© Ravi Deepres Diallo in reviews Diallo company reviews Graham Watts reviews 'Sense of Self' UK tour April - May 2008 EFlyer (pdf)

“My 20s were the Random years”, says Laïla Diallo, referring to her time at the creative table of Wayne McGregor. Eight years in which she matured from being an implement for the intelligent execution of his dance vision to progressively evolving her own creative influence on the output ; and assisting McGregor in directing movement for theatrical productions; and teaching the company’s community outreach projects.

I can see why McGregor and Diallo clicked so easily into a working relationship that has continued to grow after she left the company. A charismatic and beautiful performer, she has the qualities of loyalty, hard work and creativity that bridge the gap between muse and artistic collaborator; more importantly she shares the diverse approach to dance that defines McGregor’s work. Not for nothing is his dance company called Random.

Diallo has followed in these footsteps to become a dance polymath herself, juggling teaching, movement direction in theatre and opera, creating her own choreography and performing that of others in a relatively seamless life that she clearly enjoys to the full.

We meet during final preparations for ‘Sense of Self’, which she made jointly with her childhood friend, Mélanie Demers. It was conceived during a three-week workshop on Lamu Island in Kenya and finessed during a month together in Canada, culminating in four days of performance at Tangente in Montréal in February and a UK tour this spring. It has been a cathartic experience for Diallo, establishing a reason for examining her own sense of self.

Laïla was born in Quebec, with an African father and French-Canadian mother. Despite 12 years in the UK her voice is still coated with the rich, velvet sensuality of a French accent that manages to make English sound lyrical, but every now and again her sentences end with an interloping sound that has crept in from the inevitable Anglophile invasion of her sense of self, though the enigma is maintained by an ambiguity that disguises any regional flavour. Adding to the charm, her conversation is regularly punctuated by laughter.

Laïla had no special desire to become a dancer. At 14, she joined L’Ecole de Danse de Quebec, attracted by a schedule that confined academic lessons to mornings, enabling her to dance every afternoon. “I always had other things in mind that could be a good career for me – I never, ever got to a point where I thought I’ve got to be a dancer and that’s it.” Despite this ambivalence, her talent was recommended to Regine Chopinot in La Rochelle and she continued her training with a year in the young dancers’ company attached to Chopinot’s Ballet Atlantique.

At 19, Laïla’s “itchy feet” led her into the 4th year at The Place and an encounter with McGregor, who made a piece for the end-of-year show. This fate card turned into a royal flush since Wayne was looking to rejuvenate Random with a fresh cohort of dancers. Laïla went along without any high hopes but was offered a place; she told friends “I’ve got this amazing job and I’ll do it for a year” but it stretched to eight and what began as a few years away from Canada ended up in a life change.

Random was an intimate group with a very particular style. Laïla explains: “what kept me there for all that time was a fascination with Wayne’s idiosyncratic way of moving and the fact that his creative energy is always so high and contagious – that energy is great in the studio and I’m so glad that I’m still working with him on other things”.

Despite her obvious predilection for diversity, Laïla didn’t do anything else other than work with McGregor in these years. “It was all I had time for, so I guess this was why – after 8 years of being so involved and loving it – I needed to create the space to do more things.”

The catalyst for change came with a five-month sabbatical to Asia and Australia; “it was an extended holiday to escape with my boyfriend, and on coming back I thought, I don’t have to live in London anymore; I can move”.

Although Diallo had no offer to do anything specific, it felt right to change; “I had a wonderful time with Random and wanted to leave with that happy feeling”. A difficult decision was handled sensitively, without abruptness – “there was a long time between first telling Wayne and my last show, which allowed me more time to plant my seeds and leave gently”. Deciding where to go was easy; after the closeness of those months’ away she needed to “build a nest” with her boyfriend, who was in Bristol.

