TRIGGERnometry - Defending Women Cost Me My Business

00:00:00.000 We had a dinner party and late into the night when the alcohol had been taken the dancers said

00:00:07.100 who are you casting and I said I don't know it could be a man it could be a woman we're just

00:00:11.120 writing the audition notice no that has to be played by a trans person and I was well aware

00:00:17.140 of what was going on very quickly became aware that I was being ostracized from my own company

00:00:22.560 and then you have the leaders at the top and I think they come from the same probably a little

00:00:26.840 bit older generation than me they had a great time they probably feel a bit guilty they probably

00:00:32.260 did a few things they wouldn't want remembered or they don't want to become a hashtag

00:00:36.100 you know and so they're going to keep quiet look towards their pension look towards hopefully an

00:00:44.140 OBE and just try and keep their organization afloat before they move on so I didn't expect to be

00:00:51.860 cancelled in my own home I didn't I knew nothing about intellectual property I know everything now

00:00:56.720 happened I was like well I made it it's mine no no it's more complicated than that

00:01:16.140 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry I'm Francis Foster I'm Constance Timothyson and this is a show for you

00:01:22.820 if you want honest conversations with fascinating people our fantastic guest today is a dancer who

00:01:28.760 was forced out of her own dance company for having as usual the wrong opinions Rosie Kaye welcome to

00:01:34.200 Trigonometry hello thank you very much for having me it's really nice to be here it's really great to

00:01:38.080 have you on the show uh tell us who are you what has been your journey through life uh my name is Rosie

00:01:42.960 Kaye um I trained from the age of three to be a dancer I never thought that I could do it as a job

00:01:49.780 um it just seemed something so far away and spectacular and I was lucky enough to see some

00:01:55.240 very good dance when I was young and growing up I saw Nuri F live I saw the German choreographer

00:02:00.480 Pina Bausch live when I was a teenager and um I got into dance school uh amazingly I got into uh London

00:02:08.960 Contemporary Dance School still thought I don't think I can do this as a career performed toured the world

00:02:15.600 for five or six years and then realized that I wanted to be a choreographer I wanted to make not

00:02:20.940 just the dance not just the movements but the stories and um I was always very inspired by quite

00:02:26.760 political female choreographers people like Martha Graham um or Mary Vigman sort of amazing women that

00:02:35.060 made work about the world that they live in and so I set up my own eponymous company in 2004 in Birmingham

00:02:41.440 and I've spent the past sort of 20 years building up from very small solo duet trio work into large

00:02:50.040 scale the biggest theatres and up until 2021 was touring the world with my dance productions yeah

00:02:56.700 and then what happened and then what happened

00:02:59.300 I was 10 days away from a big premiere of Remy and Juliet which I'd been spending five years

00:03:08.580 researching working with gangs gang members schools in Birmingham community groups and different

00:03:16.200 artists I'd put together a contemporary Birmingham based version of Romeo and Juliet and it had got put

00:03:24.360 back and put back and put back because of Covid and I really wanted to still work and have a show ready

00:03:30.220 and give people jobs because it was a nightmare for artists through Covid it just stopped so I'd managed to

00:03:36.400 get through auditions and rehearsals we're 10 days away from the premiere and there was just this very

00:03:41.320 strange vibe in the company very young dancers some of them had never performed professionally yet

00:03:46.840 because they were straight out of college they hadn't had graduation shows so I invited them to my house

00:03:51.940 we had a dinner party and late into the night when the alcohol had been taken um I was asked what my

00:03:59.080 next show was and I was well in on the way to preparing a production of Romeo and Juliet of Orlando

00:04:05.900 which is a Virginia Woolf novel about there's an eponymous and there's an amazing hero who turns from

00:04:10.800 a man into a woman it just happens Virginia Woolf writes about it very wittily

00:04:16.340 but also she does 400 years of history and she changes style all the way through so it's a really clever

00:04:22.100 funny book anyway the dancers said who are you casting and I said well I don't know

00:04:27.160 could be a man could be a woman we're just writing the audition notice no that has to be played by a trans person

00:04:33.060 and I was well aware of what was going on I was watching it from a kind of outsider but from a female

00:04:40.680 perspective as a woman in the arts going hmm I can see what some of the dangerous implications are to this

00:04:46.920 movement if we redefine what women are it could pull women's rights back and it could pull back the

00:04:53.380 advancements we've made um so I just pushed back a bit and then really quickly it turned into

00:04:59.460 an argument and I was making those points around women's safety women's dignity and then also around

00:05:07.040 children and um how children were being pushed down an affirmation model and I don't need to explain

00:05:14.120 all this to you because you've amazing guests that explain all this um it was met with utter hostility

00:05:20.080 I went back to work I felt a sort of wall of woke hate it's a really vulnerable position when you've

00:05:27.560 got a premiere coming up and your company has turned against you I asked how sorry how did so you have

00:05:33.200 this argument with these people who you're trying to give jobs to yeah and then how how does that

00:05:38.260 become a wall of hate that you feel so we'll go back into the studio on the Monday and with these

00:05:43.900 same people with these same people these same people and I could just feel the the temperature

