Do not go gentle, an interview with Debbie Lee-Anthony and Lauren Anthony

Do Not Go Gentle, an interview with Debbie Lee-Anthony and Lauren Anthony

Debbie Lee-Anthony and Lauren Anthony (photo: Bailey HYT)

Dylan Thomas’s poem Do not go gentle into that good night was addressed to the poet’s father, encouraging him to ‘fight against the dying of the light.’ It is a poem that focuses intimately on family but at the same time serves as an affirmation of life. When Debbie Lee-Anthony wanted to create a work to celebrate the life of her sister-in-law, Kath Posner, whom she had recently lost to cancer, she discovered her favourite poem had been Thomas’s famous villanelle. Debbie and her daughter, Lauren Anthony, decided to work together to weave a choreographic response to Thomas’s words. Adding to the work’s emotional complexity, the score is by Debbie’s brother, Hamilton Lee, who as Hamid Mantu of Transglobal Underground is a percussionist and composer in his own right. The first time he will see the work dedicated to his late wife will be at The Place on January 31st as part of Resolution 2017.

Debbie graduated from The London School of Contemporary Dance in 1982 and made a career as a freelance dancer and teacher. After becoming Senior Lecturer in Choreography and Dance at the University of Winchester she has recently returned to life as a freelance dance artist while teaching part-time at the University. Lauren graduated from Middlesex University two years ago with a first class degree in dance studies, and is currently a member of a hip hop dance company, The Rebirth Network. It was when she saw her mother perform Threshold at GoLive in 2015 that she saw the possibilities of performing with her. Do Not Go Gentle is the first time mother and daughter have performed together under the company name Mater-Filia.

Having created mainly solo works for the last five years, Debbie began by creating her own material to the poem which she then showed to her daughter. Lauren learned the material and sampled it with her acquired blend of hip hop and contemporary technique. They developed material as they went along, inciting each other with their different approaches and abilities and using the infrequent rehearsal time to catch up and comfort each other as much as to push the boundaries of the work. While Debbie was inspired by the words and the spaces between them, Lauren focused on the rhythms of the verse, but what constantly brought them together was the spirit of the piece. Both have collaborated closely with Mantu in his creation of the score which contains a sampling of the poem read by Anthony Hopkins; if Lauren wanted a little grunge beat in there for her solo, or if Debbie needed an additional softness or a slowness, Mantu was able to oblige. The project has thus grown organically around the celebration of life, for while Do not go gentle is dedicated to Kath Posner’s memory, it is not expressly about her; like the poem it is an ever-present rage against time.

If the creative circumstances of this work are not rich enough, there is another aspect that is integral to it. As an academic, Debbie has for many years written about ageing and the mature dancer. In retrospect, her publications such as Age, Agility and Anxiety (2007), and Conflict, Content and Context in the ageing body (2008) serve as a theoretical underpinning of her current experience in Do Not Go Gentle, and a paper she wrote on Sharing the dance through the lived body (2010) perfectly describes what she brings to the stage. Apart from managing the physical challenges, her greatest fear is not remembering, but because of that she goes over and over the material in between rehearsals. Now the work is finished she is feeling happier; the structure is secure and she and Lauren can use the remaining rehearsals to inhabit it fully, constantly challenging time until the stage lights die at the end of the performance.

For tickets and information: Resolution 2017 website