Lea Anderson MBE on working with BA students at London Contemporary Dance School

Lea Anderson is an independent choreographer, filmmaker and artistic director, who founded The Cholmondeleys Dance Company in 1984 with Teresa Barker and Gaynor Coward. Lea started the Featherstonehaughs, the brother company, in 1988. Extracts from her work, 'Smithereens' are performed by third year BA students at London Contemporary Dance School at Wilton's Music Hall as part of a mixed bill evening alongside works by Maxine Doyle and Yuval Pick.

How have you found working with our students?

I have been surprised and delighted by the enthusiasm for what I expected to be quite a niche or particular kind of dance performance. Initially I think they were wondering what exactly this work was but now I can feel a very strong enthusiasm and enjoyment.

What does it feel like to bring a seminal piece back to live interpreted by a new generation of dancers?

A dance piece is an ongoing living thing and it only exists when new people are engaging with it. This was a piece I felt very strongly about and very close to when I made it, and I felt that the design and the music worked really strongly together. Its very nice to revisit this piece and experience again how much detail and thought went into it. It is also really enjoyable to work with people like Anna Pons Carrera and Steve Blake who were in the original production, and to hear them remembering things and realising the amount of detail. It has given me ideas about a new kind of archive or reproduction of works.

The dance industry has changed a lot since 1999. Do you see the work with different eyes now or how has it changed?

The context for dance performance has changed hugely since 1999. There isn’t as big an audience anymore. We did nearly 100 performances of this work back then, which meant that the dancers and the musicians had a depth of understanding that dancers today probably don’t get the opportunity to develop anymore. I realise that it is a very different kind of experience for them now.

In the past I think people were more curious or more open to very niche interpretations and cross over between different art forms. My work was always a bit different and never quite fit just a “dance audience”. But its great that it is being performed again and young people will know about the work. Hopefully it will help them think about their own work and what they want to do.

Keeping repertoire alive is not something we are necessarily very good at in contemporary dance. Why is it important to revisit work as well as look forward?

What’s really important is that dance is such an obvious art form to be cut financially. Dancers often think it is normal to have no budget. It is not thought of as a visual art form anymore. So to know that dancers in the past have fought to get funding and that funding grew through the 80s and 90s and money was invested in the visual design of new works, paid by tax payers money so it would belong to us all – this needs to be known and we have to teach people the dignity and the investment that should be in dance.

Bradley, Flowers, Smithereens is a very exciting triple bill of three high caliber choreographers. How do you feel about the opportunity for audience to see contemporary dance work curated in this way?

It’s great to remind people what work is out there, and in a student production you can give people little flavours of these things. It’s great for audiences, and it’s great for the dancers.