The Art of Faux Pas #3 - Orrow Bell

Orrow Bell is a London based dance artist. They make, perform, work as dramaturg, facilitator, and curator. Orrow’s solo works have toured widely. As a performer, they worked with Tino Sehgal, Hussein Chayalan & Damien Jalet, Lea Anderson, Maresa von Stockert, Alessandro Sciarroni and Chiara Frigo amongts others. 

To me, Orrow is a quiet strength. The kind of strength that radiates from people who are fully, rootedly, themselves.  

Together we talked about queerness, failure being a systemic bullshit, lycra and blank on stage, the cosmos, being a recovering perfectionist, putting care alongside actions…. It is a dense and rich conversation you are about to listen to, it is bound to question your perspectives and angles… I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did! 

Transcript

The Art of Faux Pas #3 - Orrow Bell 

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Art of Faux Pas. Here, we celebrate the artistic fuck ups, the feelings of failure, the blackouts, the falls, the unfollowed rules, the invaluable learning experiences within the creative process. All this with kindness, amusement, and respect.

Today we’re chatting with Orrow Bell. 

Orrow Bell is a London based dance artist. They make, perform, work as dramaturg, facilitator, and curator. Orrow’s solo works have toured widely. As a performer, they worked with Tino Sehgal, Hussein Chayalan & Damien Jalet, Lea Anderson, Maresa von Stockert, Alessandro Sciarroni and Chiara Frigo amongts others. 

To me, Orrow is a quiet strength. The kind of strength that radiates from people who are fully, rootedly, themselves.  

Together we talked about queerness, failure being a systemic bullshit, lycra and blank on stage, the cosmos, being a recovering perfectionist, putting care alongside actions…. It is an inspiringly rich conversation you are about to listen to, it is bound to question your perspectives and angles… I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did! 
Léa: Hello, Orrow. Thank you so much for joining me today. 

Orrow: Hello, hi, really good to see you. 

Léa: Um, let's start with an introduction. Just share with me your name, your age and what you do. 

Orrow: Yes, um, so my name is Orrow Bell. I'm 41, and yeah, what I do, it depends how much detail you want. I generally say that I'm a dance artist. 
Uh, I guess I'm [00:02:00] based in contemporary dance. And that covers dancing, performing, dramaturgy, facilitating, artist care, or a number of roles that might be a bit more tailor made depend on the project. 

Léa: Nice. Um, can you remember what's your first memory of dance? 

Orrow: I don't know. I feel the first memory I'm conscious of is dancing in my living room to Top of the Pops to Boy George or Dead or Alive or something like that. Yeah, definitely like early 80s upbeat pop bouncing around joyfully. Yeah. 

Léa: And did you know from an early age that you could have a career in dance or were you familiar with that? 

Orrow: Um, yeah, I was, I guess I was aware that people did it, but I didn't for a moment think that that would be [00:03:00] something I would do.
I didn't seriously think about that until I was like, sort of 20 or something. Like I, you know, I did a lot of dancing in my childhood and I, I loved it, but I didn't, um, didn't think it was something I would be doing with my life or that that would be possible. I guess I thought, had a lot of assumptions, I suppose, about what, who gets to do that or what that would be.

Léa: And when, like, when did the shift happen? Like, when did you decide to professionally train to become a dancer? Like, when did you jump? 

Orrow: Yeah. Um, well, when I was, I guess when I was 18. I, I went to university and did a degree in English. Um, I love literature and language and, you know, I wanted to do that, but also I didn't really know where that was going. And it sort of felt like the thing I should be [00:04:00] doing. And I enjoyed that process, but I really missed dancing until that point. I'd done a lot as a hobby, like through my teen years. And I just, I really missed it. And I was looking down at my adult life thinking like, Oh, I guess I'm, I'm going to be someone who used to dance as a child, and I'm going to be an adult that doesn't do that anymore.
And I really missed it in a very deep way. And, um, I had stayed in touch with a friend of mine, Charlotte Spencer, who is a choreographer and artist, um, still now. And, uh, I was full of doubt, didn't know what to do, and she said, why don't you come and visit me? She was training at London Contemporary Dance School at the time, and she said, why don't you come and have a look?
And so I did, and she kindly let me stay, and I watched classes, and it just seemed so... exciting and it was the first time I started to really think, oh maybe I could do this, like [00:05:00] to see what it would mean or like. Yeah, and I guess I had some teachers also who could, who encouraged me in that to say ‘Oh, no, you're not too old. You're not too weird. You're not too, you know, XYZ…’ and um, and yes, I finished my, my degree in English and then did a training at London Contemporary Dance School after that, which of course is probably something that would be impossible now because it would be far too expensive because at the time my university education was free.
My, my first degree was free and my dance degree was like a thousand pounds a year, which I had support with. Um, so yeah, there was like your local educational authority would pay if you were from a poor income family, they would pay. And then, yeah, it's just completely different thing now. So I feel very, um, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be doing that now.
If I was a young person now, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to do that. 

Léa: Um, so you did the [00:06:00] BA then? 

