From the editor
Donald Hutera, guest editor
When I was offered the challenge of guest editing this edition of Animated, creativity and learning were suggested as its twin themes. Almost as soon as I'd said yes, those very subjects began to spring up everywhere. I spotted them in the fragments of an education article on the back of a review hastily clipped from a national broadsheet.(Lines that leapt out at me include 'The young are presented with celebrity rather than excellence as their role model' and 'It is the most curious youngsters who want to learn, not the most talented.') I heard them more directly during a brief Woman's Hour interview with Twyla Tharp. 'I don't believe creativity is off-the-wall, or a matter of mood or whimsy or indulgence,' she opined. 'It's a practice.'
The world's most fiercely disciplined choreographer ought to know.
As a dance writer it is my privilege to interview artists like Tharp. The encounters are often tied to a particular project or performance about which I'll usually ask, 'What did you learn from this?' That line of enquiry has been filtered into this issue, via a short set of questions posed to people who work in various capacities - dancers, choreographers, artistic directors, educators - within the industry. Their sensitive, witty and illuminating replies are dotted throughout the magazine, ideally reverberating against the feature articles and each other.
As I write this, the final draft of the text for this issue is in the hands of the designer and just a few short days away from being sent to the printer. I'm feeling a mixture of relief, dread and cautious pride. Why the bundle of prepublication responses? Because despite more than a quarter century of experience as a freelance arts journalist, I've never edited a magazine before. And now the bulk of a seemingly monumental task is over. But how will it read, and look, in its finished form? Will the articles 'flow' individually and collectively?
Plunged into a deep end of the journalistic pool, I was hoping that a buoyant range of voices would help keep me - and the issue - afloat. Here you will find enthusiasts, methodologists and even a satirist expressing strong views, recounting vivid experiences and outlining strategic plans. In terms of content, I believe we've struck an attractive and insightful balance between policy and aesthetics.
I've scarcely had time to ask myself how I define creativity, or to ponder the scores of lessons I've learnt via my connections with dance. For me, an essential ingredient of any creative pursuit is to play with as uncensored an imagination as possible. Echoing the newspaper fragment quoted above, a virtually insatiable curiosity is another must. Claim your ignorance - the 'I-know- what-I-don't-know' syndrome - and capitalise on it. I also place a high value on fear and doubt as extra motivators. Do that which scares you most, or makes your heart skip a beat. Keep asking yourself, Why am I wanting or needing to do this? And can I do it? Am I capable? And embrace failure. Who was it who said that nobody makes anything good without risking making something bad? As a reviewer I know that I may actually learn more from a fatally flawed piece, or a work-in-progress that is still trying to figure itself out, than I will from a polished so-called success.
There is, too, something to be said in praise of what could be called 'the connective tissue'. There's a more articulate example of what I mean. For a while my good friend, the Angolan artist Lilia Pegado, was sending me a daily quote via email. The source for one of these was Austrian pianist/composer Artur Schnabel (1882-1951), who said, 'The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes...ah, that is where the art resides.' If there is any art in this issue of Animated, perhaps it resides between the lines of the actual text and in the passions and instincts that fuelled the words.
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Animated: Autumn 2003