It’s been a little over a year since Kynan Hughes gave up the bright lights of Sydney and a position as a dancer at Sydney Dance Company (SDC) to return to his home town of Perth.
For Hughes the decision to leave SDC was made for various reasons. “I’d been at SDC for three years. I had a great time there. It was very challenging – the work is very physical – and I felt like I had danced hard for three years in a particular style. It was very rewarding but I felt it was time for a change,” he explains. While Hughes could easily pass for a twenty-something, he is turning 32 and that played a part in his decision. “My body… you know, it starts slowing down a little bit,” he says with a rueful grin. The high impact work all the time isn’t so suitable after a certain point.”
The move wasn’t just about dance, though. “My father passed away, so I had an urge to return home, to be closer to family,” says Hughes. “Being away for 11 or 12 years, you realise how little time you’ve spent with your family. So I wanted to challenge myself differently, away from the hard-core physical stuff, and also I needed to return to my roots. It wasn’t an easy decision to make though, I loved working with SDC. It was an incredible three-year experience.”
There’s been little time for Hughes to become nostalgic about life with SDC, however, since arriving back in Perth. He returned to his alma mater, the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) in 2012 to convert his Advanced Diploma into a Bachelor of Arts. “It was nice to go back to WAAPA and use my brain in a different way to analyse and examine other sides of my dancing, aside from the purely physical," muses Hughes. "During that time I assisted Nan (Nanette Hassall, head of the WAAPA Dance Department), which was amazing. I remember having Nan as a teacher when I was a student at WAAPA and learning a lot from her but also missing a huge amount of information because you do as a student – there’s so much being offered to you and you just take what you can. Teaching with Nan affirmed memories that I had but also filled in some blanks and coloured in the lines a bit more.” Whilst at WAAPA Hughes was invited to choreograph a work for the first year dance students and is currently creating a work for LINK Dance Company’s May season.
Hughes has also worked with various independent artists in the short time he has been home. One of these is WA-based writer and director, Sally Richardson, who is renowned for her hybrid theatre works. “Working with Sally in incredible,” comments Hughes. “The way she approaches dance has been a bit of a revelation for me, in terms of the way I work and what is possible. It’s really interesting to come at dance from a theatre, circus, kind of hybrid-artform perspective, and in a quite intellectual, cerebral way. There’s a lot of deep thought that she puts into how to make work and how to speak to an audience… how to connect to the audience beyond the physical.”
Although Hughes grew up and trained in Perth, he left for Leigh Warren and Dancers after graduating, and is now also enjoying taking the opportunity to work with some of the artists who inspired him as a student. “I got the chance to work with Chrissie Parrott last year, which I always wanted to do,” he says with a smile.
Right now, Hughes is in the process of ticking another item of his wish-list – working with Sue Peacock. “Sue was one of my teachers. When I was at STEPS Youth Dance Company she made a work on STEPS and when I was at WAAPA she was making works for the students, but I was never in the groups that she was working with, so, although I learned a lot from her as a teacher, I never got the opportunity to work with her as a choreographer. So when the chance came to work with Sue [on her new work Reflect]… that was a dream come true actually.”
As the name suggests, Reflect is about memory and thought… although Hughes emphasises that the meaning of the work is, intentionally, fluid. “It’s very open – we’re offering something and there’s room for interpretation,” he says. “From my point of view, it’s about how things in our memories can often blur,” says Hughes. “Do our memories tell us the truth or do they lie to us? That’s how I perceive the work. It’s very human – we all are plagued by that question at some point in our lives. It’s like when you have a dream that’s particularly vivid and you wake up and you go, ‘Did that actually happen?’ We confuse ourselves and the line between reality and perception/memory meets and blurs.”
Listening to Hughes talk, it is clear he connects very strongly with Peacock’s vision and is relishing his time working with her. He is relishing being in Perth too. “I love big cities but I grew up in the hills of Perth," he explains. "I grew up on an acre of land and you could see all the stars at night, there were lots of wildlife and birds. I enjoyed living in a big city like Sydney and touring to London and all those places… but at heart? I’m not a big city person.”
For Hughes coming home is also about a sense of community. “I got so much out of the dance industry in Perth. It’s nice to be able to come back and, in a small way, give a little back," he comments. "I’m back at WAAPA, STEPS and John Curtin [College of the Arts] – all the institutions that I got so much from… it’s nice to be able to offer something back.”
If you’re in Perth in May, you can catch Hughes and the cast of Reflect at the State Theatre Centre, 3-11 May.
Kynan Hughes and Tyrone Robinson in Sue Peacock's Reflect. Photo: Christophe Cananto.
Kynan Hughes and Aisling Donovan. Photo: Christophe Canato.
Kynan Hughes and Aisling Donovan. Photo: Christophe Canato
