In Conversation With Sandy Strallen
Being cast in a smash hit musical on the West End or Broadway is probably every performer’s dream - a dream that Sandy Strallen has seen realized not once or twice but five times during his long career, with roles in some of the most legendary musicals in history such as “Chess”, “Song&Dance”, “Cats”, “Aspects of Love” and “Sunset Boulevard”.
Dancer, actor and singer (a "triple threat", in theatre parlance), Sandy expanded his talents beyond the stage, appearing in some of the biggest video music hits of the 1980s, and in hugely successful films such as “Les Unes et les Autres”, “Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again”, and “Beauty and the Beast”.
In addition, Sandy has also earned accolades as choreographer, teacher, creative director, producer, and film maker, carving himself a career that now expands through five decades in an industry where fickleness is the norm.
Defying every expectation that one may have from someone with such an outstanding curriculum, Sandy is remarkably approachable, charismatic, fun, and easy to talk to, evidencing a vast culture, intellectual curiosity, endless creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit.
Join us for an engaging talk with Sandy Strallen about working with some of the biggest names in the West End, the importance of Arts in society, the un-formula for success, the required skills to become a producer, and the exciting projects that future has in store.
A Curious Culturalist - Thank you so much for accepting talking to us, Sandy. It’s an honor to have someone of your experience and stature answering our questions and share your vast experience. And without more ado, let me start by asking you, how old were you when you started dancing and when did you begin taking dance lessons?
Sandy Strallen - I met the mother of a great friend from my senior school who was the artistic director of a major dance school in the UK. After one year of basic classes as a very late start as a dancer (my first class was at the age of 18 years old), she arranged for me to receive a scholarship at the Noreen Bush Dance School in East Grinstead for two years, which I undertook between small engagements as a professional dancer in contemporary projects.
ACC – This is a Performing Arts School. For those not familiar with this schooling system, can you describe how it was?
SS - It was very unusual because, as the only man in a school of only young female dancers, my presence at the school was limited. I was allowed on campus only from 8.30 am until 5.00pm and only on weekdays.
The curriculum was arranged so that I could receive beginner's ballet and intermediate in the mornings, with Tap dance and either/or Jazz or Contemporary-Martha Graham Classes in the afternoons. Of course, I had finished all of my academic work by 17 years old so I could concentrate only on the vocational classes, which was advantageous. From 5.30pm I would take a train back to London or drive there, and work at nighttime in a cabaret show.
ACC - A grueling schedule! When and how did you decide to become a professional dancer?
SS - On receipt of the scholarship I decided to forgo my opportunity to go to university and concentrate only on dance training. Prior to this, I had been taking hobbyist amateur classes in my gap year prior to starting at university to read Politics, Philosophy, and Economics.
ACC -You danced in the West End in several of Andrew Lloyd Webber's most outstanding productions - such as “Cats”, “Song & Dance”, “Aspects of Love”, “Sunset Boulevard” - and you were also dance captain and resident director in them. Can you tell us more about these experiences?
SS - The experience was absolutely brilliant, particularly as on “Cats”, “Aspects of Love”, and “Sunset Boulevard” I had the privilege of being directed by Trevor Nunn, the famous and brilliant Shakespearean director, and working with Bob Avian ( “A Chorus Line”, “Chess”), Anthony Van Laast ( “Song and Dance”, “Mamma Mia”, “Tina”, etc.), Gillian Lynne ( “Phantom of the Opera”, “Cats”, etc.).
Dance captain for any of the above choreographers required being beside them at all times during casting and rehearsals, noting all of the work, and making a “Bible” master copy containing and detailing every one of the different choreographic and staging “tracks” that each cast member did. Once the show was up and running, the dance captain became entirely responsible for “setting up” the show every night, which meant being present to rehearse-in understudy calls, and swing and cover rehearsals, and particularly having the Bible on hand at all times in case an understudy or “swing” was sent on with short notice so that they could study the track in detail and (per e.g.) seek out cast members with whom they interacted to get chapter and verse on how they worked and whether there were special considerations which were required… All things which would not be obvious to the management, owing to discretion and colleague support structures that occur in all theatre ensembles.