00:05:49.920 yes and I was really scared and I thought you know the production could fall apart so and I and I felt

00:05:58.180 really shocked and really scared I'd kind of opened myself up and I'd revealed things about like the

00:06:02.160 near death of my baby and myself through childbirth and you know tried to sort of say listen you know

00:06:06.680 as a as a woman who is older than you these are experiences that only a woman could go through and

00:06:12.220 here they are you know please take them to understand how how much this like how important

00:06:18.040 the body is we cannot I feel as a dancer as an artist you can't deny that we have bodies this is

00:06:23.940 important anyway I felt this wall so I asked um the chair of the board who was a friend who I'd worked

00:06:31.780 with who I trusted if she would help intervene to just calm it down I think really the approach should

00:06:39.620 have been you're all adults it was two in the morning you were talking about something contentious

00:06:44.840 you're allowed to have different opinions that's it get on with the work instead something happened

00:06:51.140 I don't know what happened but I very quickly became aware that I was being ostracized from my

00:06:57.440 own company I went through one investigation which I wholeheartedly cooperated with I was exonerated

00:07:05.700 what were you being investigated for I couldn't quite understand I couldn't kind of I couldn't

00:07:11.720 get them to define whether there was something around inappropriateness but there was something

00:07:17.340 about the fact that they were so offended and I kept saying well you do realize that the very

00:07:22.100 definition of what they're offended about transphobia is is the fact that I have defined women and men as

00:07:29.520 being biologically real like that that's that that's the issue we have here they're going to get more and

00:07:35.060 more offended but the fact is there is that there is there's a problem here and that's fine we just

00:07:39.560 need to move on so I was investigated I did make an apology that wasn't enough for one dancer they

00:07:49.540 walked out and appealed and so then it went into a really dark second investigation and by a mistake

00:07:57.400 they forwarded me a lawyer's email so I could see that they were spending a lot of money on outside

00:08:03.440 lawyers to investigate me again who's they the board the board I know this is probably a really

00:08:09.600 stupid question but I neither I or a lot of our owners may understand this if it's your own company

00:08:14.360 how are these people in charge of investigating absolutely I should have said that so um I set it

00:08:20.660 up I was the director of it it was a limited by share company around 2017 I stood down as director

00:08:26.920 and I turned it into a charity in order to get the bigger funding right yeah and we were we became a

00:08:34.860 regularly funded arts council organization but under English charity law because it had my name and it

00:08:40.400 was my work I could not be a director so also I just had a baby and I'd never had a salary holiday pay

00:08:46.740 pension so I was like do you know what I'd quite like to try being an employee for a little bit

00:08:51.560 quite quickly I realized I didn't like it because I like being the boss and and it doesn't matter if

00:09:00.980 it's got your name on it and it's all your work and all the money coming in is through you but if you

00:09:05.640 let go of that power this is what happens and I and I should have I should have realized that I thought

00:09:12.880 well hey let's do this compromise in order to get that funding in order to get the company to that big

00:09:18.800 level I'll take that sacrifice inside because it's going to get me where I want it to go but that

00:09:25.840 was a mistake so second investigation second investigation I see that they're lying they're

00:09:31.220 spending vast amounts of money that I had earned for the company um they're acting in my view and

00:09:39.200 in legal opinion untoward to the law can I put it that way um even like little well not little things

00:09:47.220 but I asked for this investigation to be paused because a very close family member had an emergency

00:09:52.060 operation they refused to pause they were acting in such a way that I knew that I would never be able

00:09:57.940 to trust them again or work with them again and so I resigned citing constructive dismissal and

00:10:04.260 discrimination I was building a case to sue them I would have sued them but they folded the company

00:10:11.000 and then despite the being a really decent amount of money in reserves when I left it went into

00:10:17.560 uh insolvency wow so that puts it into a completely different legal thing um I've been fighting over the

00:10:24.660 past year I've bought out the entire assets of that former company including my name so I now own that but

00:10:32.180 again that was another legal fight that I had to do behind the scenes isn't it amazing that all this

00:10:37.260 happened over let's be honest basically a heated discussion over a few bottles of wine yes it is

00:10:46.720 it it's really shocking and and there's kind of like a few theories about like why because on the

00:10:52.160 one hand you have the activists who are young and I think have been indoctrinated I don't think they're

00:10:58.040 very nice they certainly don't have empathy but I also think they're probably victims of this and then

00:11:04.000 you have this kind of capitulation and cowardice of a board now they're called trustees for a reason

00:11:10.200 in that you should trust them now the interesting thing I think is actually the artist who this is

00:11:15.560 all meant to serve is actually in the most vulnerable position because you're the one making all the

00:11:20.900 problems you're the one that's still trying to do your job it was written into the charitable objects

00:11:26.860 that rosie k tackles controversial and taboo subjects shining a light on things that are

00:11:32.460 unspoken or unsaid that was my job so of course if there's something controversial going on

00:11:38.140 I'm right there in it going what's you know what's going on tell me you're young what's what's what's

00:11:44.920 your opinion well I don't agree with that but this is what I think and and I'm used to that

00:11:50.020 back and forth you should be able to debate these things I felt and do you think this is a culture