Orrow: Yeah, so I did the BA at London Contemporary Dance School at The Place and then I did also the MA. There was a scheme which doesn't exist anymore. It was definitely the thing that people thought was useful at the time to do EDGE, which was...well, some people thought it was useful. Some people always thought it wasn't useful. Um, but it was like a postgraduate company. So as a student, as a postgraduate student, you'd form a little company, you'd have guest choreographers make work with you, and then you'd tour it, and then, yeah, it's kind of based on a model, it just really has no basis in professional reality anymore, like the idea of like a rep company or something. There's very few of those around and certainly isn't a model I've ever worked in or ever really been interested in, mainly because the process times are so short and it's often quite, I mean, it's trying to do something that I'm less interested in.
However, it was an extraordinary [00:07:00] experience and really equipped me to feel more confident to begin life as a professional. You know? And the other dancers were wonderful to be with in that relationship, that trust that you build, and the person who was sort of mentoring us, in charge of that company, was Lauren Potter, who is a legend, and who, yeah, I learned a lot from Lauren, including the tensions that I think she also felt with that model and the way that she encouraged us to think for ourselves inside that.

Léa: And once this, this year finished, um, did you go on working for other people?

Orrow: Yeah, so I, um, I, I tried to do that thing of like, auditioning, which just seems so absurd now, like I don't, I thought that's what you had to do, um, so that's what I did, and I did manage to get a first job through [00:08:00] auditioning, and that was with Marisa von Stockert, who had a company called Tilted Productions. Uh, she's based in, mainly in France now, but she, um, used to make, um, kind of mid scale dance theatre work, very visual, very much about, like, objects and props, very psychological, quite dark, humorous, um, and she often casts, um, well, for, at the time, seemed slightly less conventional people, but, you know, I look differently at those times now, you know, it was sort of, I feel like the dance world has moved on so much in terms of thinking about structural questions, about those sorts of things.
But yeah, certainly I felt like, um, unconventional, even then. And my gender presentation and my, my kind of queerness, I felt like lots of people didn't know what to do [00:09:00] with me, casting wise, or like, I don't know. Uh, and I, and she gave me a chance, she gave me my first job, so that was really, yeah, was a, was a, was really lovely working with her, and, and we toured, it was in the days where you had like a spring tour and an autumn tour, which now is kind of wild, and yeah, I stayed with her a number of years on and off on different projects, and later did some rehearsal directing with her, and stayed connected, and certainly learnt a lot in terms of choreography and she's really someone with a, like a vision, like visually a vision, I know what I want. And, and it was so extraordinary to be next to someone who had just such, such an imagination, just such a, where does that come from? It was kind of great, yeah. 

Léa: Did you understand why dance? 
Orrow: Um, I mean, surely we, we ask ourselves this every few [00:10:00] weeks.

Léa: and it might change every week!

Orrow: Yeah, but I think a number of times through my career, I have, um, thought about not dancing or not continuing for all sorts of different reasons. And so this question becomes even more urgent in those moments because there's always something that doesn't quite let me let go. Um, And, yeah, it's something that's difficult to put into words and certainly something that is difficult to not sound cheesy about. But it is something very much about the activity of dancing for me, which is different than making dance or performing dance. But it's something about being in or around the activity of doing the dancing, which seems to me...on its own outside of anything about making work or making a career or living so meaningful [00:11:00] and so uniquely able to help me feel like, this is gonna sound wanky, but like in presence, like, like, like in presence in the world, like, even, I'm making myself laugh thinking about it, but even sort of like cosmically, like I don't know if you ever did any skinner releasing, but there's this idea in skinner releasing technique that about alignment.
So we might think about the alignment as like the bones or whatever, you know, like the physical alignment of your body, but, but in skinner releasing, it's also like. That, that sense of alignment is also connected to alignment of forces in the universe, like gravity or light or you know, that they're sort of energetic alignment.
And I feel like it's through only really through dancing that I'm able to release something to, to [00:12:00] become aware of that sense of alignment or misalignment that to sort of sit into that in, in, in the best moments, obviously that's like 2 percent of the time that I spend dancing, but there's something there that's a little bit addictive that I haven't quite managed to give up.

Léa: And as an art form, you know, as an art form itself. Yeah, why why this and not music? 

Orrow: Hmm. I mean the straightforward answer there is that I'm not very good at music. Music's great. I'd oh god. I'd love to be a musician. I’m not sure, I can't speak to it, but I imagine it; probably musicians have a similar experience and in some ways it's more, it's even more direct, like how it touches an audience. I think there's a lot of really huge barriers that lots of us think about often around audiences. Encountering [00:13:00] dance in a way that feels genuinely inviting or inclusive and, you know, traditionally, contemporary dance still is, like, super white, super middle class, too expensive, um, makes reference to things that may seem obscure or, like, not really, um, I don't know, so immediately, it seems sometimes I think still that some contemporary dance feels that it's in a code that people have to have a knowledge of to understand. And so friends of mine who very readily will pick up an experimental novel or go to an exhibition or listen to like, you know, music that's quite out there. Going to see live art will be like, oh, I don't know about that. I don't really know anything about dance. And that makes me sad. And so, you know, I'm really excited by artists who can tackle [00:14:00] that. Not just artists, also producers and people working in the sector who are attending to those barriers, uh, naming them or thinking creatively around.
What does it mean? What kind of invitation do you want to make to another person to witness this thing? And what, you know, what's the, what, not just what's the politics of that, but like, concretely, how does it make people feel in their bodies? And how, you know, what kind of experience might you be able to offer?

