We sat down with Mark Bleakley, who is bringing his show Stepping in… Spilling out to Edinburgh Fringe this year. Part of the Made in Scotland showcase 2025 and produced by Hacks, this show runs from 12 – 17 August at Assembly @ Dance Base. Get your tickets here.
Great to meet you, Mark. Can you tell us about your upcoming Edinburgh Fringe show?
Of course, Stepping In…Spilling Out is a dance performance and collaboration with percussionist and friend Rémy Gouffault. The work is an attempt from me to explore why I love stepping – the act of putting one foot in front of another, whether that is 2 stepping in a club, marching in a street, or melancholic swaying alone in grief. It unlocks a feeling and an activation of ideas, cultures, memories, and communal practices which come to my body. In this work I have tried to create a pathway that I step through, and hopefully guide the audience with me. Working in a continuous dialogue with Rémy, the performance weaves improvisation, text, rhythm, participation, and recorded conversations together for the audience and myself to consider the ways we step on, with, and for: people and places present or absent. As part of the spatial design I have created a loose pattern using audio cables to create a carpet-like space where the work starts from; my first ground, my parents’ carpet.
For me this work is a direct conversation with the audience; as a dancer with a social dance background I relate more to a line dance in a social club than the boundary of dance floor and audience. I’ve developed this performance with different moments of light touch participation to create a space that is shared and created with the audience.
The show is part of Made in Scotland’s 2025 Showcase. How does it feel to be involved with this initiative?
For me it’s a big deal to be selected. I often find my work sitting across dance and visual arts contexts wondering if it is being read. So there’s a nice feeling of confirmation and acknowledgement that my work is ‘doing’ something. This is my most public presentation and longest run of shows – I am really excited to see what I learn from each performance, and how our (myself and Rémy’s) relationship develops in the moment, how I move between the different ideas, and whether my cardio improves! (It’s a lot of steps in 50 minutes!)
What was the creation process like for Stepping in…Spilling out?
This work is a redevelopment of a performance lecture I made as part of my MFA in Choreography. We were asked to discuss an aspect of your practice, so I thought about what is at the core of my dance… stepping! I would say the creation process was in three strands:
- Interviews with guest dancers (pro and non-pro),
- weaving of references,
- and developing a dialogue with Rémy.
The key aspect I was trying to find was: how do I create a pathway through a web of references that makes sense to audiences. I balanced this script writing with invitations from other dancers, firstly so I was not making this work in isolation, that my ideas had people to bounce off; and secondly because I truly believe dance is social, and wanted to ensure that this is present in the creation process.
Can you tell us a little about the collaborative nature of the performance?
In each session with Rémy, we start with a simple game of start and stop, playing and dancing together or against each other. It has been a real joy and energising experience to develop this relationship intuitively and give feedback from what we saw and felt. We started sharing different songs I was interested in as a way of creating a base of rhythms that we could play and move with – from here it was really easy to find ways to create different atmospheres and energies we wanted in the work.
What would you like Edinburgh Fringe audiences to take away from the show?
As simply as I can put it, I want audiences to leave feeling the ground; sensing what their feet touch and carry with them. Maybe it’s like we hold so much baggage in our feet we don’t realise it – think of all those nerve endings in our soles! As living vibrant beings, we contaminate and are contaminated by the people, places, and materials we touch. I hope that someone leaves the show, walks on cobblestones, and feels a memory of their feet in another time or place.
Finally – why is stepping such a fundamentally important act?
Stepping is intentional. It is one of the first rhythms we learn (consciously, I guess). Stepping is moving with something; Stepping is moving for something. In a world constantly in flux and destabilisation, on many fronts I find it can be a way to stay in touch with myself and maintain a sense of community.