00:11:55.940 because we talk a lot about the culture in universities but we don't tend to talk about

00:12:00.080 it in the culture in drama schools in dance schools are they is that very much a culture within those

00:12:05.000 types of institutions well I I hadn't realized quite so much at the time but yes it is yes yes and I and

00:12:12.820 I've heard from insiders that they're quite hostile environments if you don't agree with this

00:12:17.460 yeah yeah really because when I like I went to drama school and it was tough it was a tough environment

00:12:24.460 and actually people didn't really care about your feelings at all so it kind of surprises me that

00:12:29.920 it's gone completely the other way yes and I mean I've got a few theories about why that

00:12:35.860 happened I'm I'm not sure so much but I mean there's definitely that's the pipeline feeding in

00:12:41.000 um I think things dramatically changed when it started um I I got a grant to go to dance school which

00:12:48.040 was just incredible um once people started having to pay for fees um that that immediately changed the

00:12:55.720 demographic of who was going to go into those professions and live with that level of debt

00:13:00.520 when you have a very very poor work situation to earn money very poor um and so a lot of the

00:13:09.580 grassroots of drama of music of dance the grassroots in local communities that stopped as well so the

00:13:17.120 pipeline into the conservatoires has dried up so the people that are going there are going to be

00:13:22.360 actually let's say they're of a certain class and wealth and privilege to even be there in the first

00:13:27.880 place so I think it kind of feeds into that whole luxury belief system and the problem then comes because

00:13:33.760 you talk about what you do and immediately I listened to to what you said about what your dance company

00:13:38.420 did and I actually really enjoy dance I'm thinking oh that's what I'm interested in that's what I love

00:13:43.380 I love theater I want to see taboos challenged I want to see interesting work what does it mean for

00:13:49.520 the arts and culture and society as a whole if we can't even have these conversations or these

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00:14:26.160 gosh well I mean I'm still thinking about like like like how did this happen how how did these

00:14:35.000 activists get in and sort of pollute and poison and change the entire environment that means that

00:14:42.720 actually speaking out is such a dangerous thing to do and that that's so serious I remember like

00:14:49.560 in 2021 I put together a series of talks with military people academics and artists and there

00:14:56.120 was a guy from the secret service and I was asking him like like why do they pick on the artists you know

00:15:02.540 it's either political activists that get sort of the knock on the night or it's artists and he said

00:15:08.180 well absolutely you you lot are the difficult ones you you should be out there asking questions

00:15:12.840 challenging society tend to be very independent thinkers um he said we're used to watching this

00:15:19.420 in secret service uh kind of organizations we see it happening in you know normally countries with

00:15:27.060 already authoritarian regimes and it comes from the top down we're just not used to seeing it in the

00:15:32.440 west and we're not used to seeing it coming what it feels like it's bottom up but I think it's so

00:15:37.540 long term that it's kind of all crunched around us all at once and do you feel do you feel a chilling

00:15:44.760 effect is is this what people are talking about in the world of dance so they feel that they can't

00:15:49.340 talk about a particular issue or if they can talk about it you can only talk about it in a certain way

00:15:54.420 I think what's happened is is it's quite complicated I think you have the the activists coming in who

00:16:03.020 probably don't have skills so we've sort of recently heard that they're coming out of drama school

00:16:07.860 unable to do Shakespeare I'd say they're coming out of dance school what I would say noodling they're

00:16:13.140 noodling around there isn't sorry they're coming out of drama school unable to do Shakespeare yeah I think

00:16:17.820 there was an article in the times this week about actors going to the globe and unable to speak or learn

00:16:24.320 or get their minds and mouths around Shakespeare and that's the science so so we're de-skilling

00:16:30.620 that workforce and through that skill now it's really important because people go oh who cares

00:16:36.440 about Shakespeare whatever but unless you have that really deep rigor and discipline and practice like

00:16:43.420 daily practice you don't have anything to build on then you really are into arty for arty territory so

00:16:49.920 with dance it's like the rigor of ballet the rigor of technique with acting it's the voice it's the

00:16:55.140 language it's the the meaning of those plays you need that depth to then be able to turn that to

00:17:00.700 everything else if it's just surface level then what are we left with we're left with their identities

00:17:05.420 and they're coming to the workplace where their identities are the most important thing

00:17:10.220 not the art so you have that also they can they can make their name young people without

00:17:16.480 the discipline the stamina the resilience can make their names by creating a huge hoo-ha by making

00:17:22.700 a mass level complaint getting their names out there you then have a system of management or

00:17:29.640 administrative kind of like control we have now such like huge controls on funding that's created

00:17:37.500 entirely new class of arts bureaucrats I'd call them the poisoned administrators often frustrated artists

00:17:45.940 themselves but very clearly saw that if they want a salary a position and power they that's where

00:17:52.600 they need to go and then they kind of astroturf the whole thing so they create the programs the

00:17:58.760 you apply funding criteria that fits that program they put the festivals on so they become the power

00:18:03.680 brokers within this world and then you have the leaders at the top and I think they come from the

00:18:08.300 same probably a little bit older generation than me they had a great time they probably feel a bit