And then I think when it goes well, You know, there's something, it's so, it's just so exciting, isn't it, when you're so moved by somebody else moving. Like, it's so, it is something unique. I don't know, it's difficult to put into words, isn't it? But I think there's a lot of contemporary, there's a lot of dance and contemporary dance that doesn't make me very excited.
And that's also fine, [00:15:00] like, we don't have to love all of it. But I think, yeah, there's... There's something so moving, literally, about dance that works for you that I think just makes people feel alive, like, you know, it can be very joyful. 

Léa: If we stay in the, in the ‘when it goes well chapter’ do you have like a best memory of yourself on stage as a dancer, either of your own work, because I know you perform in your own work as well, or in someone else's work?

Orrow: Yeah. That moment you touch the, you know, you touch the cosmos. Yeah, that, yeah. I often, I actually often find that that happens more in the studio than in, than on the stage. I think there's something, I often find rehearsal more meaningful for that internal experience than being on the stage. But of course, I also love performing. I think maybe, yeah, I wouldn't say like one memory, but like the [00:16:00] moments of connection with other dancers. You know when you're in that point where it's heightened, like there's adrenaline and you're in this flow, but you're not so nervous that you can't see each other. It's like you see each other across the stage and you really see each other.
It's like existential, like, whoa. There's something so, I don't know what it is. Yeah, I've definitely have some memories of, of performing for Alessandra Schiarone in this piece called Folks, um, that I used to join the cast periodically, and it's very much a work about connect, the connection between the group, uh, and their friends, um, and there's space for that to see each other, and it's an intensely physically challenging work.
It's really a work of, um, testing your physical limits, but not in a, in a way that reveals your humanity. So the task of that [00:17:00] work is not necessarily to drive yourself to exhaustion, but to allow yourself to be like fully yourself in it. And the days where I could overcome, ride my nerves enough that it was heightened, but that I was open and able to let myself be really present with the others and seen and, being seen with however I was.
Um, that's something very meaningful, I think. Yeah. 

Léa: What’s your worst memory as a dancer, either on stage or in the studio? 

Orrow: So many moments. I mean, I definitely remember when I was, starting to work I couldn't, I had like a really tense face and I couldn't relax my face and I'd make these weird expressions with my face and I'd sort of like know that I was doing it but I couldn't not do it because I was just so terrified.
It was just like [00:18:00] pure terror. And I'd get feedback like, can you just, I'm just noticing your face. I wonder if you could, and I just then become really self conscious about it. And then, yeah, that was pretty bad. 

Léa: Um, did you see it? Like, did you manage to see videos and or pictures? 

Orrow: No, I couldn't do it. I thought I had a really hard, actually I had, I'm a bit better, but I had a very hard time seeing any, any video or footage, film photos of myself dancing. And now I've come to understand that a lot of that is to do with actually dysphoria and like gender dysphoria. And I can be with that differently now. But I think it is also mixed in with just enormous cringe of like just cringing at myself. Yeah, I also would say a bad, bad memory of performance would be where I was really, I was genuinely really vulnerable, [00:19:00] and I agreed to things that I wish I hadn't, and I was too, I wouldn't, maybe I was a bit too trusting, but also I was genuinely vulnerable, and I think taken advantage of, and I didn't understand how to say no, and I, um, I felt like, I still feel that I gave something away to, an audience that I would slightly wish I hadn't.
Not in my work, but that helped me understand in my own work what I really wanted to, give away isn't the right phrase, but like, that I wanted to make sure that I felt okay about whatever I was sharing. And yeah, so I definitely had an experience of like, not really having good boundaries and not having my vulnerability really sort of respected.
In fact, having it slightly objectified and used, you [00:20:00] know, it's like mistaking that vulnerability for like authenticity or something like, yeah. And I think that happens. I think there can be a glamour around putting painful things on stage, sort of mistaking that for like, ah, now this is the real deal.
And actually it can be quite harmful. So Yeah, not great, that moment. 

Léa: Did you manage to talk about it with the person you were working with, maybe later on? Or, that's something you never... 

Orrow: Oh, um, no. No, it took me years to really actually understand what happened. Because also it was quite, it was an interpersonal drama as well, it wasn't just that. So there was lots of drama. I mean, that's another thing, isn't it? Don't get involved with people that you're working for. Yeah, that's a good learning. Um, no, I [00:21:00] didn't speak to them about it, but I certainly talked to the other people who were involved in the project or like other people who saw it or...Like, yeah, it took me a lot of years to understand my role in that too. And like how to, what that meant for me. And I think today, like the conversations around consent are so much more important than they were like 15 years ago, 10 years ago. Like it was something like you had a job and you had to do it somehow.

Yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a different cultural moment. Um, and that's really important. I think there's much, yeah. I think I really noticed. I think we're all noticing that those conversations are happening in a way that they didn't at all before or rarely happened before. Um, so there's that, but I think it's also my own development, my own, something about me, my respect of myself, my body, my history, [00:22:00] my, you know, it's important for others to care about that, but you also have to care about it and, and know it yourself. Like I didn't actually know what. And so, um, yeah, it was a difficult process, but I definitely feel like I know much more where my boundaries might be. And, and I'm just, you know, not that then you don't want to make yourself vulnerable again. It actually helps you be more vulnerable and more trusting, but in a way that hopefully makes it like there's more awareness of what that might mean for you rather than just like plunging in and then afterwards being like, oh, that didn't feel okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think consent, but also care. How do you check out from that state? Yeah, definitely. I think there's, it can happen even to really loving, very caring choreographers sometimes [00:23:00] that they, we can get quite single minded about the thing that we're making or feel under pressure. And sometimes even with intentions of care, uh, that can go of the window at certain push points.

And so I think that's also why roles. You know, things like show parents or, you know, people working in a sort of well being or care situation, or even, I guess, the classic, like, rehearsal director role, or, you know, somebody who isn't the choreographer, like, having, being able to advocate in that way, or just draw attention or ask questions, um, around how people are doing and how they're feeling is quite important.

Um, it's hard to be, to hold, like, I do hold, choreographers and lead artists to account around that and also they they're holding a lot very often and when the crunch point comes they also need care and [00:24:00] holding so that they don't perpetuate harm that also may have been done to them. 

I was working with an artist quite recently who found that actually that they'd invested a huge amount of thought and energy into caring for their cast of dancers and then found themselves like the day or two days before the show Realizing that they were replicating some of the dynamics that were done to them that they found harmful.
And they were like, oh, I've, I've internalized this in a way I didn't realize. So, you know, it. It runs deep, doesn't it? And, um, I'm really happy that there's so much more discourse around it now. And, you know, one, one of the things that's important about that, I think, is recognizing where these discourses come from.
And so I think, like, thinking about, like, disability activists, um, yeah, activists in general, I think. Like, um, people looking at [00:25:00] sort of social injustice, racial injustice, and thinking about what it means, put care alongside action and risk is, um, they've gone before us, I think, in, in thinking about how we can do that.

Léa: Right. So a Faux Pas is a socially embarrassing action or mistake. What would be your definition of failure and has it changed with time? 

Orrow: Yeah, it's, it's really changed. I would say that. I, when I was younger, I was, I say that I'm like a recovering perfectionist because I, I, I was, yeah, I was really, um, I was a bit of a massive perfectionist actually.
And it made me really, uh, not creative, but also maybe quite [00:26:00] unwell. Like it's just not, um, um, it's quite a tight grip on your thought processes and your emotions. So, um, and part of that has been re configuring ideas about success and failure. And one of the things that's really helped me dismantle that, um, um,  through my life, through my lived experience, and not just like as an idea, is queerness.
Because I feel like queerness a hundred percent, well it dismantles binaries generally, but it also really kind of pokes holes in norms around success and failure and in terms of what you're supposed to achieve being really associated with norms and often kind of like yeah, colonial inspired norms in this society, and, um, I'm really, [00:27:00] um, thinking about the sort of traditions of queer thinkers and artists who, like, embrace failure.
Um, there's a brilliant person called Clement Crisp, who's a sort of, like, queer icon, who, who says something like, um, If at first you don't succeed, Failure may be your style. And, you know, there's a long tradition of, of, I guess, artists, of course, but like, especially, um, queer people really questioning, um, and embracing failure, uh, or reframing failure, actually, because it's like, failing at what? You know on the basis in which you're measuring this is often about like sustaining norms like you say it's like social socially embarrassing thing or whatever like that's um yeah you have to think about like who said that this is failure or this is good or this is bad or this is success or not and i think it's like reframing it for yourself [00:28:00] to have your own um ideas about. What you're hoping to do or what you would like to do, like your aspirations or your goals, but like re relocating that inside yourself rather than looking so much to the outside.
So for me, I think like a failure would be, you know, a chance to question what I thought I was doing. So, of course, like in creative processes and artists, I often experience disappointment and, you know, despair, disillusionment, being stuck, uh, you know, things falling apart and being confused. Um, and I try more now, um, to take that as an invitation to think about what is I'm trying to do in the first place.
[00:29:00] Like, what am I failing at? So, for example, in my daily life. I think that carries over in having had experiences of feeling like I was sort of failing at gender. Like I wasn't really succeeding in being, um, the way that society might think you should be around gender. And now feeling like I'm just existing as myself and and so that like living that can't help but change the way you think about that in other parts of your life or your creative life.

