Photo: Photo: Oliver Lamford.
Honouring death through dance
Linda Murgatroyd reviews Soul Play, a dance-theatre duet about deatn and bereavement
Soul Play is a gentle and intimate dance-theatre duet that explores the moments following a young man’s death. Kate Flatt devised it in response to her own grief upon the death of family members. A secondment at a local hospice as part of a Rayne Choreographic fellowship encouraged this further, and Soul Play also draws on her experience of folk dance in Eastern Europe, Korea and elsewhere. ‘Dance is such a force for life’, says Flatt, ‘that when the right time came, I was not afraid to tackle this taboo subject.’ It’s an intimate and gripping forty minutes, brilliantly performed by actor Sam Curtis and dancer Joy Constantinides, encompassing extraordinary moments of solitude, anger, laughter, sadness, vitality and deep compassion. The narrative is conveyed through an outstanding range of expressive movement and evocative words, supported by strong but simple visual and sound elements which interact wonderfully with the performers. The audience is engaged at a deep level, with many questions left for their imagination and interpretation.
The first performances of a Soul Play piece, in 2008, evoked such powerful responses in the audience that Kate Flatt has developed the project further, adding opportunities for members of the audience to reflect together on their reactions to the piece. In addition, she has devised a series of creative workshops on loss and remembrance for the bereaved (including children) and for professionals who work with them. One of her intentions is to seed ideas that could be helpful for bereavement counsellors in future; both to nourish them spiritually and to develop new tools to use in their work.
Kate Flatt’s Quaker background informs her work in a variety of ways. For her, spirituality is about how we go about our everyday life. As a teacher of choreography, she encourages students in improvisation to work from a place of stillness, in order to engage with a deeper part of their personal experience. Kate feels that this work is all about developing creativity and spiritual growth. Her fundamental belief that there is that of God in everyone, and her openness to light from unexpected sources, has also enabled her to cross boundaries, between dance and theatre, community work and spirituality. Much of her choreographic oeuvre has been outside ‘pure’ dance; it includes a number of outstanding productions in opera, film and musicals. The Dancing Room, another dance-theatre piece made in 1995, was inspired by her father John Flatt’s description of how he saw the spirit as a dance in the worshipping space of the Meeting house.
In Soul Play Kate Flatt imagines what might happen in the immediate aftermath of death, with the departure of the soul. Each death is different but in every case there needs to be time for honouring the departure, for the bereaved to mourn, and to celebrate the departed – over different timescales. Although many cultures have established traditions for this, there is little space in our largely secular and multicultural society for taking leave of the dead or dying, for mourning them or for celebrating them. Kate Flatt’s work demonstrates that the physical language of dance and movement can help to break down these taboos and to create safe spaces for mourning, celebration and inner healing.
Soul Play will be performed at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, on 27 March at 2.45 and 7.45, and at The Place Theatre, London, on 30 March at 8.00 pm. Post-performance discussions will be held. See www.kateflatt.com for further information.
