Strut takes big strides in dance
More than a decade after it was set up to support WA choreographers and dancers, STRUT dance is taking a big step forward under new director Paul Selwyn Norton.
"We are locked and loaded and ready to make trouble," Norton says about transforming STRUT into the National Choreographic Centre of WA, one of the rare such organisations based away from the east coast.
"I have now positioned STRUT into being a national organisation. It is no longer only representing WA. Our membership is going to go Australia-wide."
Norton has vowed that the contemporary dance development centre will strut its way towards a bigger national role from its base in the King Street Arts Centre.
Norton has hit the ground running by signing up international dance luminaries William Forsythe and Ohad Naharin as mentors at STRUT for the next three years.
STRUT has had its financial firepower almost doubled for the next three years through the Australia Council and Department of Culture and the Arts for its ambitious mission to turn Perth into a beacon for contemporary dance. That means more artists will be heading west to develop their skills and collaborate with local and international talent.
Naharin will lead workshops in his Gaga dance methods when his Batsheva Dance Company is in Perth in February, and classes in Forsythe's techniques will occur in August.
Naharin and Forsythe are two of the greatest choreographers of the past few decades and their methodologies resonate through 21st century pedagogy and repertoire.
"I don't want artists to come over here and tell us how to dance," Norton says. "I want artists to come and share their knowledge about the creative process, methods to open creativity. People are already doing great work here. My job is to facilitate their opportunity for better creative resources."
More work will be done to make the city a conduit for cultural exchange with Asia, starting with a partnership with Singapore's T.H.E Dance Company.
Norton also has initiated a Rogues program to unearth and nurture new talent Statewide from outside the traditional pathways such as dance schools.
"I thought STRUT was all about 'Muscle up, show us what you've got'. But it was more about being a support mechanism so I have completely shifted that sense," he says. "It is unashamedly inclusive and unashamedly meritocratic."
Born in Africa in 1964 and raised in the West Indies, Norton was training to be a doctor and immunologist when he was discovered dancing in a Dutch disco at the age of 23. He has since gone on create shows for Korzo theatre, DudaPaiva Company and Galili Dance in the Netherlands, Forsythe's Ballet Frankfurt, the Moscow Chamber Ballet, Batsheva Dance Company in Israel, Koresh Dance Company in the US and Australia's Stalker Theatre and Chunky Move.
Since replacing STRUT director Agnes Michelet in June, he has been involved in extensive consultations with the local dance sector about how STRUT could take its next steps sideways and upwards.
"People were very excited. They made my job really easy. I just said 'Here's the invitation, do you want to dance with these people?'."
STRUT choreographers will be commissioned to create new work with T.H.E. Dance Company, to be presented in Asia, and the Singapore company also will help STRUT identify possible touring partners within the Asian market.
The first year of Norton's plan will culminate in a "mini" MoveMe Dance Festival in 2014. By 2016, that will be expanded into a full MoveMe Dance Festival.
Strut's three-year relationship with Naharin will be crowned with the premiere of his work Minus 16 at the Heath Ledger Theatre, danced by 15 WA artists and three from interstate.
Norton says the focus is to offer sustained exposure to world-class dance techniques and choreographic practices.
"There are disparate pockets of beautiful poetry happening all over the city and there is space to pull it together in a more profound way."
