Helene Cooper Blog

I was once told...

The world's most important people are all risk takers.

Perhaps this will encourage me in my ventures. It seems one doesn't get anywhere by playing safe.

Growing up...

"My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it"

Mark Twain

Change of plan...

Well as is always the case I have run into problems before the company has even started. My co-partner Laura Asbury has had a moment very common to people in the field of dance in which she has questionned what dance means to her and how she wants to shape her future. So for the meantime she has decided to remove herself from dance completely in order to have a break and to re-address what is important to her. Consequently she is no longer going to be a part of establishing the company. And as a result I will be going it alone! The thought of this is extremely nerveracking but I have to be grateful that this has happened as without her I don't think I would have taken the leap to decide to set up the company.

Talking to friends of mine about the situation, one of them asked me - 'Well why can't you do it on your own?' and to be honest I couldn't give her an answer. I know what I want from a company, I have a specific direction in which I want to lead it and I believe I have the drive and motivation to see it through. I think the only thing that has stopped me so far is fear and having someone else to share this fear with encouraged me to go ahead. Now Laura isnt' a part of this process the fear is still there but I have taken the first huge step in deciding just to get on with it.

In regards to a name for this company I am still thinking about this. I am very grateful for the comments/suggestions on the forum.I particularly like Saltarium although I have decided that whatever word I asign to the company I do want to follow it with 'Dance Collective' to emphasise the collaborative nature of the company. I also like Graham's comments about the symbolic/allegorical relations to my name. Particularly because my father has always been very inerested in history and why I was given my name.

I keep coming back to the possiblity of Verité Dance Collective but am not 100% sure about this since the company may be mistaken for a french company with both my name and the company name being french.

What is in a name...?

So having decided that we're setting up a company, the next decision to be made is to decide what we are going to be called. We have a few ideas but would appreciate any suggestions so if anyone has anything in mind please do email me.

Contributing Company Name Ideas:
There is a discussion thread in the Ballet.co forum for people to contribute ideas - so do go and give your thoughts and suggestions:
Helene Cooper Company name suggestions and discussion

I suppose for you to suggest a name it is necessary for you to know what sort of work the company will produce. My practice is in site specific work and dance film but since the company will commission work by a number of choreographers the work will be somewhat varied. The company does have a number of focus points, which will be on the website when it has been set up - not sure how long this will take I'm afraid. These points are - to encourage collaboration between artists of different fields, to make dance accessible to the general public (including those not exposed to dance), to make dance accessible to a wider audience through the medium of film and to create a total theatre experience - through the provision of work by a variety of different choreographers and by the commission of 'theatrical' works such as work influenced by circus skills.

I hope these aims will become clearer as the company evolves and takes a clear direction.

It's final...

So...we've decided upon it so there's no going back. This blog should be continuing on from the last, informing you about my history but as this is quite an important development in terms of my practice as a student choreographer I feel it best to share with you now.

Laura Asbury, is a fellow Postgraduate student at Laban and she also happens to live in the flat downstairs from me. She is one of those people that you bond with as soon as you meet them - the sort you are able to share private jokes with within days of knowing each other and, I may be premature in saying this but, the sort of person that you can envisage inviting to your kids party with her kids in years to come. In other words we get on very well having not known each other a very long time at all and to top it off we share a lot the same views about art, choreography, practice and intellectual debate on dance - correct me if I'm wrong Laura?

Laura Asbury and I ©Helene Cooper

Laura is completing the Postgraduate course in Dance for the Community for which there is a very packed schedule. As a result I only seem to see her late in the evening when we catch up on each other's news from the day. These catch ups now seem to be a regular occurrence in which we end up talking for hours until the wee hours about everything on life, choreography and dance. The most recent development in these discussions is our decision to form a company. I have been thinking about it for a long time as has she but have always held back. There is the worry that we're not experienced enough and still have much more to learn but then there's always more to learn, one never stops learning in fact. So we figure we might as well just go ahead and do it anyway.

The purpose of a dance company is to perform work. In this case the company need a venue in which to show this work and so before we do anything else we are going to research a possible platform in which we could premiere the company. Laura and I both have existing work that we could re-work for the company or show in its current form. So having found a venue, the next step will be to draw up a proposal for the venue and to heavily market ourselves as an emerging company including designing a website. We are very aware that running a company successfully is reliant on good business sense so let's hope we have enough of that.

Wish us luck!!!!!

MTV is responsible...