The cast member responsible would let the dance captain know in confidence about any such “arrangements” and special considerations, and this in turn would discreetly be communicated to any swings or understudies having to go on so that they knew. You would go over the track they had to cover with them and, if necessary, call-in other cast members to rehearse with them.
As resident director, one was responsible for running recasting calls and auditions, and giving advice to the creative company management about who was planning to leave, how the cast matrix might best be managed, and whether there were clashes of personality. Also, in association with the dance captain, you ran new cast member rehearsals, and once or twice a week sat out on the show to take cast notes to give to members of the company to keep the show in top performance mode.
The responsibility (though unwritten) to manage and effectively be an assistant human resources and conflict management consultant in association with the Company Managers was also very much an unspoken role, and in a long running show with large personalities all shut in a small building for lengthy periods of time, an important and occasionally tricky role.
ACC - Two most demanding roles of great responsibility, particularly when one is so young. But, what a privilege to have worked with so many giants of the Performing Arts! What would you say is the main thing that you learned from them?
SS - Above all, I enjoyed their respectful, kind and focused methods of being with fellow creative people and solving creative challenges with good grace and patience. The key to leading in the arts is being comfortable with uncertainty and not necessarily knowing all of the answers.
The most interesting creative people seem to be those who come to every rehearsal with their homework thoroughly done, but are confident enough in their own skins, and confident that they will inspire those around them with the gifts of improvisation and creative energy when in the room. They are entirely happy to throw away even three weeks of hard graft from up to 40 highly invested people, just to start from scratch or change direction on something which has already gained momentum but is not “right”, without shame or embarrassment in being ‘wrong’.
Sandy Strallen and Cherida Langford as Admetus and Victoria in “Cats”
(Photo:Michael Le Poer-Trench)
Great time management skills are particularly important in the fuzzy-logic world of making meaning out of what is, essentially, thin air. Too many directors can become so involved with their project that they forget that their own personal investment in the project will always be greater than that of their colleagues, for whom the project is primarily just a job.
As such, the capacity to empathise with all of those in the room, and keep in mind that the daily preoccupations of the cast and crew are only parked for an agreed amount of their equally precious time. Forgetting this and letting time run away -or run over- happens too often, and fundamentally undermines the confidence that creative colleagues will retain in a director or choreographer, or any other major creative role.
This undermining process is a subliminal process, which the greatest of theatre leaders have the capacity to avoid by managing stress and controlling the leaking of cortisol into the room. No smell is more pervasive and corrosive as is the smell of fear, and those with the strength of mind and self-discipline to control their flight, fright, or freeze mechanisms will be the leaders-directors-creative facilitators that everyone would like to work with.
In the pressure cooker of highly budgeted theatre shows, I have found that the best creatives fulfil the following key characteristics: Unflagging kindness and respect for your team through thick and thin. Openness to change, but with clear conceptual ideas and the skills to share them concisely with your creative colleagues at all levels. Good timekeeping and important key team management skills, like being the first to say “OK, break time”, “Happy Birthday”, “sorry about your team losing”, and the 1000 other small things which help make us all feel connected.
An absence of an ego-driven requirement to demonstrate that you are the cleverest person in the room. The uncompetitive and authentically unthreatened ability, and real desire to hire people smarter than you are and give all collaborators the space to bring their best game.
I would never say that any of the creative leaders with whom I have worked are short of any number of the human failings -some have more than most-, but as a synthesis of their interpersonal, essential creative skills, it covers most of the bases in terms of their more admirable qualities.
ACC -Performing in musicals every night and touring with these shows can be exhausting, not to mention taxing. What did you do to keep yourself away from injury during performances?
SS - Staying away from injury was next to impossible, particularly in “Song & Dance”, “Chess”, and “Cats”, which were highly taxing on the body because of the choreographic demands of eight shows a week, which other dance companies never inflict on their dancers. Increasingly, managements became aware of the importance in investing in cast healthcare, although this really did not become a “thing” until the nineties.
I think free physiotherapy and personal counselling is part of every contract ever since the 2000’s and is essential, as people have busy lives and -sometimes owing to family and other work commitments-, cannot dedicate sufficient time to keeping themselves constantly in peak condition.
