Born in Israel but based in Britain, Yael Flexer has spent a decade steadily climbing up the UK's independent dance ladder. In 1992 she graduated from London Contemporary Dance School. That same year she became choreographer in residence at The Place Theatre and founded Bedlam Dance Company. Five years on she received a Jerwood Award for Young Choreographers. Commissions have come from the likes of Ludus Dance Company and Scottish Dance Theatre, but it is in her work for her own company that Flexer has shone brightest. She makes dances that are unaffected and unforced, sometimes driven, often charming and invariably smart about the complexities and ambiguities of being alive.
'I like to keep it open,' is how Flexer puts it. Once a dance is made, she says, 'it becomes itself.' There is an improvisatory element at play. 'I give the dancers the freedom to change what a dance means along the way, and for the audience to intervene. They can alter what seems serious one night and make it funny the next.
'The dancers are real people,' she continues. 'These days I'm working in an almost documentary fashion, using what's already there in them and their relationships to each other and the world. Whatever is going on in the studio or in their lives is onstage.'
Bedlam's benchmark tenth anniversary season has prompted the 30 year-old choreographer to reflect on where she has come from as an artist, and where she would like to go. 'The map has changed quite a lot since I started. I guess what I aspired to, and what existed at the time, were companies like V-Tol, The Cholmondeleys, Yolande Snaith, Ricochet, DV8. To a large extent I feel I've succeeded, with six full-length productions touring nationally and internationally and the recent full-scale - mammoth, actually - production of Wallpaper at The Circus Space and South Bank Centre.'
Bedlam has likewise acquired a reputation for community-based projects, projects with dance students in higher education and recent graduates, and training and mentoring programmes for professional dancers. 'Education work always felt like the right thing to take on,' Flexer remarks. 'We were good at it because we're passionate about it, and coming from many different backgrounds we found it relatively easy to connect with people. I'm comfortable with teaching. I enjoy the buzz.'
One of her sharpest memories is of an exchange during a college residency. 'On the first morning we asked the students if it would be okay to open the blinds, or would the sun be in their eyes. One of them replied, 'The sun never shines in Ellesmere Port.' What an ominous beginning!' But by the end of the residency, she says, 'these 'kidz' were improvising like there was no tomorrow.
'Dance makes people more aware of their own physicality and sensuality,' Flexer says. 'It fulfils a load of other needs, whether social or psychological. But, like poetry, you have to bring yourself to a certain place to 'get it.' It's a matter of persistence. All of a sudden it'll just click.'
Flexer and her core dancers are undergoing an organic shift in terms of community work. 'In the future our approach might not necessarily be only educational. Perhaps that's just one of many ways of making dance alongside a touring programme, films or site-specific events.'
'I'm schizophrenically interested in working at two extremes,' she explains of her current preoccupations. 'I'm excited by the idea of creating large-scale works for and with groups, and incorporating elements like film and installation work, live music and new circus. It seems to draw in new audiences and tickles my imagination. Equally I'm fascinated by ultra-intimate works like those in the current touring programme (Flexible Shorts). I like the fragility and depth of solo and duet work, and the work that both performers and audiences have to put in to make their relationship work.'
Such artistic duality, Flexer believes, breaks the 90s' company mould. 'It's driven more by a choreographic than a business vision. I'm hoping that we can find a way to sustain work at these extremes, and that we're supported through it without falling into the traps of established organisations.'
Self-examination is plainly one of Flexer's strong suits. She juxtaposes an engagement with the audience/performer dynamic with dances that address her Jewish background. 'Those who've watched my work over the years have related the very personal and informal way in which I present people, including myself, onstage and the way I interact with the audience to me being Israeli. Certain issues keep coming back and driving me on, like migration, transience, being an outsider or on the fringe, and the delicate and sometimes uncomfortable dynamic of not being quite at home anywhere and yet feeling a bit at home everywhere.'
Flexer's national origin has significantly shaped both her creativity and career. 'Coming from volatile Israel, it took rather a long while to learn English etiquette, particularly being as young as I was (21 when she founded her company). Patience not being one of my virtues, I had some hard lessons. On the other hand my chutzpah was also a sign of my determination and true hunger to make work, which was picked up on and taken seriously.
