Dance Australia caught up with James O’Hara to talk about leading a two-home life, award nominations and his work with STEPS Youth Dance Company.
Australian dancer James O’Hara may have been based in Europe for most of his career but increasingly we’re seeing him perform on home turf. His work on Australian stages hasn’t escaped notice . This year he’s managed to pick up nominations for both the Australian Dance Awards (ADAs) and the Helpmann Awards. The ADA nomination is for his performance in Gideon Obarzanek’s There’s Definitely a Prince Involved, presented by the Australian Ballet in 2012 and the Helpmann nomination is for his performance in Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Faun, which was presented in Perth by STRUT dance in 2012.
“I come back to work in Australia as much as I can,” says O’Hara. “Three years ago I decided to start coming home more because my sister had her first child and I felt a pull to home. The idea was to do almost half-half but it’s just actually not possible. Last year was pretty equal but it turned out to be exhausting because it wasn’t six months here, six months there but a lot of shorter periods – physically, mentally and emotionally that’s hard… but yes, I want to be here and I want to work here.”
When he’s not gathering award nominations in Australia, O’Hara works extensively with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, in his “other” home in Belgium. Initially a dancer with Cherkaoui, O’Hara is now also involved in teaching and directing when Cherkaoui works with other dance companies. “Most recently I worked on a creation with Larbi at the Paris Opera Ballet," he remarks. "It was a collaboration between Damien Jalet, Sidi Larbi and Marina Abramovic on the Paris Opera Ballet – we created a version of Bolero. It was a really great experience – being able to step inside that company, inside that building. It’s normally such a closed building. I ended up slotting in and dancing in the last five performances… so I danced with the Paris Opera Ballet as a guest. It was quite surreal – it was familiar work to me, because most of the movement material was made by me and Emilios Arapoglou – but the environment was so unfamiliar, on that stage with the slant, for that audience...”
Currently, O’Hara is in Perth, remounting Scratch the Surface for WA's STEPS Youth Dance Company, a work he co-created with the company’s Artistic Director, Alice Lee Holland, for the 2012 Dance and the Child International Conference in Taiwan. Scratch the Surface will be presented as part of a triple bill entitled "Threefold", in August, which also includes work by choreographers Shona Erskine and Kynan Hughes. Holland and O’Hara explain that the work was made specifically to showcase Australian youth dance to an international audience. Originally created for dancers from Canberra's youth dance company QL2 and STEPS, Scratch the Surface aims to do just that – scratch the surface of what youth dance companies like QL2 and STEPS offer their dancers. “There’s a real diversity in the experiences the young dancers get beyond technique and physical skills,” says Holland. “It’s also about expanding their creative capacity… and that even when we are focusing on technique that we invite them to be who they are.”
For O’Hara, who danced with STEPS as a teenager, his own experience within that framework was a big part of the inspiration for the work. “I was reminded of what I experienced as a STEPS dancer, what I appreciated and what I still appreciate as a dancer – the sense of community, of home… and also that it is a very mature experience," he recalls. "So I wanted to treat the dancers as young people but also as I was treated when I was in STEPS, as an equal.”
O’Hara certainly puts his money where his mouth is. “Last night I gave the STEPS dancers the same class that I taught at the Paris Opera last month,” he notes. “It was incredibly beautiful to see how they embraced it.”
- Nina Levy
Threefold plays the State Theatre Centre, 1-4 August.
Bookings: www.premier.ticketek.com.au
More info: www.stepsyouthdance.com.au