The other thing I'd say about failure is that it's an invitation to think about structural things that set some people up to fail because lots of times when we experience failure, we, we're told, especially now. That [00:30:00] it could be that we haven't tried hard enough, or like, we've got the wrong attitude, or like, we haven't got what it takes, or… and that, there may be elements of that, of course, but like, fundamentally, systems around us, including those which support dance works to be made, favour certain ways of being, favour certain kinds of people, favour certain kinds of knowledges or experiences, and set others up to fail. So, particularly, you know, thinking about, you know, ableism and class, I think people don't talk enough about how you can feel like a failure, um, if you're coming from a more working class experience, and obviously race, you know, there's lots of other, there's lots of ways in which people can internalize feeling like a failure when it actually, it's a [00:31:00] structural bullshit that makes you feel it's part of the mechanism of that that makes it think that it's you that's failing when actually it's just an indication of what the system is favoring. And it's a really huge work to, uh, remind yourself of that and to keep saying, um, no, it's just that I'm not doing what is favored.

Um, I mean, and sometimes you. I don't want to say there's no such thing as failure because like sometimes you set out to do something and you don't manage it and that's a failure or sometimes you let someone down. I've definitely done that, you know, in different parts of my work. I feel like I've let somebody down and I'm like, that's the bit that really sticks with me that I really have to think about how [00:32:00] co you come to terms with that relationally with that person or yeah. So what else am I saying? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm waffling now about failure. But yeah, it's a really great question because I think what is your definition of failure feels a very important thing for particularly artists to think about.

I mean, I don't know if you remember, but like there's like a kind of fashion for it about 10 years ago, I felt like there was like, um, everyone was making pieces about failure and I feel like it was like a weird contemporary dance moment where people are sort of discovering live art and, um, oh yeah, and there's this, this book, ‘The Queer Art of Failure’ by Jack Halberstam, which came out around that time, I think, and it, and it, and it celebrates failure as, um, [00:33:00] opening possibility and, and, uh, almost embracing it as resistance to norms and so on. But like there then became this thing in contemporary dance where people were like, like performing failure on purpose when you know that they weren't really failing. It was like, yeah, but we all know that you're really virtuosic and you can totally do that. So it's like setting yourself up to fail to be like, ‘Oh, aren't I a beautiful loser’ also feels like not quite… Um, yeah, it felt like a sort of fashion moment, but I still think it was an important one in terms of like opening the possibility that you don't have to be perfect all the time.

Léa: Yeah. What's the space for failure in the creative process within the creative process? 

Orrow: Yeah, um. 

Léa: I guess I guess I can link into my other question or thoughts [00:34:00] is a creative process a success anyway. Is an artistic product a success anyway? 

Orrow: I think it's about being really clear about what you're trying to do. So, I don't want to say that like money isn't important, for example, in this. Because in some ways I feel like, oh, success for me isn't about external validation. I mean, of course it is. Those things are also important. But, you know, you might decide that you can't afford to make a loss. You can't afford to put your, you know, not, um, you can't afford to risk your financial stability on a project and it happens all the time that people are thinking about this and having to work that out, I'm thinking particularly as we're coming into September of like the Edinburgh festival that we just had, you know people use like thousands potentially on that [00:35:00] and they might have made an incredibly successful piece that might be like artistically everything they wanted it to be, it might have had amazing reviews. They might feel great about it, they might have really been like a step forward in their process and, and they may have lost like thousands of pounds that can really fuck you up. So I think like defining for yourself, maybe not, not necessarily what success looks like, but like what your aspirations are, or maybe what are the values or the principles that you would like to stay close to.

That for me is like, that then holds other kinds of failures. When you think, well I really hoped that I would, you know, make an hour long piece, but actually it was only 20 minutes. It's like, Then if you're like, yes, but I stayed close to my values of working within my budgetary limits and [00:36:00] actually the artistic idea, I wanted to stay close to my artistic idea, and it's actually, I realized it's only a 20 minute thing. That's then no longer a failure. It's actually a success because you know, you're clear about what's more important. What's more important is your artistic idea than an arbitrary time limit or something. Which may then, of course, fuck up other things, because you might have promised to a venue that you're gonna do an hour long piece, and now you're in a pickle.

The commission had certain conditions of what you're gonna do. But if you can hold to yourself and say, well, actually, yeah, that's a change. That's not a failure. It wasn't that I didn't manage to do it. I, it changed. And I think that for me is really helped me navigate process where instead of feeling like I failed at something, it's like, well, actually something else became more important or, or a value or a principle or a goal that I held.
I stayed close to it, which means that something else had to shift. That really helps. [00:37:00] Um, and then of course on a basic level sometimes, and this is obvious, this is kind of obvious, but like forgetting something, fucking it up, having a weird brain fart, a Freudian slip, often for me is like the breakthrough moment, the moment where I let my guard down or something unconscious happens, I stop thinking, uh, some kind of lapse or a break of something, a mistake, uh, can often be the way that something surprising happens or something a bit more genuine happens or, I don't know, it breaks the energy somehow.

