Welsh-born and bred dance artist Eddie Ladd makes performance in which dance, bilingual text, music and new media technologies are featured. She is back again in Birmingham to perform her solo piece, Ras Goffa Bobby Sands / The Bobby Sands Memorial Race, which is set in on a 12ft by 6ft running machine. The show concentrates on the final years of keen runner Bobby Sands, who died on hunger strike in Belfast’s notorious H Blocks nearly three decades ago. IDFB caught up with Eddie for a chat.

Tell us about the piece and what inspired you to do Ras Goffa Bobby Sands / The Bobby Sands Memorial Race?
It’s a dance piece on the life of Bobby Sands looking at the period 1976 to 1981. He was one of 10 who died on hunger strike in the H-Blocks of the Maze prison in Belfast in 1981. Their aim was to win back political status for the republican prisoners, in pursuit of the longer-term aim of a united Ireland.

“Trust no thought arrived at sitting down,” is a phrase quoted at the beginning of the show, and the idea was arrived at on the move. I was training for another piece of work, which would feature a run of 18 miles, in January 2009. During one long run, I remembered Bobby Sands’ name. I remembered seeing an American website that had details of a race run in his memory. He’d run and raced as a teenager and wrote about it while he was in prison. He made the arresting observation that, while he could once run miles over fields and hills, he could now barely walk the length of himself.

I was running most days and each day, running or not, the idea developed some more. I thought it might be possible to present his life and struggle through running and might be able to say something through an activity that calls for endurance, effort, commitment and self-discipline.

The question then was how to present the action in a theatre space. I’d done much of the training for the other piece on a treadmill and I could not think of a better way of making running look like running. You can run properly, and its image stays before the audience all the time, without having to find more space or turning around and so on. Then there was the question of finding the right kind of treadmill. A regular gym machine would not work. The runner needed to be seen; there had to be some impression of open space; a machine with sidebars and a control panel up front could undermine the idea. We had one made in the end, by a company from Oldham, who make conveyor belts for everything.

What are the themes in the piece?
The themes are endurance and commitment, physical and mental.

What particularly interested you on Bobby Sands and why focus on the running side rather than the political side?

Running provoked Bobby Sands’ name and the piece then followed (or had to be pushed and bent into being). The running is a way of looking at the politics.

Can you tell us about the process of creating the piece? Who did you work with and why?
We recorded the sounds from which its electro-acoustic score would be made in December 2008. Once I’d had the idea while training in January 2009, I thought while I ran, and kept on thinking afterwards. I read books and drew out the structure on long pieces of paper. I practised the structure on a gym running machine. This was before I decided there ought to be choreography as well as running in the show (it could have been over 60 minutes of running, with a commentary on the soundtrack).

I asked Sarah Williams, a dancer from Montreal, to work with me on the choreography and the month’s rehearsal in July 2009 was devoted to devising the movement. I recorded interviews in Belfast before and during the rehearsal period too.

Guto Puw, the composer, sent sections of his electro-acoustic score everyday during this time. Nick Rothwell, the sound designer, made his own settings and we all thought about which of Guto’s pieces should go where. The structure changed during this time as well! The narrative, choreography and music naturally decided the shape of the piece.

Giles Parbery, the technical manager, made the sensor hardware as we rehearsed and we’d look over from the running machine occasionally and see a scene that, in miniature, was reminiscent of Merthyr Tydfil in the 1830s – tools, tubing, metal and smoke, all lit up and running almost continuously. The first week we worked a civilized 9am to 6pm. By the end, well, it was…like Merthyr Tydfil in the 1830s.

Can you tell us about the music and the role sound plays in the piece? How did you get to work with Nick Rothwell?
The electro-acoustic score is by Guto Puw and I asked him to work on the project before I knew what the subject matter would be. Although he’s a well-known contemporary composer (and has written for typewriters and the like!), he wanted to collaborate with someone who had experience in setting electronic sound. After a while, I was put in touch with Nick Rothwell, who specialises in programming, media, and making installations, and things felt solid from then on.

