Preview: Dance Nation

“I want to dance
I want to dance
I want to heal the world through DANCE
I want to dance
I want to dance
I want to feel alive through DANCE
I want to dance
I want to dance
I want to dance”

This November, the multi award-winning play Dance Nation by Clare Barron – a story which explores the fine line between girlhood and womanhood – will be coming to Cambridge in a new student-run production at the ADC Theatre. The show will run from the 8th-12th November 2022.

Clare Barron’s Dance Nation is a tale of ambition, sexuality, power, and finding our souls in the heat of it all. Somewhere in America, an army of pre-teen competitive dancers plots to take over the world.

We follow Zuzu, a brilliant dancer who is always just about second place to Amina, the darling of the group. In the world of the dance studio, getting a featured part is everything. If their new routine is good enough, they’ll claw their way to the top at Nationals in Tampa Bay.

Image Credit: Thea Melton

But this is no regular coming-of-age story. Barron centres the girls’ emergent sexuality, cut-throat ambition and need-to-achieve in all its grittiness and complexity. Girls develop fangs, hiss at the audience, chomp down on their arms when they don’t feel good enough…

The dances turn from cute to holding the power of ritual. 11–13-year-old girls become pagan gods, politicians, and mothers. As Barron dictates in her opening stage directions, Dance Nation should be staged as if “Cuteness is death. Pagan feral-ness and ferocity are key”.

It is an intensely truthful, raw and exciting portrayal of girlhood and growing-up and is a play that is absolutely unique in its theatricality and style.

Image Credit: Thea Melton

Here’s what the director, Elizabeth Laurence, and the assistant director, Layo Akinola, had to say:

What is your aim for the show – what do you want the audience to take away from it?

EL: “This show confronts contemporary experiences of girlhood in an incredibly truthful, candid, and often heart wrenching way. It is a coming-of-age story like no other — ugly, raw, hilarious, desperately sad. It taps into the full scope of what it is to be a young woman now.

“It is also a parable. A horror story about ambition, jealousy, obsession. It’s like what Dance Moms would be if Dance Moms was a satire on the shortcomings of modern life. The girls are driven to disturbing places through the relentless pressure of their environment and their own self-denying perfectionism. Think Black Swan, but funny.

“When I first read the play I was so refreshed by how honest Barron was — there was no attempt to romanticise or to shy away from the more complicated and painful aspects of tween years. I’m hoping that the audience can find something to relate to here, and that the play can offer them a way of reconnecting with their younger selves.”

LA: “As much as Dance Nation is really fun and really crazy, there is actually loads of edifying content in it too. So many of the plotlines explore the characters coming of age in different ways, and how life at that age is actually much less simple than it’s often made out to be. It’s a reflective experience for the audience, in its exploration of the realities of the transition from childhood to adulthood.”

How was the rehearsal process and the process of turning a script into a show?

EL: “It’s been quite a rollercoaster. Going from the emotional vulnerability of one-on-one character rehearsals to the frenzied mania of the larger scenes is intense. The play has so much to offer — at times nuanced and reflective and then suddenly effervescent and crude.

“Its erratic modulations in mood and pace would present a challenge to any actor. Watching the play take shape, making sense of the mayhem, has been such a fulfilling task. Most of all, watching the cast come to understand and connect with the girls they are playing has been deeply moving.”

What have been the challenges in directing or staging such a dramatic show?

LA: “I’d say there are just so many elements to it. There are full-on dance numbers, profound monologues, and everything in between. Creating cohesion between all these levels has been interesting to navigate. The actors are insanely talented, and their amazing abilities continue to wow me more and more each rehearsal; they make the directing process so much easier.

“How was the rehearsal process and the process of turning a script into a show? The rehearsals have been so fun! Since there are so many different elements going into the show, they have been very varied. Again, the actors are absolutely amazing, so translation from stage to page has happened very organically.”

Is there anything that you’re particularly excited about in the show?

EL: “The “baby sexy robot” dance. If this sounds intriguing to you maybe you should come to the show and find out a little more about it.”

LA: “Definitely the set. We have been planning it for a really long time now, so I can’t wait to actually see it in person for the first time. It’s such a big part of the show, and it’ll be interesting to see the actors interacting with it, as its quite different to spaces they’ve rehearsed in before.”

Image Credit: Thea Melton

Clare Barron’s play was a hit off-Broadway in 2018, with The New York Times’s former-critic Ben Brantley declaring Barron ‘insanely talented,’ and continued to describe the experience of Dance Nation as possessing ‘the passionate ambivalence of early adolescence with such being-there sharpness and poignancy that you’re not sure whether to cringe, cry or roar with happiness.’ Dance Nation, in all its intensity and complexity, promises to be a powerful week in Cambridge theatre.

Dance Nation will run at the ADC Theatre from the 8th-12th November.

Tickets Available Here

(Feature image credits: Thea Melton)

Articles recommended by this author:

9 Things To Do In Cambridge If You’re Chronically Single

Which College Would These Famous People Have Gone To?

Tab Tries Sunday Roast At The Tipsy Vegan