Katie Green has been the one to start me thinking about grants and funding. It’s often an inevitable path for the dancer, a path I’ve (for some reason) been reluctant to take.
Green, after studying English at Cambridge University, went on to study at London Contemporary Dance school, graduating in 2006. In the same year, she began her company Made by Katie Green. I find that amazing. Courageous – in the everyday-battle kind of way. I think it can be incredibly difficult to define what you want to do, and to take a leap, without being drowned by feelings of under experience.
She’s been an Associate Artist at Dance4 (Nottingham; 2007-9), and Regional Artist at Déda (Derby; 2010-11). Green not only directs Made by Katie Green, she’s a freelance dancer, choreographer and teacher.
Green speaks to my own heart when she describes her love of storytelling, the reason she decided to begin with an English degree. I love story-telling. I think it’s a way we connect as humans, convey deeper meaning, understand life. It gives us distraction alongside engagement. Viewing her work “Matters of Life and Death” the other day was a work with a vivid narrative background, it demonstrated how storytelling can be used as a backbone of dance, and how dance can transform and shape a linear situation. In a post show talk, Green described the body as a “pivot to deal with a scenario”, to “highlight emotional facets”.
There’s more to the English degree for Green: “The thing I’m most glad of about my particular training route is that I think I was better prepared for the physical and emotional challenge of dance training. I found much of that first degree really hard – 3 or 4 essays a week, attempting to read what felt like the complete works of Shakespeare in my very first term… I just wasn’t ready to receive all of the information I was given straight out of school, but after a while of listening to lots of other people and time spent with some very good tutors, I had more confidence in my own view of the world.” (londondance.com)
The surety Green brings to her practice, the articulation of her ideas, and her willingness to pass on her wisdom to youth dancers is something to be admired. Encouraging people not only to engage with dance in a performance space, but through workshop and choreographic creation can heighten the understanding people can have of dance. Perhaps the passion she mentors with is in part due to her own positive experiences with mentors of her own: Anna Williams and Kate Flatt acting as choreographic mentors and Tom Cornford helping in movement and rehearsal management.
For me, Katie Green is an intellectual, thoughtful and encouraging choreographer, dancer and teacher. She highlights the payoff that consistent persistence can have, and showing how a choreographer can give back the support she’s received.
Time to get organised myself!
Image via LondonDance