“I had never read anything that spoke to my own mental health, sadness, and depression, the way these words and these pages did.” Andrea Walker talks to Melina Block.
Andrea Walker, artistic director of 201 Dance Company, is preparing for the UK tour of Sad Book; a stage adaptation of Michael Rosen’s 2004 novel of the same name, written following the death of the ex-children’s laureate’s teenage son. Walker is no stranger to using the stage as a platform to explore deeply personal issues; following a difficult mental and professional period, he moved to New York for a year in 2014. It was here where 201 Dance Company was born, named after the room number he stayed in.
Despite beginning dance relatively late, in his mid-teens, the Italian-English artist’s career has been on the rise. But it wasn’t always easy: “I always felt like I wasn’t street dance enough, I wasn’t commercial enough, I wasn’t contemporary enough,” he reveals. “and 201 was really born from a place of, why don’t I just start my own company and get everyone to move how I move?”
Back in London, Andrea produced the critically acclaimed Smother. Inspired by a difficult breakup, he used streetdance to bring his struggles to the stage. Although things seem to have changed now, he acknowledges that, at the time, it was unusual to see queer themes represented in that dance style: “Exploring queer themes in 201 became very important to me, but, to be honest, for me, the most important thing in 201 was just using my style to tell stories that matter and that our audience could relate to.”
Andrea seems to use dance as a sort of physical diary, a way of exploring and processing personal experiences through the stage. Sad Book’s creation was already well underway when, around a year and a half ago, Walker’s mother died of cancer. His company is in the beginning stages of creating a piece based on this experience, alongside rehearsing and preparing the Sad Book tour.
Film and television also influence the dancer, who studied both at university and hopes for people to watch his shows like they would a film. “The narrative always has to be very clear, very visual… I’m not a fan of dance for dance’s sake – everything needs to have a reason.”
This mission, along with a visit to a Quentin Blake exhibition seven years ago, laid the groundwork for Sad Book. Pages of the story, for which Blake was the illustrator, were displayed at the gallery and had a profound impact upon Walker.
“I had never read anything that spoke to my own mental health, sadness, and depression, the way these words and these pages did,” He recalls.
“I think it’s because Michael Rosen wrote it when his son tragically passed away, and he really wanted to explain to children that sadness is a very valid emotion, and it’s okay to feel sad… I was very taken by the fact that the book had no morals; there was no ‘you’re sad, you’re gonna be happy again. It was just, like, no, this is sad, feel sad, it’s okay to feel sad.” Andrea pauses.
“I just found that so powerful, and I feel like sometimes we, as adults, need that simple language to really hit us.”
After leaving the museum, buying the book, and building up the courage to contact Michael Rosen, the choreographer found the author to be extremely supportive of the project from the start. Given total support and freedom to bring the story to life, the show opened to critical acclaim at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Now, as the company prepares to tour the UK, Rosen will also be attending certain performances, including at Hackney Empire, where he will provide live narration.
Andrea claims with confidence, “It’s going to be quite surreal; I think our date at Hackney Empire, in particular, we’re fully ingraining him in the show… We have a lot of surprises for that date, and the show is literally about him and his relationship with his child, so I think it is going to be very interesting, magical, and even a bit meta, to see him in his own story.”
Child Bereavement UK and the HERA Project have also worked with the company to help produce this show. HERA gave people who had experienced grief, including as a result of losing a child, the opportunity to watch the first preview of the show in Brighton. They participated in a Q&A and movement workshop following the preview, providing feedback which proved vital in informing the current show.
Child Bereavement UK, the country’s largest child bereavement charity, were also important collaborators for the artistic director: “They said they never partner on this kind of stuff, but they were so taken by the show that they made a huge exception. “It’s just been this beautiful partnership, it’s been very validating.”
After the nationwide tour, Andrea Walker says there is potential for Sad Book to go global: “We’re just interested to see how this smaller UK tour does, and if there’s more platforms that we can take it to after that… There has been some interest from South Korea, and we’ve taken our shows to Norway before, so we will see where this tour takes us, really.”
Post show discussion featuring Michael Rosen, Dr Peter Lovatt ‘The Dance Psychologist’, Andrea Walker and special guests (Dr Diane Waller OBE, Rachel Tegg from Child Bereavement UK).
Hackney Empire LONDON: Wednesday 2nd April at 7.30pm
Box Office: 020 8985 2424.
Online: https://www.hackneyempire.co.uk/events/sad-book
Tickets from: £12.00