00:18:13.400 guilty they probably did a few things they wouldn't want remembered or they don't want to become a

00:18:18.120 hashtagged name you know and so they're going to keep quiet look towards their pension look towards

00:18:26.000 hopefully an OBE and just try and keep their organization afloat before they move on and there aren't the

00:18:34.020 people in leadership positions that are justifying their salaries they're not standing up for the arts

00:18:40.260 they're being bullied by the activists by the twitter attackers and sometimes by their own staff

00:18:46.800 so what you're really talking about is it's the culture eating itself because at the very core of

00:18:52.720 this what people always when I'm said of I want to be an actor acting trainer why do you need three

00:18:57.300 years it's I always said to them there is a reason why British actors are the best actors in the world

00:19:02.620 yeah it's because of the rigorous training that we receive in this country

00:19:06.140 in Shakespeare learning how to perform learning to learning to train your body to train your voice

00:19:12.920 if we don't have that we literally have nothing well and it's really it's just really weird in the

00:19:20.340 studio when you're trying to make a work and I've put together something called the charter of creation

00:19:25.480 that's asking people if they're going to work with me to sign to say that we're free to speak we're free

00:19:32.340 to disagree that the most important thing is the art form and in the art form we should be looking at

00:19:37.980 the depths and heights of humanity and we should be free to do that and also I think you're only ever

00:19:43.620 going to be really challenging these ideas if you feel free you can play you can make mistakes you can

00:19:48.920 argue and really I'd much prefer if people left their identities at the door you know it used to be

00:19:56.760 sort of leave your problems at the door now you've got to leave your performative self at the door

00:20:00.360 in order to make art and I just find it astonishing that that needs to be said but I just I don't

00:20:07.800 think there's been a really good argument about what what the purpose of the arts are for and why

00:20:11.600 they're so important for humanity for culture for civilization for society but they are they're

00:20:17.360 vitally important and when they're dead and gone it's going to be dark very dark hey constantin do you

00:20:25.280 like being healthy of course in my country we judge man's health by his ability to wrestle bear

00:20:31.260 turns out in London wrestle bear has very different meaning we've all had a night that's got out of hand

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00:21:52.140 out and become real men like me it's interesting the point you made i mean obviously you know you've

00:21:58.720 got the people at the top as you say who want to die before they get hashtagged and then you know

00:22:03.680 they want to be hashtagged i think i include myself in that i'm going to be honest with you

00:22:07.940 they want to be hashtagged posthumously but but it's the bit in the middle which i think actually

00:22:13.440 you're spot on about because someone sent me a mark twain quote and i'm going to butcher but it was

00:22:18.100 something like when you can't compete on merit you start competing on victimhood and identity has become

00:22:25.020 this overwhelming wedge that people have clung to in order to advance careers in order to get

00:22:32.740 attention in order to be quote-unquote successful and it seems to me based on what you're saying and

00:22:39.100 what i've been thinking about that that is a there's a fundamental contradiction between the focus and

00:22:44.000 identity and creativity yes uh i i think interestingly maybe it's through the sort of instagram generation but

00:22:54.860 that you yourself have become the product and you are selling your you are selling yourself in multiple

00:23:03.420 ways so at first that was a kind of love islandy type vibe and we all kind of went oh they're crass

00:23:08.940 um but that then flipped into that identitarian victimhood so actually like who you are and what

00:23:18.300 you're coming with and how you label those those victim status sort of markers those are the most

00:23:25.220 important things so so you're selling you're selling your victimhood isn't just victimhood you're selling

00:23:31.280 that as a product actually and it sort of goes against my sense of of of having to work so thoroughly

00:23:39.240 and solidly through the self that you then become a vehicle for the art you you can do you can do

00:23:46.020 anything you might you might be better at some things than others but i wouldn't turn down what

00:23:51.660 a role asks of me or what a choreographer would ask of me and i would do the same and i do the same in

00:23:58.060 my own work to myself and then ask that of others that we all hit sounds a bit silly but we're all here

00:24:03.080 to serve the purpose of the art the other thing that comes with this identity stuff is this full judgment

00:24:09.860 value system so even at 23 if you have these protected characteristics that are are not legal

00:24:16.560 by the way some of these are made up they can then come in and judge for example me and all i've got is

00:24:23.740 is white middle aged woman you know it's like kind of lowest of the low now i think

00:24:28.720 there's the straight white man the apex predator yeah but you don't get called karens you know

00:24:34.920 like that's i'm not even white particularly but it's francis we're looking at yeah but that's it

00:24:40.900 we all come up with you know i'm polish heritage you know it's on you and you're like i'm not going

00:24:44.800 into it's too crass to go into that i know who i am i've made one autobiographical work that i made

00:24:52.000 through lockdown because i could only work with myself for for a whole year which was fabulous but

00:24:57.860 that's it i put it on stage and you can see it so so they come with this judgment it's judgment to like

00:25:04.420 oh you know you're the boss you're the director the choreographer and of course you you then have

00:25:09.420 the weight of oppression because you're actually asking these people to do a job you know for money

00:25:13.480 and they're judging the work that they're making in the studio at the same time and so there's this