Video: Sandy Strallen and Cherida Langford in Top of the Pops (3:36)
ACC -You are one of those rare artists whose career has spanned for five decades now - What has changed for performing artists since you started?
SS - Lack of employment protections owing to the dismantling of organised labour unions. This has undermined the training and early experience qualifiers, which are essential in performing art careers as signifiers of the intention of an aspirant performer to take their craft seriously (as opposed to merely as a “wannabe”).
The internet, which has been an absolute boon in terms of exposing aspiring performing artists to an entire universe of creative possibilities, information, and knowledge about skills and training, which hither-to-fore would have not been accessible.
Social media as a channel by which to get you as an artist, an individual, and a potential performer, including your specific skill sets to the world and in front of decision makers who otherwise would never have known about you. The fact that everyone wants to be in on the action owing to the mobile phone TikTok, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook, and the plethora of outlets by which one can be “seen”.
The entire landscape of performing arts and “performatism” in its widest sense has been truly democratised, and is no longer the preserve of only those with the financial, geographical, and sociological advantages by which to access training and hierarchical influence structures.
Interactivity in video gaming, theatre making, and DIY entertainment from Karaoke and YouTube channels to podcasting.
Self-taping, influencing, and self-promotion. Everything is a wholly different universe to that when I started in the mid 1970’s.
ACC -You appeared as a dancer in two hugely successful videos: Elton John's "I'm Still Standing" and Whitney Houston's "How Will I Know" - How was the process for these two?
SS - They were brilliant experiences and, since both videos have become iconic promos in their own right, they have served as terrific professional “calling-cards” ever since and have cropped up in the most unusual of circumstances, including being paid for a special effects appearance in the “Rocketman” film, when the producers decided to use the original video and put Taron Egerton into the frame using deep fake technology.
“I’m Still Standing” was one of those rare moments in the “arts” when a whole group of people just “clicked”, and what was going to be merely a bit of a lark in the South of France with Elton and some scratch dancers -whom I got the job of recruiting as casting director-, became the most amazingly inventive and almost wholly improvised film shoot. The results have been hugely popular and highly thought-of for over 40 years.
The same production company, MGMM, made Whitney’s video “How Will I know”, and Elton and Millie Jackson’s “Act of War”, in which I also featured with my wife. All three were choreographed by Arlene Philips who became a great friend and used me on a number of other projects throughout my career.
Sandy in “I’m Still Standing” (screen capture)
ACC -In addition to your career as dancer and choreographer, you also worked as dance instructor at several important venues. What made you lean towards teaching?
SS - I have taught (inter alia) for the Central School of Speech and Drama, The Guildford Conservatory, Arts Educational Schools, The London Studio Centre, and many others, including running my own specialist “Audition for a Musical” workshops around the UK and elsewhere for many years.
There is a whole continuum in teaching in theatre schools and being a dance captain and associate choreographer in film and musicals. One gets to work with all levels of dance ability in auditions, rehearsals and performance, and this leads to a skill set in both understanding what types of choreographic demands are likely to be made on actors and dancers in any performance environment. As a result, having the experience to communicate this practical knowledge and advice before actors start their careers, in my opinion, can only be an advantage for them.
ACC -After carving a career as dancer and choreographer, you went further and became a producer. What inspired you to embark on this new undertaking?
SS - Production was a skill that one gleaned as being part of the creative management teams on many shows. One learnt the practicalities of costs, budgeting, people and skills management, and also probably the most important element, which is in effective casting for both performers and support crew for a show. It was a natural progression and started in the 1980’s when I started my first production company “Fast Forward Productions”, to make the very earliest dance instruction videos. This was when consumer-led video filming and editing equipment started to become available.
It was difficult in the early days because it was all hardware-based and the equipment was hard to access, bulky, and expensive both to hire or use. The digital age, and now the ability to make actual 4K cinema quality movies on a mere smartphone, has been fantastically liberating for anyone who wants to produce. I was always more interested in the film aspects of dance, as my earliest professional experience was on UK TV as a dancer in the 2nd Generation with Dougie Squires and other TV dance groups around Europe, where I learned a lot about staging dance for the camera.
