We sat down for an exclusive interview with Kevin Edward Turner, MBE, artistic director, Company Chameleon. Obscura is a dance double bill from Manchester’s Company Chameleon, transforming two acclaimed outdoor works for the indoor stage as the ensemble returns to theatres for the first time since 2019.
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1) What changed creatively when you brought Refuse and Umbra indoors, and how did the shift in space alter the emotional contract with the audience?
The ability to control the dimension of light, and through the lightscape what can be hidden and what can be revealed is a central theme in both works. The lighting and the environments it can create act as another performer adding context and meaning to the work. This is difficult to achieve outdoors. The choreography has been developed and expanded, evolving the work and reimagining it for the theatre.
2) These works look outward at social exclusion and inward at personal shadow—what made you feel this was the right moment to place those perspectives side by side?
Both works explore what is hidden and the challenges and struggles one faces whether that is happening in the personal or public realm. Umbra reflects deep inward personal struggle, often hidden to others and to themselves and how this impacts your relationships and how you engage with the world.
Whereas Refuse flips this and explores how outward struggle and exclusion impacts the personal and collective experience and response to that struggle, hardship and exclusion.. inwards to outwards and outwards to inwards.
For me they are two sides of the same coin and are hugely relevant to today’s paradigm. Both working with what is hidden, unseen, and the real challenges people face daily.
3) Lighting is almost a collaborator in Obscura; how did you and the design team use it to embody the idea of shadow rather than simply illustrate it?
Josh Tomalin,the lighting designer for Obscura, is an artist and a collaborator and he answered this question. He said:
“Designing Umbra is all about marrying the lighting to the psychological states the dancers are responding to. Freed from any physical location, it’s about bringing interior emotions to life. By contrast the visual concept of Refuse is rooted in realism, gently suggesting to the audience a world that they recognise”
4) Refuse draws on many movement languages—how do you ensure that such stylistic plurality serves the human stories rather than aesthetic spectacle?
The movement language in the work is diverse but it is always there in service of an idea, sensation, image and purpose. The work is created to embody meaning and to communicate a question, reflection, comment, view or perspective.
5) As someone deeply interested in journeys and displacement, how do you choreograph desperation without tipping into abstraction or voyeurism?
Desperation is definitely one aspect of the performance but there are a plethora of human states and experiences within the work.
The best way I can think to answer the question is through the approach I take in both process and in performance:
I try to be as honest as I can be
To be mindful and on guard for ‘self indulgence’
To approach the work with authenticity and openness.
To listen, to learn, to experiment.
I do not have lived experience of asylum or displacement, so it was important for me as part of the research for the work to speak with, workshop and interview those who did have lived experience. This alongside my other research gave me the stories and experiences I needed to begin to research and create the work.
6) With Umbra created by Anthony Missen and Refuse by yourself, how does Obscura reflect both continuity and change in Company Chameleon’s artistic identity?
Chameleon is always changing, expanding and evolving. Transformation and change is at the core of what we do – it’s why we chose the name Chameleon.
Obscura reflects continuity by presenting the quality and excellence the company is known and charge by bringing our outdoor work into theatres for the first time