I’m Eddie Ladd, from the countryside near Aberteifi in Ceredigion, and I’ve been making my own physical theatre work since about 1990. I’m a third of dance company Light, Ladd & Emberton too.

I studied drama at university in Aberystwyth (I wish they still called it drama!) and among our tutors were Brith Gof, an international-renowned Welsh language physical theatre company. As I was taught by them and worked for them for a decade until 2000, it is they that have had the strongest influence on me. They themselves were influenced by Polish physical theatre, by Grotowski and Kantor, which gave them a choreography based on tasks and actions, and it is this, rather than contemporary dance, that has shaped what I do.

My pathway into performance is shared by many who trained during the 80s, and will take me two paragraphs to describe. I left college (worked in an old people’s home, was unemployed for a bit) then found work with a touring community theatre company, Theatre West, in Aberystwyth. They were funded by the Manpower Services Commission, a scheme designed to alleviate the unemployment that was rife during that manic, right-wing, aggressive decade. Younger readers - graduates in their early 20s! - might think that it’s all come around again, with added virus. After that I auditioned and worked for Moving Being, an experimental theatre company in Caerdydd/Cardiff whose roots were in dance. Between them and Brith Gof, it feels that “radical” work was quite mainstream at the time.

Moving Being offered an Equity Card. Younger readers! - theatre and dance were a closed shop at the time, meaning that you could not get a job unless you were member of Equity, the performers’ union. Closed shops were a feature of the 70s, another aggressive decade and scene of very tough head-to-head relations between workers and employers. You couldn’t join Equity unless you had a record of paid work but you couldn’t get the work unless you were in the union. So it felt like you were finished before you’d started. However, companies (in the regions which means “not the West End”) could come to an agreement with Equity to issue cards and Moving Being offered me one of the few that they had for that season.

 So, finally on the path! Legit by 1987. Inspired by community theatre, by Moving Being, by Brith Gof, and the totality of my culture, I started making my own work in about 1990. It fuses movement, music, technology and text which can either be in Cymraeg/Welsh or English, or sometimes both. I’m glad to be still touring and performing.

I feel sick thinking about the things that aren’t in my bio. As a performer I’ve gone on stage knowing that everything I tried in rehearsal hasn’t worked. Although I produced my own work for years I was never up to the job and have made some shows where I didn’t get enough people onto the team or recruited on the basis of having a chat. Just reckless and clueless. Which works sometimes. And from this I learn that feeling sick about these things is one thing, but better is to consider the mistakes and put things in place to avoid them. I am full of admiration for the young companies that I know who are able, calm and quick. 

To my graduating self and new graduates I would say: have less faith in the centres of culture. I was brought up near Aberteifi and once saw it featured in the “Let’s move to” section of The Guardian. This column suggests nice places that its readers might like move to, what they might expect to pay for a house, what the area is like and so on. Someone in the article commented that the theatre in town was a ‘godsend’.  I have no criticism of the theatre or its team, but the implication was that there was no culture, or none of ‘quality’ and standing, in the area before it was established. There was, of course, but it was Welsh language and not generated through arts centres. A colleague has described these centres as ‘castles’, and like all of us, I go up to the gates of many of these in the hopes of selling my carefully-tended produce. 

So, consider your own culture. What does it have that you’ve learned not to value? What networks produced it? Their forms could well challenge and change your practice and mine. Who invented contemporary dance? Last year, in that strange time when we could just attend things, I went to an event where Jamila Johnson-Small talked about her work and my world changed as I realised that what I’d learned and thought to be true was not so. She pointed out that contemporary dance maintains that everything comes from the core, from the centre, and that the limbs, the extremities, have no agency. Colonisation has shaped our brains and bodies. So, my hope for dance after 2020, and my intention, is to use my privilege to help decolonise dance. I can start with my own work. 

Cofion cynhesaf - warmest wishes,

Eddie