Despite moving to Bristol for love, others suspected a business plan: John Ashford (Theatre Director at the Place) advised, “that’s a great career move”. Laïla is adamant that greater potential for regional arts funding played no part in her thinking at that time, although she acknowledges these greater prospects now: she moved to Bristol while still touring with Random, a period she remembers as “always having a rucksack on my back” (although in a quick aside she says ruefully, “its still a bit like that!”)”. She would come to London, rehearse with Random, and then go back to Bristol to teach. Eventually, the planned break came and teaching – “everyone from schoolchildren to professionals” – has been an important mainstay of her new career.

Laila Diallo in ‘Waiting Fleeing’
© Ravi Deepres

She has four works on her choreographic CV to date: ‘Between the Shingle and the Dune’ and ‘Waiting Fleeing’ were created simultaneously – the former a duet with Theo Clinkard, and the latter a solo. Although part of the same creative flow, they have never been performed together: “each piece needed its own life”, says Laïla, “I wasn’t thinking about building an evening’s dance at that time, just playing with ideas”. There was also a tiny solo called ‘Out of Sight in the Direction of my Body’ (“sorry about the long titles”, she laughs again), which was performed as part of ‘Firsts’ at ROH 2; and ‘The Wayside’, another solo, inspired by a Spanish song where “the richness of the voice – singing of waiting, leaving – going full circle to come back to someone - was really moving”. This has been shown several times around Europe –“just a few outings and still going”, she says.

Laïla is adamant that the door is not closed on these early works, feeling especially that ‘Between the Shingle...’ hasn’t been seen enough, largely because she hasn’t been able to dovetail with Clinkard’s schedule, but she hopes they can revive it some time soon: “we touched into something that had a special meaning to me – physicality with a human sense, linking landscape and the human condition: being alone, being together”.

Despite the significant success of these early pieces, Laïla feels she is still at the beginning of her choreographic career: “I don’t know if I’m any good (another laugh) but let’s see. I don’t want the company thing of making work to fill twelve months of the year. I just want choreography to be one of many little bubbles.”

One of her most important “bubbles” is the strong desire to direct movement in a theatrical context. It’s a skill she has learned from McGregor, working with him on a number of projects, most notably ‘Dido and Aeneas’ at La Scala. This is to be remounted at the Royal Opera House next year, as part of a double bill, and Diallo will be McGregor’s assistant on both projects. She has also branched out on her own to direct movement for Scottish Opera, the National Theatre and the RSC. “Theatre is really dear to me,” saysLaïla, “I’m interested in the human sense to movement, finding the body language of a particular character - if I do a good job as a movement director then it should be the same as a voice coach – you won’t even know that I was there”.

Asking Laïla about how she manages her time triggers another laugh accompanied by the tiny, telling aside, “....or not”! She adds, “I’m learning to say no to things –sometimes it breaks my heart because they are things that I really want to do. So far it hasn’t been an issue but I would always make room for making and performing my own work. It leads to some crazy juggling; making a piece and then performing it while making another piece. It’s worse when someone else is involved – because you have to accommodate their commitments as well!”

This brings us back to ‘Sense of Self’ and its co-authorship with Mélanie Demers. They met at school in Quebec, at 14, and have remained great friends ever since, despite having the Atlantic Ocean between them (Demers is based in Montréal). “We’ve always expressed the wish of working together”, says Laïla. “I was given the opportunity to travel to Kenya on a Dreamtime Bursary. I could have gone and done nothing – just free my head from dance – or I could go and create something. So I invited Melanie to see if we could work together”. It was to be a year before they actually travelled and it began as “potential playtime – just to see how we get on together in the studio”. However, this informality quickly evaporated when Mélanie suggested four performance dates in Montréal, to come just a month after Kenya, “so, suddenly, playtime was over!”

The Eflyer image for the Sense of Self tour
© Melanie Demers

With this change of focus the risks became all too apparent. “We knew that great friendship and respect don’t necessarily make great collaboration so we were totally aware of the challenge– we trusted that we would connect but it might not have worked. We had watched each other over the years and knew how we had developed as individuals – so we had a sense that it wouldn’t be a disaster but now there was a new urgency about it!”

