Dr. Adesola Akinleye is an interdisciplinary artist-scholar and choreographer who started her career with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Working with UK companies such as Green Candle, and Carol Straker Dance Company, the last twenty years have seen her work range from films, installation and texts to live performance that is often site-specific or involving a cross-section of the community. Her work is characterized by an interest in glimpsing and voicing people’s lived experiences through creative moving portraiture. She just released her new book ‘Dance, Architecture, and Engineering’ which explores how dance, architecture, and engineering can contribute to decolonizing the production of place. We caught up to discuss her book, career, and current projects.
Thank you for agreeing to catch up with Occhi Magazine. How were you introduced to dance and when did you decide to fully embrace it as a career?
Thank you, it is great to be able to talk about my work with Occhi Magazine.
I began dancing in an after-school program in my last year of primary school. My beginning experiences with dance were after school and community program it has shaped by belief that dance is an important part of everyday life, not a luxury hiding in a theatre somewhere. I never really decided to have a ‘dance career’. I have just spent my life making sure I can keep dancing. I cannot really imagine not dancing.
How has your career and dance as an art form evolved since you started?
It hasn’t changed, it just gets more interesting!! I see dance and choreography as processes for understanding the world. Every day, every dance is a deeper investigation into understanding how we are present in the world around us, the dance of the city, the dance of life.
Please tell us more about your company ‘DancingStrong Movement Lab.’ and its objectives?
I am the Artistic Director of DancingStrong Movement Lab (DSML) www.dancingstrong.com, the company was founded in 2009 as Adesola Akinleye/DancingStrong. On our ten-year anniversary in 2019, I was joined by Helen Kindred. We now co-direct the Movement Lab. Under our direction, DSML is a hub for interdisciplinary somatic-based inquiry, practice-as-research processes, performance, texts, and film projects. We present work internationally mobilizing movement ideas as well as facilitating and creating community-based art projects and performances making dance with and for people across the community (such as our interactive performances for young audiences). We also have a community movement hub trip that offers classes and workshop and other fun interactive events https://www.triipdancingstrong.com
How have Covid and subsequent lockdowns impacted your work?
This question is such a big question because I think this is a moment in time is a definitive period of change. It is clear we must address that we do not live alone on this planet; we must understand we are part of the web or network of the critical zone of the Earth. Dancing, one becomes aware of this network, in the moment of dancing you can become more aware of the coming together of this network. As I dance, dance lives across the network of the moment – the breath, gravity, muscle, music, floor, other people, etc…
Covid and lockdowns have underlined the importance of the somatic: for all we create in the 21st century, our bodies still conduct our experiences of life.
I have been working on a hybrid live-on-line performance that partly plays with the ‘glitches’ in online platforms, how I can hack dance into online communication. Helen and I have been creating Concrete-Water-Flesh a performance work that lives across the digital world and also live physical performance events.
Congratulations and very best wishes with the success of your new book ‘Dance, Architecture, and Engineering. When and why did you decide to write this book?
Thank you. The book shares reflections on research I did during 2019 as part of a Research Fellowship I had with Theatrum Mundi. This is given foundation by my Ph.D. research undertaken ten years prior to this. The book is part of the Society for Dance Research, Dance in Dialogue/In Conversation titles. This is an interdisciplinary book series that examines relations between performance, dance, and other disciplines. My book uses the experiences of conversations, workshops, and performances in dance with and for architects and engineers during 2019. Using these events, I look at the commonalities of concern (across our practices) for how we create kind and responsive places to live together.
Can you explain the importance of decolonizing space, particularly for women and certain groups?
Architecture isn’t about aesthetic buildings, it’s more about people and the form or functionality of spaces. Has your project, and working with construction professionals changed or widened your perspective on architecture?
I feel I understand the processes and culture of making within architecture and engineering more. I am particularly interested in the training – when we first learn the classisms of our craft (be it dancer, architect, or engineer) this is a point when we also inherit some of the assumptions that movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter attempt to challenge. It is interesting to learn more about how these assumptions manifest and pervade. Seeing them in one subject inspired in another for instance I have found new creative approaches to the same issues as they manifest in dance.
Having worked in the construction sector, I’ve experienced varying levels in understanding the synergy, use, and therapeutic benefits of visual and performing arts in designing buildings. Please explain the process and results of your collaborations with construction and design professionals.
Umm, this is a difficult question; it took me 50,000 words in the book to explain!!
The book launch is a collaboration with Theatrum Mundi. Can you tell us more about this initiative, its mission, and your involvement?
Theatrum Mundi is a center for research and experimentation in the public culture of cities. We are interested in expanding the crafts of city-making through collaboration with the arts, developing imaginative responses to shared questions about the staging of urban public life. My fellowship took a starting point from the paper written by Theatrum Mundi director John Bingham-Hall and UCL, STEaPP lecturer Ellie Cosgrave ‘Choreographing the City: Can dance practice inform the engineering of sustainable urban environments?’ (Bingham-Hall & Cosgrave, 2019).
Theatrum Mundi had a Dance, Architecture, and Engineering book launch last week where we read excerpts from the book and DancingStrong Movement Lab. performed excerpts from Concrete-Water-Flesh.
There is an event this week May 6th at MIT. It is an online event starting at 12:30 (EDT) http://act.mit.edu/news/2021/04/29/may-6-adesola-akinleyes-dance-architecture-and-engineering/
What are the expected outcomes of the book and related activities?
My book, Dance, Architecture, and Engineering marks the first stage of my Fellowship with Theatrum Mundi (Choreographing the City: as/at the city limits). I am now in a second phase (Choreographing the City: Navigations). Part of this phase is a collaboration with the Art, Culture, and Technology Program at MIT where I have been hosted by Professor Gediminas Urbonas http://act.mit.edu/people/affiliates/adesola-akinleye/. At the end of last year, we created eight podcasts that relate to the book. They work well as pre-listening before reading the book. https://soundcloud.com/actmit
Has the experience of working on this project encouraged further exploration into working with other artforms?
Earlier I described the world as a joyful interconnected web of exchange. Similarly, I really feel that the notion of subject areas, art forms, and other subdivisions exist only as once convenient containers. But as we try to unpick the damage of commodifying and measuring each other left to us by Western colonialism or global sexism I also question if it is useful to be limited by the notion of belonging to an ‘artform’. Thinking in networks: I am interested in discussing the idea that the subject areas we first learn to express in (our training) are almost more useful for illustrating to us what we don’t know and assume (because of that training) than they are useful for what we do know (because of our training).
Where can we find more information about you and your work?
www.adesolaakinleye.com (@adesola_akinleye)
for DancingStrong Movement Lab www.dancingstrong.com
A Akinleye Photos by (main) F Christofilopoulou, A Wieland
Concrete-Water-Flesh, A Akinleye and H Kindred Photo by C. Warner
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