Doorstep Duets: ‘Community and connection and joy and wonder’

Contemporary dance can seem like a strange and unknowable art form, with those interested in discovering it still left feeling perplexed about how to get into it. But really, it can take only the smallest exposure to foster an immediate love of the power of storytelling through movement. 

This is something Matthew Bourne’s dance company New Adventures is well aware of, and one of the key reasons its annual Doorstep Duets project exists. 

Originally a lockdown project, Doorstep Duets launched in 2021. The aim is to bring world class dance to audiences who would not normally have access to it with short performances taken into communities, rather than expecting them to come to the theatre. 

For its fourth year, choreographer Anjali Mehra has created new show Hum, featuring original music by Grammy nominated composer Luke Brady. 

“This project is very much about community and connection and joy and wonder,” Mehra explains. “I'm really aware that it's live dance that people might not have seen before, so I needed to create a story that people can understand and connect with easily.”

She often takes inspiration from nature, she says, and while researching ideas for this show, came across information on hummingbirds. 

“The hummingbird was really interesting, because it's this very tiny, tiny bird on the planet, but it drops little nectars in different plants and it helps the rainforest,” she says. “I thought it was quite a nice metaphor for people doing small acts of kindness towards each other and how that possibly then grows and connects to people.”

The “ripple effect” of one act of kindness prompting the recipient to then go on to do something for something else then became “the basis of the piece.”

Having a story that is quickly understandable to a wide variety of audience members is one consideration. Another is how the show will work in different outdoor settings not necessarily designed with live performance in mind. The show will be staged in parks, market squares, libraries, on the steps outside Margate’s Turner Contemporary and other settings besides. 

“It's outdoors and there's no set that can fly in and lights that can change the atmosphere, or wings that you can go into, and it might be on gravelly floor,” says Mehra.

To cope with this, she goes on, there will be “different versions of the show” in order for the production to be able to “shift and change with the space” available. “We’ve got to be sensitive to the world around us,” she says.

She also hopes that the audiences will interact with the piece as well, bringing another element of unpredictability to the performances. Those watching will be encouraged to join in with the movements or sing along. “We're thinking of handing out some simple instruments so that they can keep the rhythm with us,” she adds. 

“It will hopefully be a lovely interactive thing which you don't really get in theatre,” she says. “So it's really fun.”

Mehra originally joined New Adventures as a dancer in 1999, appearing in performances by the company for two decades - including Cinderella, The Red Shoes, and Swan Lake. She was also a member of the original cast of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams, worked with choreographers including Wayne McGregor, Arthur Pita and Cathy Marston, and appeared in Hollywood movies World War Z and Alexander. 

She had worked as a choreographer and movement director on various projects in between dance contracts over the years. When she retired as a dancer in 2019, she moved into this field full time, and has now worked on shows including The Lord Of The Rings - A Musical Tale and the English National Opera’s production of A Handmaid’s Tale. She is also movement director on upcoming National Theatre show A Tupperware Of Ashes, starring Meera Syal.

As well as working on these large scale shows, she has also been involved with other New Adventures projects aimed at reaching different audiences.

“This is my third outreach project,” she explains. The first being her film Little Grasses Crack Through Stone in 2020, during lockdown. Then last year she worked with New Adventures and the charity Magic Me on a project that saw her and others work with people diagnosed with dementia living in care homes, which resulted in the short film Moving In Time. So Doorstep Duets is “another step in my connection with New Adventures in this way,” she says.

Doorstep Duets is somewhat different to those projects, however. Has she spoken to the choreographers of the previous shows to get an idea of what to expect? 

“Yeah, I know them all really well because they're all colleagues of mine,” she says. “I've talked to all of them in terms of knowing how different spaces are going to be and different people. They helped me out to let me know what different environments I was going to be in.”

“But the main thing that they said was it was just so moving,” she goes on. “They've all said it's an incredibly special project, and they were always so surprised by how much they got moved by the reactions of the different audiences.”

“So it's a very special project, and I’m really thrilled to be part of it, it's something that's really very unique.”

As for what she hopes to get out of it, she says, “I just want people to get a sense of what dance and art forms can do in terms of connecting people. It's such a human thing to dance, to move and to be affected by it.” 

“It's really lovely just to allow audiences to be affected by it and, you know, it not being in a theatre, they can get up, they can dance with us, they can, you know, they can sing with us. I think it would be really nice if they just feel like they are involved and they just feel a sense of community and a sense of shared joy. That's the main thing.”

“Hopefully they’ll go, ‘Wow, I'd love to go and see more dance.”

Doorstep Duets comes to Margate on August 23, with a performance in Dalby Square at 10:30am and a second at the Turner Contemporary at midday. The following day, August 24, the show will be in Ramsgate at Newington Community Centre at midday, the East Cliff bandstand at 2pm, and the Ellington Park bandstand at 4:30pm. See listings for the full tour on the New Adventures website.