And of course that's... That's, that's creative in a way that is less intended, and that can be really fun when it's like, um, I don't know, something more unconscious happens, or something more human happens. 

Léa: Yeah. Do you have a memory of that? Of, um, like a creative fuck up, a blank, a mistake? As a dancer, as a maker on stage [00:38:00] or in rehearsal, something that just like felt like it went wrong and then looking back, you're like, actually, it's the best thing that could happen to the piece or to myself as a maker.

Orrow: So when I was younger, I used to sometimes do like (cringe!); I used to sometimes do competitions, like dance competitions. And I, I, I think I must've been about 11. It was one of my first competitions and I was doing like a modern dance solo. (Cringe!) I think, you know, Lycra, like, brightly colored Lycra in jazz shoes, and, you know. 

Léa: We’ve all been there!

Orrow: Well not everyone's been there, I have to say, but yeah, um, that's what I was doing, I found myself doing, and it might have been the first or second time I ever did it, and I completely blanked about literally ten seconds into it, I just completely blanked, and it was a solo, and I'm just standing there, and, um, I...[00:39:00] entered like a weird, like, fugue state. It was like this incredible, like, it's like the veil of reality was lifted and I was in this, like, very surreal, you know, when time changes, it feels like everything's going really slowly, and you suddenly become aware of details that you didn't notice, like, some little mark on the floor, or like, you hear things and you're suddenly like, what? And I feel like... Um, it, that sense of like altered consciousness really opened the possibility to know that you can experience reality differently. And it was, it's like a, it's like a break. It's like a, like something broke and I saw another way of experiencing reality and it was, you know, a bit distressing and obviously it felt like a failure because I was like, oh my god, I practiced so hard and then I just forgot it. [00:40:00] Um, but it was like existentially or like thinking about consciousness. It stayed with me as that, that, that incredibly intense experience of reality and the way that pressure can break through something there. I wouldn't say it was a positive thing. But, I stayed there and I improvised my way till the end.
And, I don't think it was, I mean, yeah. It was such a strange experience. And I think that it stayed with me. Its strangeness feels important. It's a reference point for me still. 

Léa: Wow. Um, I'm very interested in feedback, how we take feedback, and what people tell us as artists. And would you be okay sharing what's the worst thing someone's ever said to you about your [00:41:00] work? Or about your, uh, performance? Because, you know, I know you've danced in other people's work and in your own work. 

Orrow: Yeah. Well, I have danced quite a bit in Italy, but I've mainly danced in the UK, and I think culturally people are less inclined to give you what we might say, like, bad feedback or like, criticism, and I actually...

Léa: You mean in the UK? 

Orrow: Yeah, I, I feel like I might have benefited from some more, I mean not like bad feedback, it's not like I want that, but um, done in, done sensitively, I might have benefited or sometimes felt like I wanted a bit more honest response from people. I think sometimes people just want to say well done and that's fine.[00:42:00] Maybe they don't want to get into it with you also, that's fine, but sometimes I feel like I. I think having critical friends around you who may do that with you lovingly is important and I'm not sure I had that until more recently, or I didn't set that up. Um, but yeah, I think bad feedback. worst feedback I've had.

I think it tends to be when somebody is making an assumption about what you're trying to do and, or, or like assuming that their point of view is, um, the objective truth or something like that. So I, I never mind if somebody says to me, you know, it didn't, that didn't work for me or like, I, I, I found that disturbing or confusing or whatever, it's fine. But it's when somebody is like, You need to do this or that was confusing that it's crushing because it feels especially if it's somebody who holds [00:43:00] some power or a position of power, it completely decenters who is making meaning out of what you're doing and it makes you feel like they know better what, than you, what happened, or something like that.

So, so long as it's given from a subjective point of view, I think it's great. But, um, I definitely had one feedback where, and this is from someone who definitely was in a position of power, and also knew, and this was maybe 10 or 12 years ago that I was working around. My gender is very new and tender for me, and I was kind of like taking baby steps around that. And this person told another quite powerful kind of programmer, important person that ‘I needed to work on my femininity’ is, uh, is what they said. But they didn't say it to me. They said it to this other person. And then that other person told me a couple of years after. And It was so [00:44:00] violent because it assumed, it was about me, it wasn't to me, and it assumed so many violent things around gender that I thought this person, that I had entrusted that this person would know that I was trying to work on. It was a work in progress, it wasn't even a performance. And that really stayed with me to be a little bit careful about, um, not assuming that people are with you inside, they're not in your head in terms of what you're struggling with or what you're working on and um, that was very painful to think that that person had made such a comment. Supposedly a queer, a person who is queer as well and I was just like what the fuck. Yeah, it was really it felt like such a betrayal. It was such a betrayal and uh, but it motivated me actually because I was like, oh Fuck you. And also you have no idea. You have [00:45:00] no idea. You're still you may be queer in in your way, but I'm doing something different than you even know about so it motivated me to be clear about what I was trying to do actually and not assume that people understand.

Léa: What’s your best feedback about your work? What's the best feedback someone's ever made about your work? Often we don't remember them I feel. 