Video: Whitney Houston “How Will I Know” (4:32)
ACC -What are the necessary skills to become a producer?
SS - Nerves of steel and the charm of a baby goat in pyjamas. You have to lead from the front at all times while being eternally and charmingly available to everyone who might have a better idea, and especially understanding of, and patient with the inevitable legion of not-so-good ideas coming from people who just want to help you and provide their best energies for the production. It’s a constant battle to look easy-going and confident of the outcome at all times, despite the fact that you have just lost your leading actor, the equipment is stuck in a traffic jam, customs, or fallen into the sea in the middle of a shoot with half the footage in the camera (it happened), etc.
You have to be strong, you have to be eternally resourceful, and not only make lemonade when it’s just lemons you have been given, but even occasionally make lemonade out of burnt rubber and apple peel. You have to be able to hire people, fire people, admire people without fawning on them, respect the process and keep your eyes on the prize, all the while smiling, tap dancing, being enormously sleep deprived and go to work entirely positive every day without fail, without a single idea of what any of this means, or even what you are doing, or even “why” anymore because you are so stressed, broke and exhausted.
In the final analysis, all of the above -which outlines the difficulties and challenges of being a producer- also identifies exactly why it is also the very best calling and job in the world. But you have to be really crazy to do it, and very lucky to pull it off without going bankrupt and insane.
ACC -It really sounds like one of the most challenging jobs on the planet, and yet, you have worked in film production (most recently as assistant director in Pontus Lidberg’s film “Written On Water”, and you have created your own film projects. What made you turn towards film making?
SS - My particular area of film making is almost wholly -or at least mainly- concerned with capturing dance on film, and curating and exhibiting the work of other dance film makers. Dance, when it comes to capturing complicated ideas expressed through movement, is a genuinely meta-poetic medium. Allied to music, moving image creates a meta-reality into which the meta-poetical element of dance is entirely complementary and provides a creative, even artistic holistic art form over and above live choreography onstage in a “normally” delineated theatre space.
Dancing, as far as the limitations of physicality of the human body, is a hard art at best. Therefore, being able to capture specific elements of choreographic design in isolation of the whole body, using close-up filming techniques, allows the dancer to give the essence of the choreographic design without having to perform the piece in its entirety again and again, risking tiredness and/or injury.
For the film maker, it’s the bringing of the audiences’ attention exactly to the places and focus you want them to have, whilst editing out inevitable distracting physical externalities, which will always occur and intrude upon a live performance.
ACC -You've performed on stage, but also in film -most recently in "Beauty and the Beast" and "Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again" - How different is performing on these two? Do you have a preference?
SS - I absolutely prefer working in live theatre rather than in film. Onstage you are as good as the energy you bring to the moment. There is a finite amount of time you are going to be required so you can point your energies and focus where and when it is most effective and needed.
In film, you are entirely at the mercy and whim of the person who is lowest in the food chain directly above you. In contemporary feature films this means, even if you are a star -or a principal, or merely a featured artist- you never know when “they” will need you. You never get immediate direct access to any of the decision-making, and have to exercise constant patience with third, fourth, and even fifth “assistant directors”. Theatre over film, every time.
All of the above said, only on a major feature film in which there is plus $100 million dollars to burn will you get the opportunity to be sent, all expenses paid and a generous daily fee, to a sunny country to sit on a beach and swim for two weeks because the shooting schedule has suddenly had to change, because one of the leads has to attend an alimony hearing, has a cold, the director has gone on a bender, or has rejected the script, etc. Delete what does not apply.
ACC -Who would you name as your artistic inspiration?
SS - Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman (of course), Akira Kurosawa, Béla Tarr, Anton Chekhov, Turgenev, the 19th century Russian painter Isaac Levitan, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Jackson Pollock, T.S. Eliot, Tristan Tzara, Buñuel, Picasso, Goddard, Giacometti, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Mark Rothko….etc….etc…
Sandy in Kenya, 2014 (Photo courtesy of Sandy Strallen)
ACC -You have been active in several charities and in charitable work for quite some time now - what inspired you to it?