'My ties to Britain are complex,' Flexer admits. 'It would take me another ten years to reconcile myself to this as home. But in Israel I could never do what I'm doing now. What I've brought here - being Israeli or simply being me, it's hard to distinguish - is a passion to make dances that are as meaningful for the people performing them as for those watching. Dances that are space-hungry and physically exhausting, but also have a point to make.' Flexer feels her 'Israeli-ness' is also evident in the democratic way in which Bedlam functions. 'It's not quite kibbutz-like, as I'm a Tel Aviv girl, but it's maybe in the spirit of my socialist grandparents.'
As Bedlam has evolved, so too have Flexer's ideas and feelings about it. 'At first it was primarily about a group of dancers.' Now, she says, she feels equally connected to her team of collaborators and managers. 'Certain people have been with me for many years. I would never have made it this far without them.' Topping the list are dancers Rachel Krische, Maria Ryan, Hanna Gillgren, Fiona Millward and, more recently, Fiona Edwards and Lisa Kendall. Flexer's other key collaborators are June Gamble (management), Nye Parry (composer), Tony Purves and Carl Stephenson (video), Lucy Carter (lighting designer) and Jamie Watton (project co-ordination). She also cites Marie McCluskey, Val Bourne, Betsy Gregory, Siobhan O'Neill, Deborah Bernard, John Ashford, Emma Gladstone and Eckhard Thiemann. 'These people have been crucial in guiding us through the maze of funding and company development. They've been there through good times and bad.'
The challenge of financial stability has shifted Flexer's working methods and her notion of company structure. 'Sustaining a company requires a curious but healthy mix of scepticism and optimism. It's difficult to support a group of mature dancers beyond short-term projects. Also, dancers need to follow their own line and work with more than one choreographer.' At times, she confesses, this was hard to deal with. The positive side is the degree of fluidity in which Bedlam operates. 'It's allowed the dancers to pursue their own development, whether that's working with other companies, making their own work, teaching, filmmaking or managing and programming.'
The same fluidity has allowed Flexer a healthy creative life outside of Bedlam. Alongside the choreographic commissions have come opportunities to work as a performer with people like Mark Whitelaw of The Glee Club, Victoria Marks and Gill Clarke.
'I've just about managed to survive just doing dance,' Flexer says, 'but the older you get, things like 'How am I ever going to own a home?' become a real issue.' Government support can be problematic. 'It's ridiculous. I've been making work regularly for ten years, but I'm still on project funding, which implies that it's very now and again.' But Flexer recognises a flip side. 'It gives you a lot of freedom. And England is big enough. There's some broad thinking about how artists want to develop, whether it's through the fixed-term route or fellowships and bursaries. You can always find a way.'
Once upon a time, Flexer admits, 'I was pushing to get places. I'm not sure I've completely let go of certain grandiose ideas, but now the process, the people and the work itself are what's important. I was in a comfortable and comforting mood when I created Flexible Shorts. The next one will probably be a little more violent.' Either way, she says, 'I'm more interested in having a good time and not over-dramatising. More and more I resign myself to fun.' At the same time she feels a need 'to make something that gets an immediate response. I always need to have a dialogue. It's that ultimate Jewish thing.'
Asked about dance and social change, Flexer responds, 'Work can have an impact. It does move and shift people. But artists in dance aren't making work of much political value. They're scared of making bigger statements.' Yet Flexer's feelings are paradoxical. 'The dance I like most has absolutely nothing to do with politics. Works about dance is what dance can do best.'
Who does she feel she and Bedlam are reaching? 'At times I was convinced we belonged to a certain gay agenda, but then at the next show I'm stopped in the foyer by Jewish audience members who've been moved to tears.' She mentions enthusiastic responses from A-level dance students in Weymouth, champagne-drinking mid-lifers in Lille, club-goers in Kassel, old-age pensioners on the Isle of Wight, gushing Americans in Los Angeles and contemporary dance virgins in Bangalore. Clearly the Flexer touch is global.
'I've given up defining our audience. It's given me the freedom to not define myself, or who dance can speak to. Bedlam's work has always fallen between the cracks of pure dance and dance-theatre anyway, never quite fitting into either, until nowadays it no longer matters.'
Yeal Flexer, artistic director, Bedlam Dance Company. Email: bedlamdance@btopenworld.com