Words by Josephine Leask.
Lea Anderson’s beautifully designed book celebrates the 40th anniversary of her companies The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs. It is indeed a work of art, a visual archive of images featuring Chris Nash’s “low-res snaps taken during performances” and “carefully crafted rehearsal images” of both companies between 1984 – 2023. The book catalogues moments from individual works, the strikingly unusual costumes, sketches of designs and stage designs, as well as interviews with members of Anderson’s creative team: photographer Chris Nash, costume designer Sandy Powell, composer and musician Steve Black, costume designer and dancer/choreographer Simon Vincenzi, lighting designer/scenographer Simon Corder and founder member of The Cholmondeleys, Teresa Barker. Along with the dancers, these people made the companies into the long running phenomenon that they became. The visual predominance of striking images enables the reader to see, imagine and feel what it was like to be up close to the dancers, making you feel nostalgic if you remember them and intrigued if you didn’t.
Informally written and anecdotal as if she’s chatting to a friend, Anderson’s introduction sets the context of the work, introducing the people who were part of it, and what shaped her vision. She sets the scene of post-punk London in the mid-eighties, and the “DIY culture” in which she was immersed, where people were making magazines, clothes, art and music – often in their homes – or performing in bands and running nightclub evenings.
Before she studied dance at Trinity Laban, Anderson had completed an art foundation course, performed for several years in a post-punk band, and was already designing and selling T shirts. While a student at Laban, she was determined to make her choreography something that “connected with the rest of the world” and included her obsession for cabaret, musical-hall and pop songs. Setting up The Cholmondeleys with Gaynor Coward and Teresa Barker, the all-female company, worked with musicians, artists and people from the club scene that performed in fringe venues, nightclubs and pubs. Often the company was supporting a band or “creating one-off site-specific work in nightclubs and parties”.
In the late 80s, The Cholmondeleys started performing full works in dance venues such as The Place, The October Gallery as well as at big festivals including Glastonbury (2000 to 2008). Anderson tells us that she and her collaborators went out of their way to make her dancers not look like dancers through the costumes, distinctive Doctor Marten boots, their band-like image and choreography she devised. The all-male Featherstonehaughs, founded in 1987 were often described as being more like a “gang of men” because of what they wore and did on stage.
As costumes played a central role in the work, Anderson makes them the focus of the book so don’t expect a detailed analysis of her choreography! She describes how in the early days costumes included a mixture of off-cuts and samples from designers, wearable sculptures and vintage dresses where the weight, texture and movement of costumes would dictate the dancers’ movement style. They were the antithesis of “normal, close-fitting, uncluttered dance pyjamas”, a derogatory name she gives to leotards and body stockings. She describes the complex technicalities of using wildly unconventional costumes, which were often difficult to put on and take off. In some pieces where there were multiple different costumes, Anderson had to adapt the choreography to accommodate frequent complicated costume changes, for example in Yippeee!!!, (2006) and Smithereens (1999). Costume changes soon became part of the choreography and from the late 80s each new work was planned with the designer from the beginning.
Teresa Barker discusses the manic costume changes in most of the works where “the dancers work had to become something above and beyond the choreography and dance itself”. She describes the changes as “mini-emergency ordeals each night backstage” as the dancers navigated movement in costumes that were an “impingement upon one’s movement scope and possibility”. These included wetsuits and flippers, studded biker jackers, whale bone corsets or the wearable sculptures in Russian Roulette (2008). Barker reflects that this costume stress “gave an extra, invigorating charge to my work and stage which added to the adrenalin rush of performing”.
The interview sections in the book, short texts nestling amongst the images, give us insight into Anderson’s working relationship with her collaborators and what was distinct about their work. Chris Nash reflects on how he worked on visual references such as Renaissance paintings and religious icons in The Featherstonehaughes’ Immaculate Conception (1992) and collaging techniques and effects in many of his photographs, such as for Flag (1988) and Walky Talky (1992). Sandy Powell who had met Anderson at art school, reflected on her preference for costume uniformity yet one in which the individuality of each dancer would emerge. Describing her love of unconventional colours and clashing combinations, she refers to the silver and gold dresses in Flesh and Blood (1989), or the sinister zombie masks in Smithereen. For The Featherstonehaughs Draw on the Sketchbooks of Egon Schiele (1998/2010) Powell designed suits and body stocking painted in different strong colours taken from the sketches of the tortured, Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele. Designer/choreographer Simon Vincenzi, describes how he was focussed on making gender bending costumes that both male and female companies could wear, which all came together in Yippeee!!!.
Lighting designer and scenographer Simon Corder explains how there was “an anarchy working around Anderson and that she helped you to do the unexpected”. Like most of Anderson’s collaborators, Corder was not interested in dance as something pretty, decorative, technical or abstract. Instead he worked towards “restricting the frame through which dancers are seen” or “constricting the space” where they moved. Composer Steve Blake reflects fondly on the “unbreakable artistic bond” he has had with Anderson and describes the joy of working with live music, his band and performing on stage with both companies. All these conversations convey the close working relationships between Anderson and her creative team that have lasted over time.
I love how Anderson deliberately chooses to tell the story of her companies predominantly through pictures and also her decision to keep the small amounts of text free from the outsider opinions of both dance critics and academics. This makes the book more personal and allows the images to speak for themselves. The contribution of the book is an intense, visual closeup of Anderson’s extensive body of work, which captures her astonishing vision, the artists she sought out, the individuality of the dancers and the originality of music, costume and stage design. Complete with a lengthy choreochronicle of every work and detailed photo captions, this splendid creation is a must for anyone working in and across the arts and an eye-opening gift for everyone else.
Art director Lea Anderson
editor Mary Kate Connolly
Designer and Production Pep Sala
Printed by Indice, SL, Bercelona, Spain
The book can be ordered from here.