ABSTRACT
As a choreographer who has made a dramatic impact on the contemporary dance scene in Britain and Europe by challenging it and defining a new language, Lloyd Newson, with his company DV8 Physical Theatre, has pushed dance-theatre into areas previously unexplored by dance. He has also been influential in the rise of issue-based work across the arts. Having originally trained and practised as a psychologist in Melbourne before becoming a dancer, Newson has created works like a psychologist’s playground, exposing human emotions and feelings, and investigating questions of sex, identity, and relationships. Together with his insight into human behaviour, Newson’s skill at evoking images, structuring movement, and creating theatre makes for gripping, disturbing, and thought-provoking performances. The raw ‘in-your-face’ portrayal of extreme human behaviour, particularly among homosexual men, is intended to question assumptions that society makes and to communicate with, rather than to shock, audiences, while the honesty and vulnerability with which the dancers perform reveals a deep self-questioning on the part of both themselves and Newson.
