Just The Tonic, Series 2, Episode 1: Positive Power of the Arts, with Carlos Acosta

Introduction (0:00)

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0:00 Katie: Hello, and welcome to a brand new series of Just The Tonic, the podcast that shines a light on the positive power of the arts. I’m Katie Derham, and in our first series we looked at how music can help mental health and physical wellbeing. We heard from organisations all around the UK, like Changing Tunes, who help musicians in prison rehabilitate; Streetwise Opera, who help homeless people regain their confidence; and the Citizens of the World Choir, who help refugees and asylum seekers integrate into new communities. And we heard from arts champions like violinist Nicola Benedetti…

0:39 Nicola Benedetti: There is a way to capture music in a way that is respectful of it as an entity – as one of human beings’ greatest creations.

0:45 Katie: …Chi-chi Nwanoku, founder of Chineke!, Europe’s first majority Black and minority ethnic orchestra…

0:51 Chi-chi Nwanoku: This is the 21st century. It shouldn’t be a novelty that there’s more than one Black face on the stage playing Beethoven.

0:59 Katie: …and actor Emily Watson.

1:01 Emily Watson: I don’t consider myself musical at all, but I love music, and I admire people hugely that have that gift and that facility. It’s an amazing thing.

1:10 Katie: If you missed the first series, you can catch up by searching for Just The Tonic with Katie Derham wherever you usually get your podcasts. In this series we’ll be hearing from more leading figures, and from organisations dedicated to making sure everyone has access to the arts.

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1:28 For this episode, I am stepping back into the fabulous world of dance. Deaf dancers Billy Read, and Sarah from Critical Mass, will be telling us all about their performances at the Birmingham International Dance Festival…

1:40 Sarah (Critical Mass): As a deaf person, I’d never thought that dance would be something that I would be good at. Having been at Critical Mass, they’ve just inspired me to go out there and just do it, and not to be scared to do it.

1:53 Katie: …and I’ll be chatting to Cuban dance sensation and director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, Carlos Acosta.

2:00 Carlos Acosta: You could dance professionally, but you could also dance for your wellbeing, and be in touch with your body. This is something that is very, very ingrained in who we are. The most natural thing to humans is dancing.

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Sarah Marshall: TPO and the Birmingham 2022 Festival (2:24)

2:24 Katie: But before I head back to the dance floor, let’s hear from Sarah Marshall, chief executive of The People’s Orchestra, the community orchestra and so much more based in West Bromwich. Just The Tonic regulars will know we featured the fantastic work they do across our first series. And all eyes will be on Birmingham this summer, as it’s the host city for the 2022 Commonwealth Games. So I caught up with Sarah to find out what The People’s Orchestra have been up to since we last spoke, and how they’re involved in the Birmingham 2022 Festival.

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2:55 Sarah Marshall: Hello Katie, it’s lovely to be back! Yes, we’ve been extremely busy. We’ve been setting up our Commonwealth Games project, and as part of that we’ve had the delight of setting up a couple of new choirs. So we have a new choir up in Shrewsbury and a new choir in West Bromwich, and all those singers will be able to join us for our Commonwealth event in July.

3:15 Katie: So tell us about that, then – what’s happening in July?

3:18 Sarah: So in July we have a live event taking place in Digbeth, in Secret Space (venue name unconfirmed), and we’re bringing together all our choirs – from Cheltenham, Shrewsbury, everywhere [unclear] – and we’re all coming together to sing, and we’re bringing our orchestra with us too. But we’re also inviting musicians and singers from the Commonwealth, so we have musicians from Kenya and from Canada coming over to join us, which is absolutely fantastic. It’s been great fun. It’s been hard work, because obviously Covid is still affecting everything, and it becomes very difficult for people to come – but it’s been great, so they’re all coming over.

4:05 We’ve recorded a fantastic live piece with John Koutselinis, and we’ve had a composer project running across the Commonwealth too, so we’ve had people creating new compositions from Cyprus, Australia, Bangladesh, Jamaica. It’s been fantastic, and we’re bringing all those together and playing them alongside our orchestra. So it’s going to be a fantastic event, and we’re really looking forward to it.