00:25:19.940 it's not it's not just your own internal sense of self-censorship you're being judged in the studio

00:25:25.620 and i think that's that's that's lousy and it totally takes away who the audience is and i feel like

00:25:33.040 you should make your art 100 into it and let the audience decide let the public decide let the

00:25:38.920 critics decide if it's good or bad you just have to put the most into making it as good as you can

00:25:43.580 make it yeah and it's like you know when i was reading about um like the globe did this version of

00:25:49.720 joan of arc and she's non-binary and i just i'm gonna swear why don't you just fucking tell the

00:25:55.100 story of joan of arc i think that's interesting enough instead of making her non-binary but this is

00:26:01.740 it's it's like the whole thing feeds itself because you've got this like powerful kind of

00:26:06.480 bureaucratic people that are putting the criteria on i don't think you can blame the artists for

00:26:12.340 trying to fulfill that criteria yeah yeah to get the money yes and it is it's a sort of a self-fulfilling

00:26:19.820 perpetuating circle and then i've heard recently that they're sort of speaking out and saying oh but

00:26:25.820 we're so worried that these poor actors are getting attacked by all these awful people

00:26:29.900 making criticism of this production it's like well we're not criticizing well it didn't look very

00:26:35.300 good but we're criticizing because you're sort of transing a female incredible heroine and some of

00:26:43.580 us object to that that there are so few women of stature and fame across the centuries that some of us

00:26:50.080 feel a bit objectable to the fact that now they're no longer female or no longer identify as a woman or is

00:26:55.860 something that i often ask people particularly women that we have on the show to talk about this

00:27:00.460 because i do see a bit of a tension there between on the one hand rejecting identity but on the other

00:27:06.620 hand you talked about how you were inspired by strong female choreographers and so on is it possible

00:27:12.360 that this is kind of that same mindset going out of control or do you see them as different

00:27:18.740 yeah i think that's really interesting and i remember like um writing a proposal for for a

00:27:24.960 piece i wanted to do which was about looking at my own polish identity and following that through so

00:27:31.300 i i mean literally i think till about five minutes ago i was i probably would have been woke

00:27:37.000 to be honest getting cancelled will do that too because i you know i was of the liberal left

00:27:44.280 i i i i mean it's always these things that you see that that kind of nugget of truth around like

00:27:51.500 racism or sexism and and and you go yeah yeah yeah oh hang on where is this going hang on no

00:28:00.060 but that's that's that's the kind of cleverness of it of it or the the the griftiness of it that that

00:28:08.080 has pushed it to this place where you're no longer able to say whoa stop that's enough

00:28:13.780 that's enough now i think we've lost focus so i i think that's what that's that's why the arts

00:28:20.160 what that's why there's so few artists have spoken out about it i think they've kind of been pushed

00:28:24.800 down through this this kind of sausage factory with it and you mentioned uh before we started

00:28:30.880 actually we were talking about jk rowling and you mentioned that at one point you tweeted uh she

00:28:37.860 tweeted something and you replied say agreeing with her it was a fascinating story about how people

00:28:43.700 think about these things well um so i decided that i was like okay identity politics let's go for i'll

00:28:51.160 make this solo i'll i'll but i'll i'll do it my way and i'll say all these things these fun things

00:28:56.500 about myself as well as the kind of tough things that have happened to me and i was really it sort

00:29:01.160 of brought a lot of stuff up about my own personal history and then jk rowling wrote that incredible

00:29:06.960 letter and it said so much of like what what i've been feeling and thinking about and working on

00:29:11.920 on my own in the studio about like where we're coming from as women and sometimes it's only when

00:29:16.680 you're older that you're able to articulate actually like what it's like being a woman growing up in the

00:29:21.660 world from from teenage years or childhood actually what is it like well i just remember like being

00:29:27.880 like a very curious very quiet dancing child and just fascinated by the world completely amazed

00:29:36.340 and then there's a point that happens around the age of 12 where suddenly you stop being an agent in

00:29:42.360 the world and suddenly you become the object it happens when like men just start commenting

00:29:47.240 constantly on your appearance when they kind of beep at you you're wandering around the world in your

00:29:51.440 school uniform and you're innocent and you suddenly realize it's actually a really scary world at which

00:29:57.520 point i also sort of looked up and looked around and realized that all these great artists that i admired

00:30:01.840 they were all men all the kind of theater directors all the playwrights most the choreographers they

00:30:07.100 were all men um all the statues around me they're all men the books i was reading the heroes that i

00:30:14.360 liked were tintin or cowboy films they're all men and if a woman came in they had like you know a

00:30:21.460 fabulous dress on and came in for a minute and then disappeared they didn't have their own characters they

00:30:26.880 didn't seem to be real living well-rounded human beings the women were sort of vectors of something

00:30:33.200 else and so you you know realizing that at 12 kind of profoundly influenced me and i i don't think it's

00:30:42.860 it wasn't like oh wow i realized i was a feminist it was just like how do i navigate this and you go

00:30:49.520 through a difficult time taking your teens and particularly i've had my 20s difficult being a dancer

00:30:53.640 in tights your body you know i modeled i didn't like that i much prefer dancing because you're doing