They were on Lamu together for three weeks, last December. “Kenya was a great starting point”, says Laïla, “It was out of our individual spheres, as if Mélanie and I were meeting on completely virgin ground away from our known contexts for making work”. The political troubles in Kenya erupted about a week after they left the country: Laïla says that the situation inevitably feeds into the work – “not the event but the underlying issues – being in Africa makes you realise your position in the world and calls for a readjustment of all your perceptions. What life is; what our privileges are. All this is part of the sense of self, and being in Kenya enhanced and nourished our creative dialogue”.

After a break over Christmas, the pair got together in Montréal for four weeks of rehearsals in January; ironically sharing her work in Canada helped to reassert some of Laïla’s own sense of self. She had only performed there professionally once before, taking ‘The Wayside’ and ‘Out of Sight...’ to Quebec City in May ‘07.

It was beneficial that the Montréal performances built upon the known context of Melanie’s work just like the performances in the UK will come in the context of Laïla’s career. She has no doubt about the mutual strength of this endeavour: “It’s a true partnership since we are both gaining from each other, much more than 2 plus 2 equals 4. We’ve challenged each other to change our points of view; it’s not the next piece either of us would have made on our own but, as a tangent to our separate careers, we created a work that is truly ours”.

‘Sense of Self’ is an hour-long duet, which presents a tough challenge, “finding the pace is crucial to keep the tension, attention and flow – the piece has a lot of theatrical moments as well as very strong physicality and there are sudden shifts of emphasis between the two”.

Diallo and Demers want to extend the current tour – they are going to Bassano, in Italy, and hope to perform it in Paris, and Quebec in January ‘09; thus bringing it full circle from Montréal a year before; Laïla adds, “obviously, it would make total sense for us to show the work in Kenya”, and a performance opportunity in Nairobi is being explored.

Laïla sees herself making more work with Mélanie – they already have some ideas but inevitably both are busy (Mélanie is touring a piece in Asia this autumn); “so who knows – we were really lucky because Kenya happened at the right time. It might never happen again but the process of bouncing ideas off another creative force has been great. Sometimes when working on a section of ‘Sense of Self’ we can’t remember who thought of particular ideas. Decisions or choices which are made instinctively need to be elucidated in a choreographic partnership. Having two heads to make a decision is sometimes more challenging. But it’s worked really well for us”.

Laila Diallo in ‘Waiting Fleeing’
© courtesy of Laila Diallo

We end the interview by talking more about the sense of self and Laïla reveals that this was not the title that the work went by in Montréal; where it was called ‘Sauver sa peau’ (‘Save Your Skin’). This duality is all about identity: when they were creating the work, they would look at each other and say this bit is “Sense of Self” or this is “Sauver sa peau”. It makes sense when Laïla says that she likes “to think of identity constantly renewing itself as skin does: we can’t reduce identity to a tick in a box”. It becomes clear that their work fights against this notion, articulating identities as multi-layered entities that are always shifting, influenced by the environment and its economic, political, social or cultural contexts.

As Laïla continues to describe the work it becomes apparent that she is explaining herself, “we are born with a certain genetic baggage that impacts upon what we think and do but the layers on top of that adjust our attitudes, as does perception – how others look at you also informs who you are, how you perceive yourself. When people ask me where I’m from I think they are slightly disappointed when I say Quebec, because it doesn’t really answer their question, which might be to do with my accent or the colour of my skin. If you want to know who someone is then you have to ask them much more than where they were born”.

It’s an articulate expression of self-awareness from a creative performer with an immense diversity of talents. Looking ahead, she concludes: “I would love to do what I’m doing now but just do it better”. I have the image of Laïla as a conjurer, spinning plates simultaneously and I hope that she perfects this balancing act. Like watching the plates, it’s a dizzying prospect!

(*) ‘Sense of Self’ is performed at The Place (15/16 April); The Brewhouse Theatre, Taunton (17 April); The Blue Room, Diversions Dance House, Cardiff (26 April); Arnolfini, Bristol (1 May); and Town Hall Theatre, Swindon (2 May)