Meet the Local Dance Company Exploring Grief Through Dance
The Company of Others are stepping into the North Sea for their dance production, Grief Floats. Living North spoke to artistic director Nadia Iftkhar to find out more
In fact, this is the Company of Others, a dance theatre company based in Newcastle who are gearing up to perform their new production Grief Floats, which has been in the making since lockdown. ‘I think we could be better at talking about grief as a society,’ says Nadia Iftkhar, the company’s artistic director. ‘I was experiencing quite a lot of grief, but I didn’t see any opportunity around me for that to be talked about or recognised. There’s a lot of silence around grief and I wanted to make something that could be really communal, that people could experience together and that could provide space for them to be with their own grief whilst also watching something really beautiful.’
The work is performed by the dancers in the North Sea, amongst the waves, at either sunrise or sunset. ‘I think the work had to be in the sea for me because that’s where I go to when everything’s a little bit too much and I need some quiet and some time just to be with whatever I’m going through,’ says Nadia. ‘There are lives that are lost at sea because of actions that take place on land and there’s no way of putting those people to rest in the same way. It’s also a place that we haven’t ruined yet. We’re damaging it, but it’s still quite a pure space. It’s a place that belongs not to us, and I like that.’
Although death is what many associate with grief, the production explores it in all forms. ‘We think a lot about grief as the loss of a loved one but it’s not always about that. We can grieve missed opportunities, friendships ending, not having a connection to our motherland – we can grieve all sorts of things,’ Nadia says. ‘When you think about grief in that wider sense, we’re all living through it all the time, we just don’t talk about it.’
The sound for the performance is listened to via headphones, rather than speakers, playing with proximity to bring the performance closer to the audience. ‘I wanted people to feel permission to be in the audience with people but also on their own and to not feel like they had to be present with their friends,’ explains Nadia. ‘Putting headphones on kind of signals that.’
As for the costumes, they were designed with meticulous detail, colour matched to a piece of moss Nadia found on the bay. ‘The overall vision is a scale. Dancer one has the most green covering them and they’ve been in the sea for the least time. Number nine is entirely sequins, and it gradually gets more sequins in between. Sequins represent decay but where there is decay, there is beauty, like where there is grief, there is love.
‘In the sea, the sequins are incredible because they reflect all the light and that’s what the show’s about. It’s not sad, it's not heavy, it’s an offering of light and acknowledgement.’
Nadia’s aim for the performance is that the audience goes away feeling less alone. ‘Grief never really leaves you, you just learn to be with it differently. I want people to really feel like that’s something we all know and we’re not on our own in any grief, although it feels like our world is ending.
‘I’d like them to feel some hope as well,’ she continues. 'Grief only exists because love exists and that’s a beautiful thing. You only really grieve something if you loved it; that’s a blessing. I think often we think of grief as a really negative thing, and of course it can be and it can be sad, but what leads to grief is magical.’
After four years in the making, Nadia says it’s ‘really exciting’ to have her work shown to an audience. ‘Lots of people have already been in touch with us about their experiences with grief and how much they’re looking forward to seeing the work. It feels like with everything that’s happening in the world, it’s a really good time for the work to meet its audience.’
Next up, Nadia hopes to take the production worldwide. ‘I think this one feels like an international touring work, precisely for all the reasons I’ve talked about. Grief is a universal feeling, it affects every single human being in a way that not every emotion does. I’d really like to take it to coastlines around the world.’