SS - Reaching 50 years old and realising that I had done nothing in my life directly to contribute to the commonwealth of the world, I looked around for some kind of “good work” in which I might be able to make a small contribution towards without causing difficulties for my “nearest and dearest”, which otherwise would have felt counter-productive. The simplest things in the world for which, it seems to me, the world is in most need are fundamental human basics such as clean water, safe sanitation, and reading, writing, and numeracy education.
The African continent seems to be most in need, particularly sub-Saharan African countries. I chose “WaterAid” as they focus almost entirely on provision and education around water health, provision and sanitation throughout the world, and “Activation”, since its sole purpose is to raise educational standards for disadvantaged young people in Kenya where I spent three years as a very young child.
ACC - As an artist who has worked on such a wide range of creative areas, what do you think is the role of art in society?
SS - I believe the role of Art in society is not to create ‘things’ which accrete ‘value’, either through rarity, notoriety, or even as shining examples of unadulterated artistic skill. All of these are laudable but are in essence branches of show-business and entertainment but not ‘Art’. That is not to say that high Art cannot be entertaining, but that is not in my belief, its primary purpose.
In my opinion the true role for Art -with a capital “A”- to play in society is for it to enrich the spiritual commonwealth of society at large. It can do this using any means that any combination of human ingenuity and energy can combine, by anyone who feels inspired to create but needs a different aspiration at its heart.
No one needs to have a degree, attend a conservatoire or spend fifteen years doing pliés or learning to draw the perfect freehand circle to be artists.
If, as is often argued, that Art triggers “something understood” in the human soul, so as to enter and inhabit the meta-poetic realms where it deepens the understanding of the human condition, enriching the experiential existence of humankind in ways that border ineffability, then the goal of the artist above all is to aspire to make a thing, an artefact, an artifice which fulfils or at least aspires to fulfil this role.
The true Artist perhaps should best be and probably is only measured by the depth of vocation of these aspirations.
ACC -That, of course, leads us to debate the question of “what art is” …
SS - Everything that is a made thing is ‘art’ in as much as it is the product of human artifice, and thereby an artefact. This made thing, this essential product of the imagination, this work of art is worthy of attention, whether “meaningful” or not.
I think ‘art’ is too often defined by that which is ‘made’ by ‘artists’ for consumption by other people who might not regard themselves as artists. The inherent admiration of technique, originality, skills, training and discipline inherent in the artist’s ‘made thing’ bestows upon the art a value and meaning out of proportion with its actual, inherent meta-poetical sense.
The making of the art, its actual existence in no way guarantees that what is ‘made’ will necessarily be ‘Art’ just because “an artist” made it.
We live with art in the world of meretricious expertism, and sadly a contemporary tokenism of wokery and equality of outcome. A world of art which -for example, among many I could select- contends vociferously and occasionally aggressively that a man in a dress who mimes to Cher is an “artist”. In a world in which technical competition and hyper-critical points of view, politics, value chains, and the actual fiscal valuation of reputations are paramount, art is now shilled out as a trade, as some sort of statement and even more egregious, as a commercially viable asset class.
Video: EnTANGOed - "Dance your PhD", 2015 (3:16)
ACC -What would you recommend to those considering a career in the performing arts?
SS - Intellectual curiosity is paramount for anyone who is considering a career in the arts. I lead a workshop for aspiring actors who do or will have to meet Directors, called “What do you say after you say hello?”.
The key takeaway from which is that, if you cannot talk for at least three minutes non-stop about a book that is resting on your bedside table (or an idea which is outside your own personal bubble of existence and to which you have devoted at least thirty minutes every single day to reading about, pondering and absorbing), then you really will have very little to offer any director or even other creative colleague. They will need you, and you will endear yourself way beyond the actually marginally less important elements, such as whether you look right or can either sing, dance, or act “well enough”.
Training the mind is equally if not more important than the physical attributes of a performer.
