I’ve been trying to figure out the existing choreographies on the Wetlands. The Wetlands exists because of human intervention in the landscape to provide freshwater for the capital. For an account of the history, see here. https://walthamstowwetlands.com/heritage The visible reservoirs are matched by buried tunnels and piping that channel the water through its various stages of purification and from there to Londoners across the city. There’s even a small nuclear bunker under the Copper Mill apparently that suggests a former movement script of crisis.

This human intervention and the fact that the general public (though not birders and anglers) have been kept out of the reservoirs has created a place where wildlife has flourished, wildlife that lives there permanently or the temporary visitors that rely on the Wetlands as one stopping point in their migration routes. The site is being managed so as to protect as much as possible the resident wildlife and that means closing particular paths at certain times of the year to enable birds to nest or to moult undisturbed. For me it also means slowing my pace when I find birds on the path and deviating if necessary. It’s also meant that I’ve be trying out quiet dancing – dances in the open space that don’t make undue noise – a dancing that I feel is co-choreographed by the requirements of the environment and its non-human inhabitants. Of course I bring my own movement history and habits to this environment, but I’m enjoying the sense that there are other choreographers in this process too.

One of the themes of my residency is refuge and I’ve been wondering where my refuge is on the site. The viewing platform in the Engine House has quickly become that place for me since it has a beautiful view, there’s some space (enough for me to warm up), it is not too busy during the weekdays (but still has enough traffic to allow for some interesting conversations), it has a metal floor that is much more comfortable and forgiving than the tiled floors below and it has wifi. I’d like to have a sign that welcomes people in when I’m warming up there. I want people to feel that my work there is as natural and/or surprising as the Thames Water workers or the flora and fauna outside. And it’s also important to acknowledge that as a human I need a place to shelter, to rest, to prepare, to process. Though I’ve always been keen to bring dance beyond its comfortable familiar settings, the resilience that requires has to be supported by some care and respite.

The success of the Wetlands opening in terms of visitor numbers means that it’s not necessarily helpful for me to attract many more people to it. However, it’s important that my work and that of the residency is visible. A mixture of visible and invisible therefore. When I mentioned this to Emma, the London Wildlife Trust Reserve Manager, she told me of the newts onsite that are undetectable to predators above because of their camouflage colouring but that have brightly coloured under-sides that they can expose to attract potential mates – safe and flamboyant. How can I be similarly discreet and attractive?

I started my stint as Artist in Residence at Walthamstow Wetlands on 2 May. The beginning wasn’t as smooth as I’d planned, though a bit of friction is always informative.

I’d been telling everyone how pleased I was that I could walk from my home in Walthamstow to work in Walthamstow – a rare convenience, and one that relies mostly on my accessing the Wetlands through the Copper Mill Lane entrance. Unfortunately the gate was closed because of Thames Water works on site and so I was confronted by the perimeter of the reserve, the long expanse of fencing that protects the sanctuary, the border that makes the Wetlands site possible as a place for refuge for wildlife.

In Of Hospitality Derrida recognises that hospitality and hostility share a common etymology because he wants us to recognise that absolute hospitality has its limitations.

From a deconstructive perspective, hospitality is necessarily ‘contaminated’ by law, system, and calculation, and this contamination is emphatically not understood as an unfortunate loss of ideal purity.

Mustafa Dikeç, Nigel Clark, and Clive Barnett, ‘Extending Hospitality: Giving Space, Taking Time’, Paragraph vol. 32, no. 1 (2009), pp. 1-14, p. 9.

The notion of hospitality already implies that the host has territory, property and resources to be able to offer hospitably to others. Therefore, the borders that separate self and other, familiar and stranger are also a necessity to the ethical relationship of hospitality.

This respect for the other’s space, the other’s difference, is something that I’ve felt on the Wetlands. I’ve noticed many solitary walkers, anglers, birders and of course, the solitary (for the moment) dance artist. Though I’ve adopted what I think of as the Irish custom of greeting the people I pass on my travels around the site, it is clear that many are there for solitude and that I should respect that.

And I also noticed that for the goslings, barriers and borders are pretty porous.

Today my appointment as the next Artistic Director of National Dance Company Wales was made public.[Press release here] It’s a relief to finally be able to let people know what I’m going to be doing. I can’t tell if you’ll be surprised. Surprise is not a bad thing. It’s the ability to respond to surprise – the surprise of other people, the surprise of our ever changing bodies, the surprise of living – that has always drawn me to dance since Adele Thompson who was giving a workshop on behalf of LCDT when I was still a student at university told the assembled dance amateurs that one of the challenges of being a dancer is that each day you deal with a new body. Each day you have to figure out how to address that body to the choreographies it was involved in before, or to make something new. And that constant opportunity to learn, to adapt, to figure out a way through hooked me, guaranteeing that I could never be bored in an art form that acknowledged the fundamental necessity of surprise.

What might be surprising in my becoming Artistic Director of NDCWales is that I’ve been what we call an independent artist for all of my career so far. Of course, as I’ve written elsewhere independence is a fiction. We’re all interdependent. But while I’ve worked with all kinds of institutions and organisations as artist, board member, client, coach etc., I’ve not been employed inside them. It’s a kind of relationship I’ve often called Fleadership, a kind of leadership that doesn’t have the heft of the Elephant, a heft that we need to beat great paths through the undergrowth. However Fleadership is mobile, capable of prompting the Elephant to shift, capable of carrying information from one place to the next.

With The Casement Project I had the opportunity and the resources to work with a brilliant team to realise a project of a larger scale over a longer time period. And I loved the increased impact, how many more people could connect with the work and how the work could grow over time.