Orrow: Yeah, I, yeah, I was trying to think about that. I feel like. The one, maybe the one that stayed with me the most was when somebody told me that they'd been moved to tears by, by my work, and they didn't tell me exactly why, but it was someone who, who I knew, and, and I knew as a very kind of complicated person, but the fact that the work had prompted [00:46:00] some recognition or some emotional response, um, in them that was precious, was almost so precious that perhaps they didn't want to talk about it, felt like the best kind of feedback. I was quite stunned, actually, that they told me that. I mean, this is someone who also sees loads of work and seems, I don't know, I'd never, someone I'd never seen them cry and then they said that it moved them. So that, and also at the same time that it had made them laugh. So I was like, yes, the double whammy, like, like, yeah, that felt really..that they, they chortled and then had a little cry, I felt like. Yeah, the way that performance can, uh, evoke something beyond the thing that I know. Like, it's, it's precious to that person. I don't know what it is. And it's not that my work did something or communicated [00:47:00] something. But maybe it just, just this...very delicate connection across subjectivities where someone is like, oh, that moves me like, yeah, that's probably the best 

Léa: Wonderful. Um, what's the most inspiring quote or advice you keep close to your heart and might help you keep going?

Orrow: I think I move across quite a lot of different things. I definitely, uh, draw from a lot of, like, meditation teachers and lots of that I find helpful, but, uh, it comes and goes. I don't feel like I have a consistent rule or something, but I did hear something brilliant over lockdown was listening to Laurie Anderson, the artist talking about her, um, artistic life.
And she shared that her and Lou Reed had these like [00:48:00] three rules, um, for working. And, uh, they just seemed quite brilliant, actually. So number one is, um, Don't be afraid of anyone. I mean, who can do that? But if you can imagine what would, you know, like we don't have to be afraid, like we might have different responses, but like not being afraid.
Um, and also quite touching to think that someone as accomplished as Laurie Anderson or Lou Reed might need to remind themselves of that feels kind of moving. Number two, get a really good bullshit detector. Yeah. Let's get real about what we're doing. I suppose it's like a daily reminder for me and three be really, really tender.
And I found those, the combination of those three, like, uh, I find that quite succinct, useful. And, and it's cool to know that somebody, yeah, like, who I think of as being [00:49:00] so experienced and so developed might come back to those simple things, and I think they are... Work speaks to that, those values as well.

Léa: Today, what would you say (obviously, you still have so many things to do and explore and learn), but today, what would you say is your biggest learning experience as an artist?

Orrow: I would say, well, definitely the thing I was talking about earlier about sort of learning how to say no, or like, or not just no, but also yes, like, what are my boundaries, this area of consent. on a, on a very deep level about who, how you want to show up to working and what parts of yourself you want to bring.
Um, I also feel like I've done, I'm continuing to think a lot and learn a lot about the way in which the conditions or the circumstances of working create the [00:50:00] work and attending. With, like, really care to that, to, like, setting up the spirit, the conditions of working, that does so much. And so it's hard because oftentimes we're not in control of those conditions or those circumstances, or they're potentially quite challenging. And trying to understand where you have possibility for crafting that or bringing clarity to that feels like a big... experience. And yeah, I'm still learning how to make choreography. I'm still like, what, what, what does it mean for me? Or like, how? Um, how to release, what structures release energy and humanity and emotion, or I don't know, whatever it is you're working on, [00:51:00] like, how do we do that?
I don't know. I just very prefer, like, yeah, the craft of choreography is still mysterious somewhat.

Léa: Do you want to go to the quickfire questions? 

Orrow: Let’s do it. 

Léa: All right. You know the principle, right? 
Orrow: Yeah. 

Léa: Red, blue, you choose red, blue.

Orrow: Oh, right. Okay. This is very binary. I just want to say. It is, you know. 

Léa: Oh… Yes, it is. It is. It is. Okay. There's one question that's not really, but yeah. Okay. You're allowed to reply to, to respond to something different. Okay. All right. Not thinking too much. Process or product? 

Orrow: They’re the same. They are. They are the same. Yes. They are because they're they're also different but the pros the you can't separate them. No, you can't. [00:52:00] Sorry. No, it's true.

Léa: But like You don't have a preference for one or the other. Like, for example, I know as a performer, I love being on stage. I love the rehearsal process. But you know what you said about, like, experiencing this, like, cosmic experience. 

Orrow: Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, okay. I mean, I'm always in process. So, probably process. Because even when I'm thinking about... The piece or the moment of arrival, for me that's still process and I'm in process. I'm a non binary trans person being trans as being in process, so let's say process. Yeah, yeah. 

Léa: Instinct or intuition? 

Orrow: Oh, what's the difference? 

Léa: I think that instinct is about reaction and intuition is more of a, is a way of knowing, more than a way of acting. I'd say instinct, you act, you react. Intuition helps you understanding. 

Orrow: Well, intuition sounds more mysterious. [00:53:00] I feel like you can get intuition from outside yourself a bit, like, I have an intuition. I'm smelling something. Yeah, that feels more exciting to me. I don't know. 