Learn at least one poem every month and be able to recite it. Brilliant both for one's memory and recall muscles, but also provides a wide repertoire of audition material. Just one, but EVERY month. The mobile phone is excellent for this, and The Poetry Foundation lists every published poet in the world, so start at “A”. You will become an expert in memorising “the sides” - which are the pieces of script which if you are in a film, you will be given at anything from a day to, literally, a 10-minute notice-, which will always be a challenge if your ability to memorise, comprehend, and extemporise emotional treatments of text is not exercised daily.
If you want to be in film in any form, either as performer or creative, read biographies of the great populist film makers, from Billy Wilder to Hitchcock, Scorsese, etc. If you want to be in theatre, read biographies of those actors who have combined longevity, respect and success across both theatre and film. Read Tolstoy, read Hemingway, read F Scott Fitzgerald, read Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, Cervantes, read, read, and then read some more.
And stay away from “mimetics” such as unrelated (to you) social media feeds and memes, and binge watching TV - it will make you both dull and, worse, start to think in clichés.
ACC -Advice that perhaps all of us should follow! But, focussing on theatre, what advice would you give to young dancers/actors starting their careers and their audition processes?
SS - BE yourself. If you don’t know who you are, then FIND yourself.
Train - every day. Learn to juggle while riding a unicycle, skate and stand on your head.
It’s hard, but it will always be ever so much easier than dealing with the mortification and self-consciousness of feeling a fake because secretly you did not try hard enough to fight the natural human tendency for idleness and entropy.
You WILL be found out -if by no one else but yourself, but the shame of having personal inauthenticity is the worst in the world. You cannot hide from yourself, and it will undermine whatever sense of genuine self-esteem you have managed to discover and channel.
Your inner workings are the only genuine things you are born with, can develop, and offer to the outside world. Everything else is external, peripheral, you cannot own it nor have any control over it and “no one knows nothing”.
ACC -Do you have any upcoming projects?
SS - Yes - a dance film based in three frames of a painting to be called “A Triptych”. It offers insights and exploration of three different mystical belief paths of human individuals - Paganism, Christianity, and Taoism, bringing key elements of each together in a danced pilgrimage across urban landscapes, from Purgatory to Hermitage, accompanied by Samuel Barber’s song cycle “The Hermit Songs”.
I am also writing two feature films: one, “Chekhov Bows and Leaves”, about the last thirty seconds of Anton Chekhov’s life in which, in a tubercular fever dream as he is dying, he meets the various women he wrote into his plays, all played by his wife, the great actor and his muse, Olga Knipper. The scenes are set in wholly-new and rewritten extracts from each of the plays in which these great characters feature during each interrogation he is continually nearly drowning in various versions of “The Seagull Pond” which is constantly being painted, wiped away, scratched out and repainted by his great friend, the brilliant painter Isaac Levitan, while Stanislavsky and various other key figures in his life -from Tolstoy to Gorky- sit on the bank as an audience, and critique the veracity and skill of his portrayals.
The other film “Courante” is about human trafficking set among the bull runners and nomadic Tzigane tribes of the Camargue.
Sandy rehearsing the choreography for “A Triptych” with Stuart Thomas
(Photo: Wilky Photography)
ACC -They all sound fantastic. What made you choose these subjects for development?
SS - Like so many writing projects, “Chekhov Bows and Leaves” started with a simple set of “What if’s?”. What if, in the face of his imminent mortality, Anton Chekhov became locked in a fever-dream- inspired “mais pourquoi?” moment? A terrible soul-shattering timor-mortis which finds him drowning in his Seagull Pond from which all the women in his life keep rescuing him, dragging him to the surface to harangue him, until he slides beneath the surface again? What if his confidence has now utterly failed him on reading Freud’s “Studies in Hysteria” whilst he’s writing Nina in “The Seagull”? What if his sense of failure had become turbo-charged in the face of a whole new landscape of understanding of the human psyche and finality of his own fast-approaching mortality? What if the immensely creative people whom he counted among his dearest and most cherished friends whose creativity he admired so much -such as Tolstoy, Gorky, and Pushkin- had begun to translate their understanding of the world into harsh, biting critique of both his sense of humanity and his motivations as a writer?