00:31:01.980 something uh relationships um taking risks i mean i've ended up in ridiculous situations

00:31:09.580 abducted in a taxi kind of hanging out with mafia in russia like being rehypnoled in a bar

00:31:15.880 like and survived all of these things and i would rather have dangerous things happen to me and be free

00:31:22.220 than to never go out there and live life you know and then it's only when you know i'm more settled

00:31:28.620 more secure especially having a child you look back and go bloody hell that was like a warfare out there

00:31:34.740 thank god i lived you know i'm so glad my parents didn't know what i was up to

00:31:39.940 and and and you want to say to younger women i know you think this way now but this is this is what

00:31:48.700 older women have to tell you you know read some germaine greer you might not like all of it but

00:31:53.740 you need to you need to be aware life is long and women's lives are long rosie do you think that's

00:31:59.880 part of the problem as well with the arts if you look at you know there's it's been blown up recently

00:32:04.600 with romeo and juliet zeffirelli where the actors complained of zeffirelli's behavior and obviously he's

00:32:10.520 no longer around to answer those charges you look at one of the greatest cinema cinematic directors of all

00:32:14.860 time roman polanski with the awful awful rape case and that he's never faced justice for it

00:32:21.760 was there was there a culture and an attitude in the arts and a predatory especially from men being

00:32:27.140 predatory towards women yes yes there was and like going back to what i was saying earlier there's

00:32:32.840 sort of this element of truth to some of this stuff yes i think certain people abuse their positions

00:32:38.020 of power um you learned quite quickly other women older women would support you give you a nod just

00:32:45.140 watch out for this person there were certainly people that took advantage um dances full of young

00:32:50.980 beautiful nubal people you know it it does attract a certain rich or person or person of power is

00:32:58.160 attracted to that and you have to know you you used to have to navigate your way through it i swore to

00:33:04.040 myself i would not continue that the kind of buck stops here and i would say most people in my

00:33:11.220 generation you know even my teaching would be quite harsh almost abusive i'd say and it's like well i

00:33:18.280 don't i don't ever want to just carry that on i want to sort of treat people really well

00:33:23.460 and then here we are i'm the big baddie well you know what there is a troll in me or maybe not a troll

00:33:30.980 or a contrarian or whatever but a part of me is starting to go is that maybe why the kids are

00:33:37.740 like this because we are all so nice uh-huh uh-huh is that it's like a vulnerability there or uh i mean

00:33:45.600 i mean i just mean that you know you i know exactly what you're talking about because in my education

00:33:50.780 there would have been people who who would have been i don't know abusive but but tough right

00:33:56.060 and you knew you knew not to fuck about i mean when you described to me the scene at your dinner

00:34:03.040 party i cannot imagine myself as that 20 year old and a person who is employing me giving me a part in

00:34:12.640 a thing is invited me for a dinner party at their house i'm 20 they're 40 or for whatever they are

00:34:19.960 right and i am there going you know what i think you're wrong and in fact i'm going to come into

00:34:27.780 work to work tomorrow and give you the stink eye like i can't imagine doing that i literally physically

00:34:33.860 cannot imagine and you know francis used to run a comedy night where i i was helping him run it as

00:34:39.900 well and the sort of like the the next generation coming in the sort of things they would say about

00:34:45.600 how like they would be like i think the night should be like this yeah and you're kind of go

00:34:50.540 who the fuck are you yeah yeah yeah do you know what i mean i was but i was so like that when i was

00:34:55.040 young as well i was such a little rebel and you know disagreed with this and disagreed with that

00:35:00.160 but i still knew just when to shut up sometimes and and and to and to work hard and well if you want

00:35:07.160 to be on your own get out on your own and figure it out earn some stripes you know don't just

00:35:14.700 yeah so so i think we've we have been overindulgent and i think there's been certain

00:35:19.840 messages that the kids have been right on up till now around like homosexuality or you know climate

00:35:25.480 change and i grew up in that generation sort of arguing my parents at the dinner table um whereas

00:35:32.420 i now it's gone too far and and and there's probably a lot better people than me to sit here and say

00:35:38.380 what's happened to parenting and to children and to farming out child care or farming out um as civic

00:35:48.660 local responsibilities so that we're not we're not involved in community forums anymore we're not

00:35:54.720 involved as school governors you know that there's there's a level that we as parents and as adults

00:36:00.100 need to be engaged in all levels of society not just our careers well i have a terrifying thought for

00:36:06.260 you that i've been thinking about is it possible that when you were arguing with your parents around

00:36:10.180 the dinner table you've become that parent now i'm asking myself that every day and no me and my

00:36:17.420 husband like have this conversation like almost every day that that are we just the grumpy ones i i

00:36:23.860 certainly think at the beginning there was that element where you're questioning you're going are we

00:36:28.020 just really out of touch but no i mean when you look at these big movements that are pushing

00:36:34.760 through the edi equality's diversity inclusion the whole kind of white fragility white privilege when

00:36:40.760 when you look at the core like that the idea of white privilege comes from this amazing woman called

00:36:45.620 peggy mackintosh and she she talks about you know the invisible backpack of of what she doesn't have to go