Economics?…I realised this wasn’t for me. And after only a year studying for a GCSE I dropped it and took up GCSE Drama. I had decided that if I wasn’t going to be financially successful I would seek a career that I would thoroughly enjoy. If it hadn’t of been for Mr.Houghton, a boring economics teacher who talked of nothing except football and tailored all exercises to his love of the sport, I may have been well on my way to being an extremely rich International Investment banker by now… so thanks for that Mr. Houghton!

© Max. Surprisingly this is me.

I came to the conclusion that being a performer would be a very satisfying career and so I completed a GCSE in Drama in just a year. But this new direction was not entirely random. For the first year of my GCSE’s I had been attending dance, drama and singing classes. A good friend of mine, Leah Bennett, whom I have sadly lost touch with suggested that we go to Pineapple Dance Studios. We were typical school kids with nothing to do but fed up with sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon and decided to get out the Yellow Pages to see what entertainment we could find. Encouraged by pop videos on MTV we looked up dance classes and found that Pineapple Dance Studios also had a Performing Arts School on Sundays and the next week we were enrolled taking classes in Drama, Jazz and Street Lockin’, Jazz/Funk & Musical Repertoire, Street Jazz and Singing.

This lasted for a term but then Leah moved to another school and I wasn’t yet confident enough to go alone. And so out came the Yellow Pages yet again and out it stayed for a while, so much so that my mother began to refer to it as my ‘bible’. I began calling up all sorts of places which actually took quite a lot for me to do as I was still fairly shy and hated calling people I didn’t know. I came across Italia Conti Theatre Arts and discovered they had Associate Schools aside from their main school and one of these was based in Bow ,which was fairly local to me. I enrolled at Italia Conti, taking a LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) Acting class, Singing, Jazz and Grade 6 Ballet. This was my first Ballet class (other than that with Mrs. Carr) but I was told I should take a Grade 6 class because of my age. I was fifteen by this point but much older than the other girls in my class (the eldest being twelve) and much less experienced too.

I took quickly to dance and would have taken it for GCSE but my High School – Wanstead High - did not offer it then. Having looked at their website recently I found it interesting to see that it is now a ‘specialist college in the performing arts’. Everything always seems to get changed for the better soon after I leave.

It was soon time to decide what I wanted to do for my A-Levels. I knew that I didn’t want to stay at Wanstead High – I get bored easily anywhere and have realized I’m the sort of person who needs to move on quite frequently. After receiving an award for progress in Ballet my Ballet teacher suggested that I apply to The Brit School for Performing Arts and Technology. Out came the ‘bible’ (Yellow Pages) and I contact them for a prospectus.

I started to think about my career as a dancer. A good dancer, I thought, would be an all-rounder, skilled in singing and drama as well as dance. And so I chose to apply for the Musical Theatre course at The Brit School. Due to my lack of experience I didn’t expect to get an audition at all and applied for a Performing Arts Course at Epping Forest College in Essex as my more ‘realistic’ choice. However, to my surprise I received an audition for the Brit School. Towards the end of the audition one of the teachers called out a list of names and asked us to remain in the room if our names were not called out. I sat there hoping I heard my name but unfortunately I didn’t. As I walked through the building on my way out I thought to myself that there was such a nice atmosphere and that it would have been lovely to have studied there. I was almost home when I received a phonecall. Apparently there had been a mistake and my name had gone on the wrong list. They asked me if I minded going back for an interview and of course I obliged. Thankfully I was told there and then that they were accepting me on the course.

The Brit School was a fantastic place to study, a very unique environment that encouraged creativity in every way. Over the period of my course I was determined to strengthen my ability as an all-round performer and took extra classes in ISTD Gold, Silver and Bronze Jazz Dance, Grade 6 Ballet, Pointe-work Ballet and ISTD Intermediate Modern dance since we only received Jazz dance and contemporary dance classes on the musical theatre course. I also took Private Singing lessons. The Brit School also had good links with the arts industry and the Musical theatre department had links to Bird College.

Towards the end of my course at Brit the opportunity arose for some of us to have Ballet classes with Miss. Town who taught at Bird College. This was a great eye opener for us as we were subjected to a style of teaching much stricter than what we had been used to. Usually, I hate to be told what to do. My mother says I’m too independent for my own good which is probably true. But I enjoyed Miss Town’s ‘Sergeant Major’ approach and respected her a great deal. As a result of this on finishing at The Brit School I enrolled at Bird College studying all aspects of Musical theatre. But as it is quite clear I am not currently working in the Musical Theatre profession…for an explanation of my second change of career please tune in for my next blog.