This idea presented itself to me as potentially a satisfying way of interrogating the creative process of writing, examining the late 19th century Russian pre-revolutionary bourgeois experience, and to look at Chekhov the man as it were through the long-end of the telescope of his work. It is an opportunity to synthesize the three major but wholly different writers’ voices of Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Pushkin into a single chorus of occasionally clashing ideas, played out by the Moscow Art Theatre actors, as directed by Stanislavsky.
“Courante” was inspired by a photojournalist trip I made to the Camargue around the time of the great gypsy pilgrimage of Les Saintes-Maries-de-La-Mer Fiesta, which occurs annually on May 25th and 26th every year. Nomadic peoples from all around the world flock to celebrate the miracle of the “Black Sara”, whose effigy represents one of the three women closest to Christ at his crucifixion and subsequent internment. These women, legend has it, escaped across the Mediterranean from The Holy Land as refugees from the Roman pogrom, washing up onto the shores of the salt-flats of the Camargue in a giant storm, having called upon Christ to save them.
Every year the effigy of the “Black Sara” is paraded down into the sea from the church amid thousands of pilgrims, gipsies, horses, riders, and bulls. She is blessed in the water, and the Tzigane gipsies wash themselves in the same for benediction and protection throughout the coming year. The synthetic theme of “running” presented itself to me after attending the bull running competition in the arena, known locally as Les Courses Camarguaises, which runs concurrently with the Fiesta, hence the title “Courante”.
Storyboards for “A Triptych” (courtesy of Sandy Strallen)
An overarching theme of how, under the cover of all of this, there is an enormous trade in human trafficking in which the Tzigane gipsies are often instrumental. Refugees echo the journeys of The Black Sara and her companions, as they run for their lives from global horrors elsewhere.
All of “Courante” is set against the insistent drumbeat of time literally running out for us all from climate change. This is noticeably changing the face of the local Camarguaise landscape at speed, as it is the Mekong Delta, the Ganges Delta, the coasts of equatorial West Africa, and large parts of the South American, North American and European coastlines, causing a cataclysmic wave of human movement.
If this all sounds a little serious, the project is largely comedic. The characters who populate the cast of the film are larger-than and living life to its fullest, and the hurtling themes bring them all into comical conflict despite the rigours and dangers inherent in the overall thematic treatment. The film is a farce of mistaken identities, the dangerous and comical results of prejudice, cultural misappropriation of ludicrous scale, unintentional consequences, a celebration of nature’s beauty, Mediterranean joie de vie and in the main, features the bad characters we meet all getting well-deserved, humiliating but entirely non-violent come-uppances and justdesserts.
The whole is accompanied by the roaring energy of gypsy and syncretic World music of all styles.
ACC -We've heard that you are currently writing your memoirs - can you tell us more about this?
SS - Getting into theatre -as I have discovered- is literally accidentally turning up to the right place at the right time. This seems to have occurred enough times in my life, I thought it might be instructive for me to stop taking this miraculous process for granted and try to unpick and unpack some of the commonalities from the process over the last 50 years as a professional ‘artist’ and examine how they might have occurred. This might result in simply pulling the wings off a butterfly to try and work out how it flies - a.k.a. an exercise in futility.
It is an examination of the imperatives of vocation, a dissecting of the process of dance making, which has been my professional métier for long enough to feel that I might have gleaned some insight into the processes, and perhaps some of the prerequisite skills to make informed choices on how best try to make a career in professional theatre and dance.
It is, above all, a memoir in celebration of the hundreds of experiences I have had and the wonderful people I have encountered, all of which have shaped me, or at least as many as I care to remember. In the final page I would dearly wish to have at least articulated the bare bones of what might pass for a creative credo.
Above all, a memoir is a salutary exercise in which every literate human alive should engage. This so as not to die entirely uncertain as to why we might have lived. As Dr. Johnson opined so memorably, “the life unexamined is the life half-lived”.
(Photo: Livio Salvi)
ACC -You mention that being in the right place at the right time allowed you to access to most of these professional experiences. In your opinion, what is the role of "luck" in a successful artistic career?
