One of the biggest influences in my life is dance. I originally come from a ‘creative’ dance background (known to most people as interpretative/contemporary/improvisational dance), which I was involved in from about the age of 2 until I was 14. I guess the best way to think about this dance is that there is no defined choreography, you can essentially do whatever you want, (but often within some constraints). For instance, our concerts every year were based around some kind of narrative story and we were to ‘dance’ our way through a ‘scene’… our classes interpretation of the scene anyway. Each class would use their bodies to explain their part of the story. Although this sounds like it would be completely incomprehensible to an audience, somehow it worked. This time of my life not only taught me rhythm and how to move my body, it gave me the confidence and freedom to just dance, to just move how I wanted, to improvise. It was only when I started going to more conventional dance lessons (jazz, aerobics and hip hop) that I realised how invaluable these lessons had been to me. Dancing styles have ‘rules’, or at least ‘conventions’: stereotypical movements of that genre (much like cinema). Dancers who have grown up going to those lessons don’t really know anything different and (generally) struggle to just let go and ‘vibe’ the music when dancing. I definitely do not proclaim to being an amazing dancer, I was never going to make a career out of it. But I did realise I was quite good at choreography. Much to my coach’s frustration, I would often take over lessons where we were trying to make up new routines. It got to a point where if we (my team, my coach and I) were struggling to think of something new for our competitive routines, they would just leave me in a room with the music on repeat for a while until I came up with something through improvisation.

Which leads me to how this all relates to film. In many ways I think that the creation of dance choreography is a great analogy for filmmaking. Firstly, both art forms are primarily about how entities move through space and time. A director can be likened to a choreographer as both of these roles are essentially dictating how things will be positioned in space and time for aesthetic, emotional and story-telling effect. So what if I took a page from my own life: what if I began a filmmaking process through improvisation to generate ideas? And then after this process I really start to refine things, so that I end up with a unified, complex and detailed piece of work.