Through dance, live music, and story telling Se Gaest | The Guest examines who we are, where we come from, and where we are going as a group of people who currently call England home today.
Se Gæst | The Guest opens at ARC Stockton Arts Centre on Saturday 3 October before touring to Hipp at the Hullabaloo in Darlington (18 November), Bradford Arts Centre (28 November), Durham Cathedral (25 February 2027) and Maltings Berwick (2027), with further performances in London and Italy planned for spring 2027. For more information and to book tickets visit here.
1. Your own experience of arriving in Teesside as a child and feeling like an outsider has informed The Guest; how has revisiting those experiences shaped the story you wanted to tell?
I was always dancing and singing, and I rejected some of the expectations being placed around me as a boy, and later as a young man. I just wanted to be myself, and particularly in very masculine communities, that could be unnerving for people. People were often unkind, but it was a different world back then. I hope things have changed, though most of my early memories are of people being unsure of me, of feeling like I didn’t quite belong.
I do have a memory of wanting to be a mermaid and swim back to Italy, and putting salt in the bath because I thought it might help. My mum used to put salt in the bath and sing Italian songs to me, so there was tenderness in those memories too.
That mixture of being an outsider and having a strong inner world is where The Guest comes from. It probably explains the selkie…although I’ve just given a little of the show away!
2. What did you discover through conversations with communities across England that changed or deepened your understanding of what belonging means?
I originally wanted to make a work about landscape and terrain, and how the natural world around us is changing. If I’m honest, I spent a lot of time trying to get people talking to me about trees, birds and insects!
But what kept coming through in conversations were the social tensions surrounding migration. The more people I spoke to, the more I realised that underneath those differing opinions was a much broader anxiety about the future. People were worried about their communities, identity and sense of security.
One thing I’ve really come to understand is that, whether I agree with someone or not, listening (and being listened to) is imperative to a hopeful future. Ironically, no one is really listening to anyone in The Guest. Everyone is trying to speak (or shout), but no one is really hearing each other. That became an important part of the work.
3. The Guest brings together contemporary dance, live music, storytelling and puppetry alongside Old English folklore and mythology; what drew you to this combination of forms?
When I was younger, we didn’t have a lot of money. I couldn’t attend after-school clubs or groups, so I entertained myself with whatever I had around me.
My creativity came from my own mind, my movement and whatever objects I could find around the house or on the street. A sheet became a ghost. A stick became a sword. Tea towels became dancing props. Shadows became monsters.
My imagination was fed through storytelling, but I made those stories in my own way. I think that is still very much how I work. So bringing together dance, storytelling, music, puppetry and folklore doesn’t feel particularly unusual to me. It’s just a continuation of how I learned to make worlds when I was young, taking ordinary things and using them as conduits to understand the world at a deeper level.
4. How have you used movement to explore the experience of arriving somewhere unfamiliar and trying to find a sense of home?
I work a lot with visual tableaux, contact, gestures and physical relationships between people, so it has been really interesting to use those tools to explore what it means to arrive somewhere, make connections and try to understand where you belong.
I’m interested in the physical language of arrival, the awkwardness of entering a new space, the desire to connect, and the uncertainty of not knowing how you will be received.
I could probably say a lot more about that, but if people want to know exactly where the movement takes us, they’ll have to come and see the show!
5. With Anthony Lo-Giudice Dance Theatre based in Middlesbrough, how has being rooted in Teesside influenced the company’s creative identity and the work you make?
When I was younger, there wasn’t a dance company in Middlesbrough that felt like it was for someone like me. I want to change that.
I’m not afraid of hard work or putting in the graft. I like to bring some Northern grit into what I do, but I also want to challenge the assumptions that can come with that.
I believe working-class stories should have the agency to be poetic, deep-minded, ambiguous and intelligent. We shouldn’t be hemmed into one particular narrative simply because of where we come from or what class we belong (or don’t belong) to.
That has definitely influenced why I make the work I make. I’m interested in subverting classism and creating ambitious work from Teesside that can travel well beyond Teesside, without having to lose where it came from.
6. What do you hope audiences recognise about their own experiences of belonging, identity or feeling like an outsider when they see The Guest?
I hope audiences recognise themselves in the different, sometimes contradictory narratives that play out in The Guest.
We’ve all felt like an outsider at some point. But we’re also all human. We all have flaws, we all make mistakes, and we all have the capacity to hurt other people, sometimes without intending to.
I don’t want to tell audiences what to think. I’d rather give them the space to recognise something of themselves in the work, perhaps in the person who feels excluded, but also in the person doing the excluding.
Ultimately, I’d like the work to leave people thinking a little more carefully about how we treat one another. Perhaps we might recognise that we have more in common than we think, and consider whether we could be a little kinder to each other.