00:36:52.700 through because she's white and it's a brilliant essay it's fantastic and it also comes with this

00:36:58.920 fantastic guide as to how not to alienate people and make people feel defensive so when like this

00:37:05.240 came up in a some sort of edi thing and i asked this sort of the the person running it had they

00:37:09.600 heard of peggy mackintosh no i said well have you heard of like also the way that she would bring this

00:37:14.140 in no it there's some of these ideas are just being pushed without a level of nuance and debate

00:37:21.620 that i think we should be having the other aspect is with that point i think in previous generations

00:37:29.040 we'd have been in more positions of power i think we're kind of quite a little sandwich generation

00:37:34.620 that grew up in the 90s had good freedoms worked her way up expected to get somewhere and get into

00:37:42.300 positions and when you look at like the national theater i think peter hall was like 36 when he got

00:37:48.760 the job of director it's unthinkable really that you you know and so the whole group of us in our

00:37:53.180 30s and 40s haven't got quite to where we wanted to other people have stayed on i'd say probably

00:37:57.820 possibly too long and we're just getting leapfrogged the younger generation are just coming in above us

00:38:03.680 so i think we probably need to we need to really speak out and take control a little bit actually

00:38:10.720 rosie why is it that the arts in particular so vulnerable are so vulnerable to these type of

00:38:16.440 ideologies because on the one hand we're talking about diversity and on the other hand like i said

00:38:22.680 i've always been passionate about the theater some of my favorite actors were you know people in the

00:38:27.940 you know in the 60s who came from working class backgrounds peter o'till i mean he actually said he

00:38:32.780 was from the criminal classes but there were albert finney yeah exactly michael kane i'm gonna get

00:38:39.420 canceled for that and so you should you know michael kane

00:38:44.720 richard burton you know all these you know powerhouse british actors you know from working

00:38:51.800 class backgrounds and you look at the actors now predominantly i mean there's very good people

00:38:56.120 like damian lewis went to eat and a lot of them did so on the one hand the arts has become ever more

00:39:02.600 the preserve of the wealthy and the upper classes yet at the same time it's about diversity and you're

00:39:09.000 right right so i think you need to sort of trace a little bit like what's happened particularly so

00:39:14.880 the funding system in this country is very strong for the arts and but it's also always since john

00:39:19.780 menard kane set it up it's always had a political edge to it always if you go back to the 80s and

00:39:26.100 thatcherism the arts were being very lowly funded and they had a kind of do you remember instrumentalism

00:39:32.500 so the arts were being used to solve like you know social woes quite low level but it meant that

00:39:39.620 artists were quite free they could kind of like do what they like you also could claim dull so you

00:39:44.520 could be an artist and you could get like you know at least enough to cover your rent and eat so it it was

00:39:51.180 a more genuinely equal sort of starting point and you were left alone and i think that's probably around

00:39:57.980 the point that the arts became lefty as they saw it as a movement against thatcher um out of that

00:40:05.960 grew some really interesting rebellious movements such as the ybas and the sensation uh exhibition

00:40:11.640 sorry to interrupt i know what the yba just explain to people which is artists so you the damian

00:40:16.340 hurst um tracy air means the kind of really rebellious art stuff you had the kind of mark ravenhill

00:40:22.940 shopping and fucking the really amazing movement that was going on in british theater you you had

00:40:28.520 these things that had like a punk edge it was rebellious it also did have quite a capitalistic

00:40:33.720 edge they wanted to make money and that was really kind of quite a clever move then you've got blair

00:40:39.540 coming in and the whole different thing about blair and the arts was it was being used for regeneration

00:40:44.600 so the arts had managed to make the business case so that like okay we go and build a massive art

00:40:50.800 center in gateshead that will then revitalize the area um that'll bring in and they and they

00:40:57.060 literally crunched the numbers to say that we can use arts to to change cities there was loads of

00:41:04.800 money it was a great time there's all these performing arts schools you get like big fees

00:41:08.780 for workshops you've got the olympics you've got these big big big stuff going on yeah brilliant i'll do

00:41:14.220 this i'll do that i'm making massive works but slowly slowly i also realized that that criteria

00:41:19.880 started to get stronger and stronger and the artists had less and less say you were serving

00:41:26.480 quite a big bureaucratic arts business because it was social engineering really to some extent right

00:41:33.880 so yeah so i think now that instrumentalism has kind of gone full circle so we're captured by the

00:41:41.500 business stuff we have to justify every single penny i would if when i was a regularly funded

00:41:47.900 organization i needed to employ someone to just do the data to just collect the data tiny one person

00:41:53.880 sort of dance company but we had to produce mountains of data to justify the money that i get

00:41:59.860 um and then you've got the kind of it's a ripe it's it's just a ripe house for mold that's what it is

00:42:09.060 and this stuff has come through and it's wet mold and it's dry mold and it's just covered the house

00:42:13.940 because it's rotten inside and out and we sidetracked you because you were talking about

00:42:19.000 jk rowling that was about three years ago that was about three years ago but tell us more about that

00:42:23.820 story because it was fascinating so i think i think it i think it was her letter and i liked it

