Kate Prince MBE
Award Winning Choreographer, Founder and Director of Zoonation
The Voice of Her Gremlin
“I’m a terrible dancer and they’re all thinking it’s rubbish”
I think the only person who can define whether you’re successful or not is yourself. In order to do that you have to be really clear about what your goals were in the first place.
I have really struggled with critics. I would be a liar if I said I was one of those people who never read my own press and didn’t take it personally. What I’m trying to do is become more resilient to that. It started off as a goal for me that I wanted five star reviews; that was a thing. But my goals now revolve a lot more around what the political content of the piece is and whether I can provoke conversations, thoughts and discussion in groups of people who may not normally think like that.
I get it every time that I have to choreograph, it’s like there is an impenetrable brick wall at the beginning. There’s no way over it, there’s no way through it. It’s just a thing. But gradually you remove one brick at a time and it weakens the wall.
One thing I’ve learnt that helps me break down the wall - Just do it, just make it. And once you’ve made it you can change it
I have very little confidence in my self as a dancer. I’ve had that insecurity from day one. I was surrounded by dancers like Teneisha Bonner, Rowen Hawkins and Chantal Spiteri, people who just are dancers, that was their skill and that was never my skill. So I faked it for a while, but it soon became clear my place was well and truly behind the scenes.
I have a need for approval and I need it as a choreographer. Sometimes I’m almost desperate for it, it’s terrible and it’s crippling. I’d love to say it gets easier as you get older, but the truth is sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t
It don’t think I’m ever in a room with dancers where some of them don’t choreograph or teach. So they all have that brain. So you’re in a room, it’s your go; it’s your turn to be the choreographer. And my thought process is “she could do that better”; “he could do that quicker”; “they’re all thinking its rubbish.”
I think there is a tendency to apply a set of rules to dance or to pigeon hole it stylistically; to say ‘it should have been like this’ or ‘it should have been like that’, but it shouldn’t have been anything other than what came out of my body.
It took me a while to realise you can be good at choreographing and not be a great dancer.
Any one who tries to apply a rule about how you ‘should’ do anything in relation to art, doesn’t understand what art is. Art is an expression of freedom. That doesn’t mean that a good knowledge of dance history and foundations isn’t important, but as an artist, ultimately there can be no right or wrong in the choices you make.
This Insecurity makes me think outside the box. I can’t get on the floor and freestyle something amazing, record it and then turn that into choreography. So I have to imagine it and and I have to find other processes.