4:28 Katie: It is really exciting, everything that’s going on around the Commonwealth Games and the effect that will have on Birmingham and the surrounding area. Obviously it’s not just sport – it’s lots of cultural events, like the ones that you’re involved in. What impact do you think something big like this has on the local community?

4:46 Sarah: I really hope that a lot of the organisations that are part of this are actually growing – not just in their knowledge, but in the number of people participating – getting people back out of their houses to physically do things. We’ve been really lucky; we’ve had some fantastic growth in that. But we do know it is a little bit difficult to get people out the way they used to before Covid. But I think this has been a really good boost for the city, and I think they’re going to have an absolutely fantastic time.

Billy Read (5:16)

5:16 Katie: Thank you, as always, to Sarah – and I look forward to hearing more from The People’s Orchestra in future episodes.

Now, as some of you may know, I was introduced to the glittery world of dance by the inimitable Anton Du Beke on the fabulous Strictly Come Dancing. Last year, EastEnders actress Rose Ayling-Ellis won our hearts, didn’t she? She was the first deaf contestant to take part, and alongside her professional partner Giovanni Pernice, she waltzed her way from Walford to the Strictly crown. She was phenomenal, and she did so much to break down the stereotype that deaf people can’t dance and can’t enjoy music.

5:50 And that is exactly what dancer Billy Read wants to do. Billy grew up in a hearing family in Walsall in the West Midlands, and his performance at Birmingham International Dance Festival, Forbidden Identity, explores the personal struggle of a deaf child growing up in the hearing world. We caught up with Billy for a chat during a break in rehearsals, and he spoke to us through BSL interpreter Rachel Veazey.

6:18 Billy Read: I started dancing about 10 or 11 years ago, but it was just a kind of street style of dance. I was trying different styles – I wasn’t only doing street dance – and then I formed my own deaf dance crew. But people have moved on to other things, so I did work with the crew, and now I’m a solo dance artist. I’ve been thinking about my own style of dance and what’s really appropriate for me, and that’s when I started to think about my identity in relation to my dance practice, and to explore my own experiences of growing up as a deaf person in a hearing world through my dance.

6:57 I’m also inspired a lot by my brother, who’s also deaf. He’s had a lot of awful experiences growing up, and I’ve seen what happened to him as we grew up together, and those have informed me as a dancer. So my style of dance is dance theatre, sign language – sort of combined arts – with a semi-autobiographical experience in this show. It’s really accessible for a hearing and a deaf audience. I want to share with a hearing audience what I’ve been through, but I also know a lot of deaf people have had really similar experiences to me, so it speaks to them as well, hopefully.

7:36 Katie: So how does Billy feel, or hear, the music?

7:40 Billy: Obviously every deaf person is different. They’ve got different levels of residual hearing – some people are profoundly deaf, some people still have a little bit of residual hearing. Myself, I can still hear very low frequencies, so I can hear some bass sounds, but I have a cut-off point at the mid-range, and I can’t hear high-pitched sounds. So for me, hip-hop music is quite useful, because it’s got a strong bass beat, so I can dance to that – I know where I am in the rhythm, so I can follow the counts that way. I also use my audio memory: I listen and listen to music and take it on board, and almost run it as a soundtrack in my head. And when I perform, I need really loud speakers – subwoofers and big bass speakers – so I can really feel the vibrations going through the floor. That really helps me too.

8:40 Katie: Billy’s also a dance teacher, and during lockdown he had to move his classes online. Now, lockdown was tough for everyone, but especially for deaf and hard of hearing young people.

8:48 Billy: I think it’s really important that deaf children have that experience of being taught by a deaf person. They need deaf role models. And a lot of them were staying at home with hearing families – they were incredibly isolated. They weren’t living with people that use BSL or communicate in the same way. So at least if they saw me once a week teaching, it helped them to feel good – that there’s another deaf person, almost at home with them, coming through their screen. And I realised that was having quite a lot of impact with young people, so I kept going with these Zoom sessions for many weeks, in a series of blocks, all the way through the pandemic. It was great for the young people.

