The Scotsman Sessions #445: Company Chordelia

All performers are used to the familiar sound of a curtain call, giving them an hour, half an hour or five minutes until showtime. So Kally Lloyd-Jones and Steinvör Palsson receiving a nine-hour call in the opening scene of their Scotsman Session is both witty and insightful. Especially when Lloyd-Jones turns to Palsson in dismay and says hurriedly, “That’s not very much time, we’d better get a move on!”

These two stalwarts of the Scottish contemporary dance scene have collectively spent years of their lives in dressing rooms, touching up make-up and pulling on costumes. Only now, in their early 60s, things feel a little different and take a little longer. Not nine hours, obviously, but that’s where the wit comes in.

Taken from Company Chordelia’s new show, Revel, their session is an amusing, tender but ultimately empowering look at ageing. We see them on stage, surrounded by clothes rails, flight cases, flowers and good luck cards; the trappings of life on the road. As they bend and pull, slide and fall, the women seem almost to be in combat with their own bodies. Then, manoeuvring Barbie dolls into a range of difficult positions, they say proudly but with an element of chagrin, “I used to be able to do this.”

Company Chordelia in Revel | Contributed

The American choreographer Martha Graham once said that dancers die twice, first when they stop dancing, secondly when they actually die. The first death, she pointed out, was the hardest. For Lloyd-Jones, “death” came a while ago, but was mercifully short-lived. In demand internationally as a choreographer, director and teacher, her focus was on facilitating others rather than herself. “I didn’t dance for a while,” she says. “Partly because of the pandemic, partly because of work. Then I moved to Kingsbarns in Fife and from my bathroom window I could see a village hall, and I said to myself ‘that's my new rehearsal studio’.”

Lloyd-Jones began booking the space for two hours each week, where she would dance alone, experimenting with new choreography. It turned out to be an unexpectedly emotional experience. “I would dance and cry, dance and cry,” she recalls. “Until eventually, the crying stopped and I realised something was pent up inside me as a result of not dancing. Because I only properly feel myself when dancing is a big part of my life. So I started dancing whenever and wherever I could.”

Founded by Lloyd-Jones in 2002, Company Chordelia has produced a number of emotionally-charged productions, including Dance Derby and Nijinsky’s Last Jump, with Revel set to be the latest. On tour around Scotland this autumn, the piece was created by Lloyd-Jones and Palsson in response to the dearth of older dancers on stage. So it’s particularly poignant when, towards the end of the Session, Lloyd-Jones says tentatively, “Steinvör, do you think we should stop? Is it unseemly?”

In a world where audiences expect their dance to be delivered by supple and strong young bodies, but where older dancers still have so much to offer, the answer has to be a resounding “No”.

Revel by Company Chordelia is at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews, 17 September, Dunoon Burgh Hall, 19 September and on tour across Scotland until 23 October, see www.chordelia.co.uk

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