After critical acclaim for her eruptive dance show And at the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, contemporary experimental dance-artist Charlotte Mclean returns to direct Futuristic Folktales for an International Tour, April 5 – 27.
Futuristic Folktales tells the momentous story of the first womb – an environment where life and death intimately coexist. Humbly attempting to unify humanity through the infinite narrative of birth, the show experiments with contemporary, breaking, and Scottish Highland dance to probe questions of tradition, preservation, myth, and identity.
Charlotte Mclean’s practice amalgamates improvisation, voice work, imagination, self-celebration, joy, and radical listening. Her choreographic work has been carved from her childhood in Arbroath, Scotland, her training at Scottish Dance Theatre and her BA at London Contemporary Dance School.
She currently works across Scotland, London and Bern freelancing for various companies (including Eva Recacha and Barrowland Ballet) as well as co-founding movement bands BADBODYCHAOSCODE and Die Berner Band. The bands have influenced a lot of Charlotte’s practice and have performed at the V&A London and TANZhAUS Bern amongst others. Charlotte’s work engages in the political: advocating for body autonomy, reproductive justice, and freedom.
Futuristic Folktales has its UK premier at The Place, London on Thursday 18 April. Check it out here.
Futuristic Folktales explores the first ever womb. How would you describe the show to audiences who haven’t seen your work before?
Futuristic Folktales is a mix of theatre, contemporary dance and Scottish Highland dancing. There are two performers on stage, both with different backgrounds in dance, Astro is a break dancer and Orrow trained in contemporary. Throughout the show, both share the story of the first womb with the audience, inviting them to experience the different worlds inside the work. We don’t know the story of the first womb and we don’t pretend to know but we imagine this creation narrative and what the future may be. What folktales will our children tell of the year 2024?
Are you excited to be taking Futuristic Folktales on tour internationally after the success of your past work And at the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe?
Absolutely. It’s very humbling to be able to share this work throughout the UK and Switzerland. I have a close connection to all performance locations. I first studied at Dundee and Angus College, where we will host our preview performance at The Space in Dundee, before heading down London Contemporary Dance School. We will perform at The Place in London which is the theatre connected to the school, so it’s feels great to have the commission and support from them. We’ll also perform at Tojo Theatre in Bern, which is where I have performed the most since graduating in 2017. I began working for a dance theatre company in Bern and it’s been important to bring my own work to the city of Bern, a place I got stuck in during COVID and have worked in for so long now. We’ll also be touring to Tramway and this is a new connection – we’re excited by this and look forward to meeting the Glasgow audiences at the end of the tour before heading to the fringe at Dance Base in August.
Futuristic Folktales is described as a ‘collaboration-driven’ show – how does the creative team speak to this?
Since 2022, we have worked with many different artists to research the show. It’s been important to gain different perspectives on the themes of the work, from many different humans, as essentially it’s about the hope we have for the future. The lighting, sound, text, dramaturgy and costume all play an equally important role as the choreography. I like to imagine all of these elements as narrators of the show too, all working together to share the story of the first womb.
Music plays a really important part in the show’s emotional and physical landscape. What can audiences expect in this respect?
The sound composed by Malin Lewis creates a vast, embodied, ethereal space in the space. The bagpipe has been another one of our imagined wombs. This guttural, visceral sound will definitely be a highlight of the show.
Futuristic Folktales is set to perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024. Are you looking forward to sharing this work with international audiences in the summer?
Of course, I grew up going to the fringe every year and worked at Dance Base as an usher during the summers when I studied dance. Doing this job, I was able to watch lots of dance theatre shows for free & experience them more than once. This definitely inspired me to make my own work. The summer I watched Pat Kinevane from Fishamble perform Underneath over 15 times was definitely the summer I went back to my studies and started creating And. I can’t wait to bring Futuristic Folktales to the fringe. It will be strange not performing in it myself but I trust the performers and can’t wait for the everyday surprises the fringe throws at you!
Do you see the story of Futuristic Folktales developing in years to come?
I think the crux of the story will always stay the same, but I’m looking forward to having different constellations of performers inside the work. Throughout the research, it was vital to have so many voices in the creation and I’m sure the performers now will be happy and hopefully honoured to share their scores, passing down the work like a folktale itself.