9:25 Katie: To see Billy’s dance clips online, search for his Def Motion pages on Instagram and on Facebook. And his online Zoom classes led to his appearance on Blue Peter.

9:37 Billy: One day a student felt inspired to write a letter and send it to Blue Peter talking about my teaching. She said, “please could Billy go to the Blue Peter studio? I feel he’s made a big impact on me”. I was very surprised. They sent me a Blue Peter badge, and then later they actually invited me to go to the TV studios and perform a short performance and do a short interview on the Blue Peter programme. I think it was to coincide with Deaf Awareness Week in 2021. It was amazing – it was really lovely.

10:17 Katie: As well as his own performance, Forbidden Identity, on the 2nd of July, Billy is also appearing in the Deaf Rave, one of the opening events of Birmingham International Dance Festival.

10:28 Billy: At the moment I’ve got a new project – I’m putting together a new performance with my dance team. It’s a mixture of deaf, hard of hearing and hearing dancers, and we’re creating a new piece of work called Cog – cog in the wheel. It’s got a little bit of a theme to the work, but we’re changing it a little bit for the Deaf Rave party, because we want to have a really happy vibe.

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10:58 I think it’s really important to see deaf performers – that we’ve got deaf dancers. And when there’s a big mainstream event like that, it’s really amazing to be featured and be part of that.

[Music]

11:10 Katie: Very many thanks to Billy and Rachel. Billy’s dance performance Forbidden Identity takes place in Birmingham’s Handsworth Park on Saturday the 2nd of July at ten past two. It is a free event. And you can see Billy at the Deaf Rave in the city’s Centenary Square from 8:25 on Friday the 17th of June, which is also a free event.

Sarah from Critical Mass (11:35)

11:35 Katie: And there’s another great event taking place in Centenary Square, just before the Deaf Rave: the world premiere of Critical Mass, an inclusive dance participation project bringing together young people from across the West Midlands, with and without disabilities. It’s all about exploring what true acceptance, inclusion and equality look like. Here’s Sarah from Critical Mass to tell us more, with BSL interpreter Chloe Matthews.

12:00 Sarah: My name is Sarah and I’m 28 years old. Dance gives me the opportunity to be free – to express myself how I want to express myself, and to portray my emotions in my own little world, where I can ignore everybody else and just be me.

12:25 I only actually started with Critical Mass – how many months is that now? – about eight months ago. At first I was flicking through my phone and I saw this advert for a dance project looking for people, and I thought, “no, I’m not interested in that”, and ignored it. And then later that day I came across the advert again, and I thought, “do you know what? It’s not going to hurt just to have a look”. And I could see that they were looking for people with disabilities. I’ve always been really cautious about joining hearing groups, because of my history of not feeling wanted or included, but I thought this might be different. I went for it, applied, went to the summer camp, and absolutely loved it.

13:15 After the initial summer camp, we started to break off into weekly groups, and I’ve been working with my awesome dance leader, who’s called Jess, and our support worker, Megan, and my team. We decided to call ourselves Team Sunflower, because we’re just a whole bunch of crazy energy, and everybody’s really inclusive and supports each other. Sometimes we do mass rehearsals with other weekly groups as well, and the minute you walk in, it’s just a whole family feeling – it’s like everybody already knows everybody. It’s just amazing.

13:59 Katie: Hearing Sarah talk about her involvement with Critical Mass, it’s clear she gets so much from dance. So how important is it for her that big events like the Birmingham dance festival are inclusive?

14:10 Sarah: Events like this are extremely important for promoting inclusivity, and to be able to demonstrate that people can work together no matter what religion, disability or sexual orientation they are, and that they can create a space where everybody feels welcome. And it’s important to promote diversity, and to show people that, whatever they’ve got going on, they can do something if they put their mind to it, and they can express themselves in their own individual ways.

14:42 Katie: We’ve heard in previous episodes how people’s lives have been changed for the better through their involvement in the arts. So how has dance made a difference for Sarah?