With Giles Parbery, Nick made the sound environment and Guto’s score was set into it. He wrote one-minute long sections, which were sometimes used as they were, sometimes looped and sometimes sampled. We all worked together to decide which pieces should go with which action. Before the subject was decided on, I’d wanted to make a piece which made the movement activate the music. Once we had the subject we had to decide how this would happen. It was Nick’s suggestion that we avoid wearables (sensors that you fix onto costume), as they’d be unreliable. They’d mostly need to be wireless to avoid getting cable snagged on the machine and to allow the movement to work, and the signals might not fire properly. He suggested sensors at ground level, mostly triggered by feet passing a short distance away.


What were the challenges in using the machine?
To stay still, you have to keep moving! For example, there’s a scene where I write on the wall, so I have to work to stay low, write properly and keep pushing the body to the right at the same time, otherwise, it’ll go left and straight off the machine. But working on a moving surface helps the action: you can run properly, the motion of the machine gives the impression of time passing, the body looks like it’s in relation to a system to which it has to react and adapt itself. The machine makes more noise as it gets faster. It’s 12ft x 6ft and the noise can’t be dampened down like a gym machine. It’s the belt that makes the running surface that makes the noise, rather than the motor. We had to accept that it would make the noise it does, and at its highest speed it makes a real contribution to the sound track.

You performed the piece in Birmingham earlier this year as part of British Dance Edition, what are you most looking forward to performing at The Patrick Centre again?
We showed the piece during a showcase in February at The Patrick Centre and it’s wonderful to be asked back!

What is the performance scene in Wales like? Also, does being Welsh shape your work, and if so, how?
There are different scenes in different areas. You could see different artists and performers working in and around Abertawe/Swansea, Caerdydd/Cardiff, Aberystwyth, Aberteifi/Cardigan, Bangor and Caernarfon. Lots of soloists and small groups at work. There are some big structures of course – recently two national theatres were established, one in Welsh, the other in English. There’s quite a lot of outright performance art because of the course at the Art School in Caerdydd/Cardiff and the performance studies course at Aberystwyth. Some might say that we’ve got an inclination to it because Methodism, strong during the 18th and 19th centuries, frowned on theatre, and in emphasising truth over fiction, gave rise to performance activity which stresses reality over representation. Discuss!

My work since 1996 has considered national identity and liberation, and the effects of colonisation on Wales. Two examples: Scarface* (the asterisk is meant to tell the audience that it’s not Brian de Palma’s film and that they won’t, sadly, be seeing Al Pacino), is a theatre show played against blue screen. I play to camera throughout, against the blue screen. My image is video-mixed into a proper scenic background and the result is projected onto a cinema screen. It’s like making a film on stage. The story of Scarface* is re-told against the wrong background (not Miami, but a farm in west Wales) and in the wrong language (quite a lot is in Welsh).

The second example is Cof y corff/muscle memory, which is also a camera and live action piece. It’s an account of Welsh history through movement analysis. Like Scarface*, it’s bilingual, played in Welsh one night and then English the next. In fact, it can be performed in any language, as the text is spoken live by a narrator by the stage. Ras Goffa Bobby Sands/The Bobby Sands Memorial Race in bilingual, Welsh and English, within the same performance.

Tell us about your dance training and background?
I went to Aberystwyth University and did a degree in Drama, as it was called then. A few years later I began working with a Welsh-language experimental theatre company called Brith Gof and they’ve had the strongest influence on me. They were a physical theatre company and it was through them that I became interested in dance. The definition of dance seems to have become wider and wider in the last few years, and it’s now wide enough for me to claim to be a dancer! My work sometimes gets called performance art but I think performance artists might go “Tut” at this point.

What’s next for you after Ras Goffa?
More dates for Ras Goffa this year and next and then I’ll work on a dance installation at Aberystwyth University. It’ll be a “deep map” of several areas on the coast and will feature dance in the environment. It’ll be projected onto the 30m long window of the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies (the drama department…)

Eddie Ladd’s Ras Goffa Bobby Sands / The Bobby Sands Memorial Race is part of DanceXchange’s exciting Autumn season. The performance is on Thursday, 11 November at 8pm at The Patrick Centre, Birmingham Hippodrome.

For ticket sales call 0844 338 5000 or to book online and for more information visit www.dancexchange.org.uk.