballet school because that was the only option to climb up, then this will make things easier until you can get out. Which is so annoying to hear, but then at some point you’ll be a total master and you’ll be able to destroy it from the inside out.
If you connect to the idea of competing against someone, just know that you can only win or lose in the parameters of that specific competition, and by the time you do, so many other interesting facets will have been ignored. Really, the most interesting competition is with yourself.
This one is for all dance teachers,
Ballet is not the root of dance. Dancers can come in from any angle, at any time. That’s the point. Please question the grand statements you make because they are perpetuating ideals grander than the dance.
Please please please require children to wear normal, comfortable clothes to dance in. For ballet, yes ok I understand the fantasy of leotards is actually a driving force for some, but you absolutely must let people wear whatever they need to to feel comfortable. It’s such an indignity to engage in the ultimate act of vulnerability: dance, in clothing that makes you feel even more vulnerable. If you can trust children to know what they want to do with their lives for the next 20 years, you can trust them to be dealing with deep personal battles. The number of times I was in a room full of children in tights and jazz shoes, walking equidistant from each other, trying not to focus on every single insecurity flooding your tiny body, terrifying.”