Downtime with Sharon Watson

08/01/20 • 56 min

DOWNTIME - interviews with dance artists & arts leaders, talking about dance & the arts

For the past 11 years Sharon Watson has been AD of Phoenix Dance Theatre. She is now CEO & Principal of Northern School of Contemporary Dance. This exciting and inspiring conversation took place as Lou joined Sharon in a personal moment that merged quiet reflection with exhilarating potential, as Sharon spoke of her journey as a black, female leader and artist, and her determination to seize the opportunity for radical change now.

Previous Episode

Downtime withTheo Clinkard

I had a great chat with choreographer, dancer and designer Theo Clinkard, in early June 2020.
In addition to making pieces for his own company, pieces like Ordinary Courage (2012) Chalk (2014), Of Land & Tongue (2014), This Bright Field (2017), he has also made work for Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Danza Contemporanea de Cuba, and Candoco Dance Company - among others.
Theo and I talked about the work he is currently developing ‘The Century Project’, his desire to engage in slow thinking – in both his life and his work, and his desire to move both his life and his work out of traditional performance spaces. Despite the current threat to opportunities for intimacy and proximity, both key parts of Theo’s work, it felt like the post-covid landscape might strangely align with the hopes he had anyway, for a more sustainable practice and a sector with access and diversity more firmly at its heart.
See
http://www.theoclinkard.com
https://www.under-story.com

Next Episode

Downtime with Aditi Mangaldas

In this episode Lou spent some Downtime with Aditi Mangaldas, a leading dancer and choreographer in the classical Indian dance form of Kathak, based in Delhi, India. Aditi runs her own rep company - Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company – The Drishtikon Dance Foundation. It is here that she experiments with what she calls ‘contemporary danced based on Kathak’. Her productions, for example Inter_rupted and Within, have toured the world to great acclaim.

Lou zoomed into Aditi's life while she was in the countryside outside of Bombay towards the end of June 2020. They had a far-reaching conversation that covered the Covid situation there, the uber-difficult task of supporting artists when the sector itself is not organised , and the digital work she is creating to raise funds to support the artistic community. They also talked about Aditi’s relationship with classical Kathak, what her style of 'contemporary dance based on Kathak' means, what her processes look like and why she turned down the celebrated National Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2013. Quick fire questions were, on this occasion, provided by Aditi and Lou’s mutual friend and collaborator Aakash Odedra.
http://www.aditimangaldasdance.com/index.php

DOWNTIME - interviews with dance artists & arts leaders, talking about dance & the arts - Downtime with Sharon Watson

Transcript

Transcript

Lou Cope talks to Sharon Watson

16 June 2020

Lou: Hello, Sharon, thank you so much for joining me. How are you doing?

Sharon: I'm doing well, actually. I suppose there's.. with so much going on one would expect probably a bit of a conflict in terms of maybe mind, body, spirit, but I feel quite.. I'm feeling quite, quite comfortable in my space right now.