14:52 Sarah: Critical Mass actually came along at the perfect moment. Having a hearing impairment, I’ve always found group things really hard – being able to follow conversations has been hard – and a lot of the time I’ve been misinformed, so I would feel really excluded from the group, and that’s led me to feel really isolated. Because I grew up as a deaf person in a predominantly hearing world, I became self-conscious, and I started having doubts about whether I’m actually any good at anything, and that made my confidence really low. Since joining Critical Mass, that’s just gone out of the window. The team themselves have learnt sign language, they’ve done deaf awareness training as well, and they just work together collectively to ensure that any needs are met and that I feel included in all the groups. It does make a big difference.

16:00 Katie: And will Sarah keep dancing in the future?

16:03 Sarah: Absolutely, yeah, definitely. Because as a deaf person, I’d never thought that dance would be something that I would be good at. And having been at Critical Mass, I’ve just been inspired by everybody – the team, the dance leaders, the other participants, the choreographers – and they’ve just inspired me to go out there and just do it, and not to be scared to do it.

16:25 Katie: And long may you continue to enjoy dancing, Sarah. Huge thanks to her and to Chloe. You can find out more about Critical Mass, and more fantastic inclusive events at Birmingham International Dance Festival, on the website at bidf.co.uk.

Carlos Acosta (16:45)

16:45 Katie: Now, my next guest is one of the most influential figures in the dance world today. He trained at the National Ballet School of Havana, and he’s danced with many of the world’s most prestigious companies. Carlos Acosta is currently director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, which is appearing at the dance festival in an exciting triple-bill performance over three days. I was so delighted that Carlos could spare the time for a chat, and he told me that becoming a ballet dancer was not really what he’d had in mind when he was growing up in Cuba.

17:20 Carlos Acosta: I didn’t care for ballet. I didn’t like it. It was an imposition from my father. I thought it was for girls, all of that. But it became my life. The turning point was when, at the age of 13, I saw the National Ballet of Cuba for the first time. That changed my life. I became more concentrated and focused on upping my skill, and that led me to win competitions, and all of a sudden all the doors were open for me – and the rest is history.

17:49 I think it’s one of those inspirational stories – that you can overcome any outcome if you put your mind to it. And from the position of director, that’s what I’m trying to do: pass on all that intensity and passion that drove my career, so that these dancers understand that this is not just something you do occasionally – it’s a lifestyle, and you need to go there when the passion is most intense. For me there were no Sundays, there were no Saturdays. When everybody was out having a lie-in, or practising football on the streets, I was there at a ballet barre, on the floor, doing it day in and day out. And then you reap what you sow, right? It’s not an accident. There’s a lot of hardship and pain and all of that behind any success.

18:49 And that’s what it was at the beginning – it was a very humble place. The 80s in Cuba were a period of great stability, and then everything became a bit more shifted when the Iron Curtain collapsed in 1989. In my household particularly it was a bit bumpy. My father was in jail at some point, while my mother had a brain haemorrhage, and therefore my two sisters were the ones who were cooking for me, and I became truant. It was a period that led me to understand a very crucial message, which is: nobody’s there for you, nobody’s going to rescue you. You have to shape your future. You, and you alone, can change the outcome of your life. And that is something that made my brain work in that direction. What you get is that you’re very independent, and you’re trying to really focus all your energy so that no one can cloud your steps. So this is more or less a preamble to how I came to be sitting here now.

19:50 Katie: But for you, obviously, it comes from within – character is so important – but you also have to have access, don’t you? You need to be able to go to a dance class, or join a band, or have access to the arts. How important do you think that was for you, and for everybody else in Cuba at the time, to have that light at the end of the tunnel?