Léa: Reflection or impulsion? 

Orrow: Oh, God. Impulsion? What's that? 

Léa: Impulse, maybe. Impulse. Something like that. 

Orrow: Yeah, I tend to be someone who can ruminate a bit too much. I can be in the reflection space a bit too much, even though I think it's important. So let's say impulse because come on, let's get going. 

Léa: Success or failure?

Orrow: Fuck your binaries. Sorry, I have to completely be like, no, no. 

Léa: All right. Doing something else. Art, useless or useful? 

Orrow: Uh Maybe joyful. I don't know, [00:54:00] use, is it use, uh, useless, joyfully useless. I don't know. 

Léa: Pilates or yoga? 

Orrow: Um, yoga. I mean, they're both great. Yoga, however, let's pay attention to the histories that are going on there.

Léa: Yeah, you're right. When creating, music on or off? 

Orrow: Um, on. Very hard without music on. Yeah. 

Léa: If you weren't an artist, what job would you do?

Orrow: I mean, I've done lots of jobs that haven't been artist ones. Um, I don't know what I'd be doing now. I don't know. Uh, probably like, oh, I [00:55:00] don't know. That's very hard to say. I feel like I might be doing something like... Editing or something like that, like, like, to do with writing, maybe. I couldn't do that now, though. I'm not claiming that I would actually be able to do it, but I'm sure I'd be doing something to do with culture still. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm training to be a psychotherapist, so maybe that's, um... 

Léa; Amazing

Orrow; It’s kind of, it's kind of creative. 

Léa: That’s amazing. Yeah, but it goes back to the words and the consciousness you were talking about. 

Orrow: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. 

Léa: Amazing. All right, step on the right or step on the left. I know it's very, very binary. You can step forward or backwards or diagonal if you want. Give us a step. Step to the left or step to the right or step? 

Orrow: Okay. I mean, you know, you have a favorite foot to step on. Mine's the left. I step on the left, I gesture with the right. That's what I always do first. Sorry. 

Léa: Nice. I picture that. Uh, the right [00:56:00] step or a mistake?

Orrow: Um, a mistake. Always. Come on, let's do it. 

Léa: Yeah. That was it for the quickfire questions. Is there anything you want to add? 

Orrow: Um… Yeah, I, just a memory that you made me think about when thinking about faux pas. Um, I literally made one on stage. I, I did a, I stepped, I stepped, did a little step turn and I broke my toe on stage in, in my own show, in a solo, about two thirds of the way through and I had like the third of the rest of the show to do and I broke my toe. And that for me is like, that's the perfect faux pas because it was literally a misstep and something broke and then I was having that experience of like, did I break my toe? What's happening? Oh, it's changing colour. Oh, that's quite painful. Um, and [00:57:00] it wasn't as bad as I thought, you know. 

Léa: During that show, did you have to exit the stage at some point or not? 

Orrow: There was nowhere else to go and there was nothing else to do. If I'd have stopped, that would have been the end of the show. So I, I, and I could have done that, obviously, but I... I wasn't completely sure that I'd broken it, so I thought I'll carry on, I'll see how it feels. So I carried on, I finished the show, and then afterwards I was like, oh fuck I've broken my toe.
And I had another show to do the next day, and yeah, it actually wasn't as bad as I thought. I changed the show, and I had really good support from the team to either do it or not do it, and it just wasn't as big a deal. 

Léa: Yeah, that makes me think of like physical failure when our bodies are just like, you know, broken when, when they break.

Orrow: But you know what? The amount of possible [00:58:00] movements that I could have injured myself doing, really weird, difficult movements, I literally I did a tiny little step, just softly, little step, little 90 degree turn. It was like potentially the simplest step of the entire hour long show. And that's when I broke my toe. So that was an incredible learning as well. It was obviously just waiting to happen and... 

Léa: Yeah, a friend of mine broke their arm, just lift, uh, broke one of their ribs, lifting their arm. 

Orrow: There you go. You know, it's like. Yeah, it's never the really, you know, it may be also the complex moments, but it's, it's often those, it just goes to show it can happen anytime, but I just thought I'd share that with you. Cause it just seems like for me, it's like the ultimate little faux pas that I made. But, but also to say, I thought, Oh, this could have been a disaster, but it really wasn't. It was okay. We managed it. And, uh, and yeah, the team I [00:59:00] was working with was phenomenal. So, yeah, right. Yeah. Things can work out.

Léa: Thank you so much, Orrow. So much food for thought. 

Orrow: Thank you. And I want to hear what you think about all these things as well. It makes me think a lot about your work and I can't wait to hear other people, your conversations with other people too. 

Léa: They’re so inspiring. It's so interesting. Um, yeah, but I'll share, I'll share all this very soon.

Orrow: Great, can't wait. 

Léa: Yeah. Thank you so much for everything. Thank you. I'll say goodbye. Our fake goodbye. 

Orrow: Thanks for having me. 

Léa: Thank you, Orrow. Bye.[01:00:00]