SS - There is a sad phrase which can be used by many people that they “never miss a good opportunity to miss a good opportunity”. As well as many gifts of amazing opportunities, I have also had a share of missing wonderful opportunities because of flawed judgement, poor timing, wrong headedness, fear or simple idleness. However, if one has enough “oh my goodness, pinch me!”, moments, occasionally these will impinge upon one’s otherwise usually dense and incomplete appreciation of life to make one realise that, while we can never discern what it might turn out to be, “there is a destiny which shapes our lives, rough hew them as we may”.
Lucky is, people say, as lucky does, and as a life-long Buddhist I firmly believe that one gets exactly the harvest that one sows, emotionally, professionally, in terms of application to the business of simply living alongside other human beings and how one treats oneself.
The luck I believe comes from being aware of opportunity in every form, seizing the moment, feeling the presence of chance, and bringing yourself alongside it. It is entirely possible for one to screw it all up at any moment so staying aware of it -all without becoming ham-strung by fear of one’s luck running out- is as important as “luck” itself, whatever that may be. One can be lucky by winning the lottery entirely by accident, only to discover that too much wealth brings its own ill luck.
The role of luck in a career probably works in direct proportion to the amount of time, effort, pain, sweat, and tears one is prepared to spend to achieve whatever one envisages as one’s “true” aspirations. What I have learned of inestimable value to every situation is LEAN-IN. Even if one fundamentally disagrees with the premise, direction, or even concept of a project, once one is “in”, continue to add your own specific gravity to everything - one never knows where time and luck will lead you.
ACC -Given your extensive experience in so many artistic fields, what would you say is the formula for success? Is there such a thing?
SS - There is, strangely, what I can only describe as the “un-formula” for success: Strip away any pretension to fame or fortune, as they are entirely fickle. Examine the notion of envy very closely and then strive every waking moment to ensure your ability to wish your fellows well from your heart and soul, and never to envy but only to emulate their success at every turn.
To never gossip about your colleagues as at very best it is toxic, shallow, and is often just a ploy by another or AN Others with vested interests, to put you at odds with someone with whom you have no issue. Trying never to waste precious and increasingly-scarce time on externalities, which could be spent otherwise, simply getting better at what you have chosen to be good at.
Exploring and internalising the fundamental facts about neuroplasticity, how the brain is wired, how becoming good at something is about repeating beneficial patterns of activity.
Practising your craft and technical mastery as quietly, diligently, modestly, and preferably as privately as possible, and then fighting the human entropic principle to practise again, and again, and again.
Practising meeting every person in the eye with happiness, an absence of the potential for conflict. Eat well, laugh much and sleep whenever you can. Read, read, and then read more. Turn up to everything with a smile and light in your eyes reminding yourself that even on your darkest days, without doubt, there will be someone in a crowd near you having an even worse day.
Inspiring, teaching, sharing and finding a good, kind, and achingly funny joke to tell as many people as possible every day. This habit is particularly good for the heart, the soul and the memory. Never offering advice or opinion, but merely loving supportive thinking and -above all-, always waiting to be asked for it.
Working out who is the very best you can find that does what you do and then deconstructing how and what it is they do down to the finest detail. Never forgetting that it is never what it looks like, for anyone. Telling the truth, particularly in Art. In the words of J. Keats, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on Earth, and all Ye need to know."
ACC - We could go on forever talking to you, Sandy! Unfortunately, our time is up, so we’ll have to wait for your memoirs in order to learn more about your fascinating views and experience. Thank you so much for allowing us this generous slice of your time, and for all the pearls of wisdom that you have shared with us. We wish you all the best with your projects and we’ll be on the lookout for “Triptych”, “Chekhov Bows and Leaves”, and “Courante”.
To Learn More...
*To learn more about Sandy’s production company and upcoming projects, please visit his website: www.strallens.com
*To see more of Sandy’s videos and film project advances, click on the following links:
-Nunc Dimitis: https://vimeo.com/41514010
-Hanoi Morning: https://vimeo.com/8457356
-The Heart Sutra: https://vimeo.com/74897097
-Chekhov Bows and Leaves: https://vimeo.com/16544696
Cover photo: ©Mark Berry
Comments
Post a Comment