20:22 Carlos: Exactly – I think that’s a very important point. Obviously Cuba being a communist country meant that money wasn’t an issue to have access to anything you wanted. When you get money into the equation, sometimes you divide those who can from those who cannot, and therefore you will have perhaps a smaller pool of people in the arts to choose from. But when money is not an impediment, it allows poor people like my family to really have an education for free. And that was a period of greater stability in Cuba, in the 80s, and it allowed families like mine to get into an art form where dance shoes can cost you a hundred euros or a hundred pounds – one pair of dance shoes – and then they won’t last you that long, and you have to keep spending. So that would have been a big impediment for people that come from a family similar to mine. That was a great thing that I think we benefited from.

21:30 I think exposure to the arts is very important – having role models and all of that. And also, in Cuba, art and ballet were always on TV. It was synonymous with wellbeing; it was synonymous with being cool, that you could have a good life. When you send that kind of message, endorsed by the government, I think it’s already a route that you’re cultivating. And we had really great role models. We had the principal dancers of the National Ballet of Cuba, who were gods for us, and we all wanted to be like them. So yes, accessibility was key in the 80s in Cuba, definitely.

22:15 Katie: So how are you managing to try and rebuild that model, if you like, at Birmingham Royal Ballet? How are you managing to give more people access to dance?

22:25 Carlos: It’s creating awareness. I’m not going to lie to you – the pandemic slowed us down, big time. We felt like we had momentum. I had everyone behind me – I still have everyone behind me – but two years was a long time, and it’s hard to generate the momentum again when people are suffering at the moment financially. You can see the oil prices are going up, the food prices are going up, and then you have less and less time and money for entertainment and for leisure, and that affects the numbers in the box office, and that affects the planning.

23:05 To bring awareness, we have a very effective outreach and accessibility programme to engage people, to try to involve families, and to give them an education in what it is we’re trying to do at Birmingham Royal Ballet. And then obviously there’s my programming, which is in the direction of packaging traditional ballet but with a more modern wrapping. That is the definition of what a classical ballet company of the 21st century should be like.

23:40 To give you an indication, at the moment we have a programme for the Commonwealth Games theme called On Your Marks, and that programme does exactly that. You’ve got a new classical ballet with augmented reality – so using technology on stage, which is a feast for the eyes. Then you have a new creation with Commonwealth composers, and choreographers from Australia, Luke Hold (spelling unconfirmed), and Juliano Nunes from Brazil. So you see this globalisation, and you’ve got the Cuban director – and that’s BRB, that’s the 21st century. And then at the end you’ve got a piece that’s a dance installation – it’s not even dance, it’s a sport. It’s mathematical: the dancers are in tennis shoes on stage, throwing bottles full of water with neon, and it’s almost like a mind test, because they have to remember numbers. There is a dance element there, but it’s a very, very sporty, quirky piece. And that is the wrapping that we also cultivate. So for those who might have an idea that ballet is just all tights and tutus and classical – you know, The Nutcracker, which it is – it’s much more than that. So that’s what I’m concentrating on at the moment, Katie: just trying to bring the art forward while keeping our core repertoire on.

25:08 Katie: How do you see that working in the community? I know Birmingham Royal Ballet do a lot of outreach work – you do lots of different styles of dance to try and get people involved and engaged. You must see some great examples of people’s lives being changed by dance.

25:25 Carlos: Yeah, of course. We just had, a couple of weeks back, the 25th anniversary of Dance Track. Dance Track is a revolutionary programme where we educate kids aged six to eight for free. We give them education for free, we give them all the gear – the tights, the shoes. We go to all these schools and bring this programme to them, and then we also do shows and bring them on – and that also educates the parents in what we do. We want to enhance that even further. Obviously it’s a very diverse demographic here in Birmingham, so we need to understand, and try to educate people in what ballet is, what it could be, and how great it could be for their child, should they choose to develop a career out of it.

26:32 What I would really like to do, now that Covid is behind us, is actually go to places, instead of waiting for people to come to us – go to the community, to the Black Country, with demonstrations, with tickets right there, at a discount. It’s just hard sell. I think these are the times where we have to engage more one-to-one with people, and obviously I can use my life experience to say: you know, this is where I come from, and it did wonders, and it’s a great life. So these are the kinds of things that I think we’re going to be doing in the future.

