What is the transition from a working dancer to setting up your own company?
I stayed with Ludus for 5 or 6 years and then I moved out of the touring company to do some freelance work as the company made a transition. And during that period, I decided I wanted to do a little more academic work so I started studying an MA in Peace Studies in Bradford.
About half way through the year the parameters were changed and I was required to be there more often than I could afford to, I was working freelance for Ludus to pay for the course. They gave me back the money I paid and I then had to find somewhere else to go and do the course. Myself and Hannah she had moved to Ludus about two thirds of the way through my time at there, decided to leave Lancaster. I found a Peace Studies course in Spain, I applied to that, and went there to study.
Meanwhile, I had beeen engagged by a dance company in Dublin, Cois Ceim which offered me freelance work, so I was flying there to teach and facilitate community classes as part of a big community project. In Spain we found out that Hannah was pregnant, so we had to go somewhere because we couldn’t stay in Spain. We weren’t earning any money there. We didn’t want to go back to England, so we decided to go to Enniskillen, have our baby there and at that time we had no plans to stay there.
So the plan was to come back for a short period?
Yes, but quite soon after we returned, I was offered some teaching work in Sligo, teaching Peace and Community Development , and then I was offered a dance residency in Fermanagh, and I started to think that there was something to do here. Things just seemed to be falling into place.
It was actually against my desires, and I did feel that living in Northern Ireland was dragging me back a little bit, because I wanted to go off and do something; work as a dancer in Contemporary Dance in Europe. That was certainly where the drive was, but at the same time I felt there was something to be achieved here. This was 22 years ago.
What informed that judgement?
The Peace Process was working its way through society and by that stage things were starting to change. I felt that you could feel those changes taking place.
I remember going to a Night Club in Enniskillen, much earlier, maybe when I was 16 or 17, and there was a fight and there were guys who would normally have been involved in the fight saying, “Keep the peace, keep the peace,” and that had stayed with me in my head.
The fight had nothing to do with the bigger conflict, but that phrase meant something to me. Partly because of my work in Peace Studies, partly because of the Human Rights aspect of it, and partly because I felt the arts were going to be a key part of the healing process.
What developments take place once you decided to stay?
We ended up slowly but surely settling ourselves down, we had another child, we found a plot of land that interested us, and we became rooted in the place.
I needed to earn a living, I was teaching Peace Studies in Sligo but I couldn’t get away from dance. That just wasn’t possible.
I had been to a few workshops, through the Peace Studies work, and there would be a game that you were asked to play where you had to identify yourself, and people had to work out what you were, and I always wrote dancer to describe myself. There were other things, Father, Irishman, Fermanagh man, but even though I wasn’t dancing very much at that point, it was always there. I needed to find a way to service the dancer.
What did you do to service the dancer?
Nicola Curry was running Maiden Voyage Dance Company and I reconnected with her and started to get a bit of work there, I applied to the Arts Council and worked on projects that way, and I could see there was a small ecology starting to develop.
I soon realised I was going to have to form my own company if I was going to be able to do work on any scale, and things evolved from there.
You might say setting up my own company was driven by a combination of things. I needed to earn a living, I had more children by then, we were rooted here, I wanted to do larger projects and I wanted to service the dancer.
To see more of Dylan Quinn’s work see the following ink – www.dylanquinndance.com
