Asher Norridge on performance, poetry, and contemporary creative practice

When he was younger, Asher Norridge never sat still. Recognising his need for a creative outlet, Asher’s parents introduced him to the world of dance when he was eight years old. The connection was instant: he fell in love with dancing and decided that this is what he wanted to pursue. But it wasn’t always so simple. Asher struggled picking up material and remembering it. He found it challenging to focus in class times. Feeling discouraged, Asher changed his performance dream to being a choreographer – a profession he felt was more suited to his talents. He now reflects on this time and sees it as the first showing of his experience as a neurodivergent dancer (Asher has a diagnosis of ADHD and dyslexia). During his time at Trinity Laban, he has loved working creatively through multimedia, taking a film module and engaging with poetry and painting to supplement – as well as expand – his creative repertoire. In his first two years of study, he struggled with attendance to technical classes due to his insecurities around neurodiversity and self-belief. However, through support from Trinity Laban and his friends, much of this has been overcome and he has finished his time at the conservatoire proudly. He now enters the professional world looking for work in the realms of both choreography and performance.

How would you describe contemporary dance to someone who has never seen or studied it before?

This question is always a weird one to answer. It depends on what we are doing. Release is all about rolling around, whereas Cunningham Technique is Ballet’s weird cousin. But I think the real answer, for me at least, is that contemporary dance is a feeling. It’s being one hundred percent engaged in what your body is doing in every muscle and bone and tissue, and the peace that I find in the singular focus. My family always comes to my shows, and I think as people not engaged in the dance world, they always get something out of them. This varies from simply enjoying the aesthetic to piecing together a story. That freedom of interpretation is what makes dance so powerful. I would always encourage someone asking about Contemporary Dance to invest a little and watch something on YouTube or at a theatre, to figure out what they think contemporary dance is for them.

Name it Dance

I think that contemporary Dance for me is just that…

It’s for me,

Contemporary dance is about the artist

And in what YOU see, the audience gets to become the artist

Contemporary dance has a limitlessness to it

You can wake up, brush your teeth and name it dance

And you’re right.

It’s the opportunity to readjust your perspective

It’s the way you see people, on the stage and in Aldi

I get to see it all, you all

As artists and the audience.

(Written by Asher Norridge)

Having completed your BA at Trinity Laban, what are some of your favourite memories from your dance training?

Some of my favourite memories are dancing down the side of a studio to Steve Ashmore on the guitar; flying low warm ups with Armanah Cleopatra for our first commissioned work; being on stage for the first time performing a piece by Gary Lambert; and the constant collaboration within our year group. Running my own work and being in other people’s works are such a constant source of fun and have uplifted and kept my passion for dance alive throughout this degree. These vibes are something I aim to keep up throughout my career as a dance artist.

How do you go about preparing for a performance, both mentally and physically?

The way I’ve prepared for performances has changed significantly over the course of my training. As you go through the experience more and more, you get a feel for what you need personally and as a community before going on stage. As part of BA3, we do commissioned work, and I performed in a work by Stephanie Schober. This was my final opportunity to perform on the Trinity Laban stage and it was so funny to reminisce on the difference between this experience and my first.

In first year, my focus before performing was always hyping myself up and getting the energy up for both myself and my colleagues. I’d do this by having really loud music, doing lots of sprinting and jumping, etc. My process is really different now, though some elements remain the same. I use a practice called Small dance by Steve Paxton, which focuses on the small adjustments your body makes to stand up. I use this to take me into a type of self-care improvisation. My other big focus is community so I go around the group, say hi to everyone, check how people are feeling and try and get in tune. This was especially important for the most recent BA3 Commissioned Work as the whole piece was in silence, so being together and remaining engaged with the other dancers on stage was vital. Performance is what so many of us are working towards and the important thing to understand is that every day is different. Some days you’ll feel great physically or mentally and other days not. It’s about learning how you can bring the best out of yourself no matter what is going on in life.

Contemporary Dance incorporates elements from multiple dance styles and encourages improvisation. How do you balance technical precision with emotional expression?

I think these two things aren’t as far apart as you’d think. Performance quality is a part of technique and you can really tell when you are watching an expert performer, whether that’s because of their facial expressions or their high level of embodiment. These things generally come from people who work as if they are on stage every single class. The balance has changed a lot during my years at Trinity Laban. For a long time, I didn’t want to go into performing because of my own self-doubts and so I never made performance quality a priority. It was just something I enjoyed. But this year, while watching and working with amazing teachers like Marina Collard and Daniel Squire, my perspective changed. I really engaged with physical embodiment and ownership of technique in a completely new way, and arI found this exploration supported my ability to perform. Sometimes contemporary dance is a deep exploration of trauma. Sometimes it’s about frogs. When you are highly invested in the process of making work, you will always end up with intention and embodiment that shines on your technique and on your expressive ability.

What is your top piece of advice for prospective contemporary dance students?

Don’t be attached to the things you already know. Allow your intrigue to lead you. Don’t lead your intrigue. It’ll help you find new passions and learn new things about yourself. You’ll leave Trinity Laban a new person and the chances of that person being who you think are very low because you don’t know just how great you can be and how much you can grow.

My final piece of creative work at Trinity Laban was a short film I made around the topic of men’s mental health called My Eye’s Begin To Break. This is a topic very dear to me, one I have personal experience with. During my time at Trinity Laban, I have been doing therapy for various things and I’m very lucky to have come out the other side of that journey, having graduated therapy for this stage of my life. What I saw in my research was that although men’s mental health is a very hot topic at the moment, all of the conversation is about raising awareness and not lived experience. As a result, I wanted to create a film that portrayed some of the emotional experiences of men visually and poetically. This was done with the hope that people could see them and be able to relate, leading to open conversations about experience. The creative process began through conversations with male friends about their experience of mental health, where that came from and how they felt like they were treated at the time. We discussed the colours, shapes, and textures that related to their experience and these created the shots, ideas, and poems that make up the film. I work largely through instinct in my creative process, so I mostly followed my own experiences and allowed these to lead me through improvisation and writing that could be collated into emotional expressions.