27:04 Katie: Have you seen many little Carloses coming through the system? Do you see kids like you?

27:08 Carlos: Yeah, yeah, there are a few. I remember that when I joined The Royal Ballet in ’98, it was just me – I was the only Black dancer. And now, little by little, you can see more and more everywhere. You’ve got Misty Copeland in the US, and we’ve got Céline Gittens here, and Brandon Lawrence; and in The Royal Ballet you’ve got Marcelino Sambé, and we’ve got Francesca Hayward. So the role models are there, and that is something that gives me a lot of pleasure to see. I think that’s the way to go. You see posters, and you see that poster saying: this is for you, and this is great – look at these muscles, look how athletic, look how refined and great, and you’ve got music. That is the kind of thing: we keep this artistry, taking it forward and alive in everybody’s mind, in every direction, in every company’s mind. That is the path for the future: more inclusivity, less segregation – instead of what you used to see on the stage, the representation of who we are today on the stage. Early on, I must say, when I started, it wasn’t there, and now we’re getting there more and more. So that’s a great thing.

28:31 Katie: But I also think – and I’m sure you agree – that it’s so important that people realise how good it is for the city, for the community, for them, to have all this dance around. Even if you’re in the audience, or if you’ve got a kid who’s enjoying being in a class, it has such a wonderful ripple effect, doesn’t it?

28:55 Carlos: The most natural thing to humans is dancing. You could dance professionally, but you could also dance for your wellbeing, and be in touch with your body. And it can also be used as a sense of gathering, a sense of community – bringing people together. So I think there is definitely that aspect of why we dance and why we should dance, which I think is also a route that we’re going to be taking to engage with new audiences.

29:28 Katie: And finally, tell me what’s going on at the International Dance Festival, because I know you’ve got a lot happening.

29:33 Carlos: It’s a great place. You’re here in Birmingham; we bring people from all over the world, all over the place. We’ve been invited with this programme called On Your Marks, and within that programme you’ve got the world – it’s a Commonwealth theme. Again, the Commonwealth is all about bringing nations together to have this feast, this event, together, and so we’re mimicking that in a programme that we’re curating. We’ve got people from Brazil, from Australia, from Spain, from Cuba. Acosta Danza is doing that piece I was telling you about with Birmingham – the one where they throw bottles – called 24 (title unconfirmed). So Acosta is there, the music is by an Italian composer [unclear]. So we have all these ingredients, which again, within the scope of the Commonwealth Games, bring that kind of celebration and that kind of theme onto the stage as well.

30:28 Katie: Are you looking forward to it?

30:30 Carlos: Oh yes, yes, yes. I’m a bit nervous, because it’s quite radical. We always had audiences that follow – they know The Nutcracker and Swan Lake – and now I’m going in a different direction, which I think there is a need for. The ballet is there, the pointe shoes are there – but you never know with this radical programming and radical pieces what you’re going to get. But hopefully they enjoy it.

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Close (31:00)

31:00 Katie: My thanks to Carlos Acosta – so great to catch up with him. Head to the Birmingham International Dance Festival website at bidf.co.uk to find out more about Birmingham Royal Ballet’s On Your Marks performances. And my thanks to BSL interpreters Rachel and Chloe, and dancers Billy and Sarah from Critical Mass, and I wish them all the very best for their performances at the festival. If they have inspired you to get up – or get down – and dance, search online for dance groups in your area, or get in touch with Arts Council England, the Arts Council of Wales, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland or Creative Scotland.

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31:46 In the next episode I’ll be keeping you updated on The People’s Orchestra’s plans for the Birmingham 2022 Festival, and star of stage and screen, musical legend Sir Richard Stilgoe, will be telling me how live music can really help long-term patients in hospital. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and follow us on social media for updates – we’re on Twitter and Instagram. And if you think there’s someone that we really should be interviewing and featuring in the podcast, do let us know. Thanks for listening.

32:12 Just The Tonic with Katie Derham was produced by Jill Davis and is a Peanut and Crumb production, supported by The People’s Orchestra and by Arts Council England.

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