00:42:29.320 not on my company account twitter account but on my personal one i liked it and retweeted it put my

00:42:35.480 phone down went put a kettle on came back picked up my phone already there was like you know i don't

00:42:43.380 know what's called that this massive kind of trail of messages of people from the arts world saying

00:42:49.520 is this the is rosie k a turf is rosie k transphobic um is this the official policy of rosie k don's

00:42:57.480 company i was absolutely shocked i was overwhelmed because i was kind of like that's a brilliant letter

00:43:02.080 no one's going to argue with that come on we were all so naive ones weren't we

00:43:10.300 it just takes someone to stand up and take a stand and then everyone will go somebody's

00:43:16.800 obviously not right wing somebody's obviously all they have to do is just stand up and beautifully

00:43:23.960 articulate the point and everyone will get it yeah and i was like oh my god and my husband's like

00:43:30.500 just delete it just delete it so just deleted it and then i felt i felt a bit dirty i felt a bit bad

00:43:38.480 and i thought oh so i'm making work about exactly this that's going to go on big stages okay all right

00:43:46.260 let's do it but let's do it through the art let's do it through the art so i got this solo out there

00:43:52.760 it was called adult female dancer i wanted it to be called adult human female and i was convinced by

00:43:57.280 my management just to tone it down a little bit again a bit annoying it's very offensive you are

00:44:01.740 right hugely offensive being female hugely offensive and being yeah adult that's yeah yeah so i did this

00:44:08.600 solo show back in 21 big venues really big like edinburgh festival theater you know birmingham rep and i got

00:44:15.520 these amazing reviews observer the guardian and in this solo adult adult female dancer there is a point

00:44:22.940 where i say being a woman is not in my head being a woman is on my head i thought someone would pick

00:44:28.360 it up and out me no i just got like four five star reviews so i was like i'm out fine let's just keep

00:44:37.480 going this is like the this is the little line it's dangerous but i'll play it so i didn't expect to be

00:44:43.520 cancelled in my own home i didn't didn't expect that one but then i also a bit like saying about the

00:44:48.900 house had gone moldy my board were not there for the arts either i don't know why they're there i

00:44:54.320 think there's a much bigger important question about governance in the arts and i'd like to do

00:45:00.340 some work on that with lawyers to look at how we can protect i mean i i knew nothing about intellectual

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00:45:36.260 i was like well i made it it's mine no no it's more complicated than that yeah um so i i think i

00:45:50.880 think we've got to kind of like upskill ourselves a little bit as as as artists as a movement and i

00:45:55.360 want to be part of that go well actually maybe we need a little bit of governance a little bit of legal

00:46:00.020 advice um we need to start going out and making everybody's lives as difficult as they've made

00:46:06.160 ours you made a point about how we we the art got into bed with the corporates and i remember like

00:46:12.900 because i was very lefty when i was younger as we all were right and i think that stage is very

00:46:17.420 important if i'm being honest i think you should be at that age but yeah i remember always feeling

00:46:22.720 uncomfortable whenever i saw like the national theater sponsored by deloitte or whatever else and

00:46:27.480 i can never articulate why but if you're receiving your money from corporates then how can you be

00:46:33.980 truly rebellious as an artist because because art became a brand i mean i made this show called mk

00:46:41.300 ultra that was looking at conspiracy theory and i was sort of stunned i was going you know to all the

00:46:47.320 big theaters and dance events and i was kind of like kind of like doing the same thing over and over

00:46:53.760 again they've got like a brand a look a vibe a feel the audience is the same and then i was looking

00:46:59.720 at pop videos and like some of it's completely bonkers and i was like well that's going quite

00:47:04.020 avant-garde why have art stopped being avant-garde and yet mainstream pop mainstream media we are

00:47:11.120 talking like 10 years ago now is is more experimental and i thought there was something really failing

00:47:16.800 already going on there yeah art is a brand you're selling a product they don't want you to

00:47:21.620 do a different work every time they want the same work recycled so that they know what they're selling

00:47:26.920 i think theaters are in a difficult state i mean they're in a really bad state at the moment with

00:47:32.220 the cost of living crisis and heating um and they're some of some of them not all there's some

00:47:39.660 brilliant chief execs and directors out there and programmers really brave really get it really see

00:47:44.860 the future are impresarios but some people are just scared and are going to just not rock the boat

00:47:51.260 they're they're the they're the captain of the of the bounty you know they don't want a mutiny on their hands

00:47:56.360 so because we've talked about a lot about what is wrong with the arts

00:48:01.160 how do we save the arts because the arts need saving because it is truly transformational i used to

00:48:08.340 teach drama and you know rough secondary schools up and down the country i literally saw kids who

00:48:14.360 couldn't access any type of education the moment you put them on a stage they flew and you they

00:48:21.140 developed it wasn't just about performing it wasn't just about the fact that they loved drama and then

00:48:27.480 they loved expressing themselves it gave them a dignity because they thought i can do this

00:48:32.540 so how do we save the arts then

00:48:35.040 okay for first of all just a little caveat is i think that learning departments within

00:48:41.820 organizations need to have a good look at um because that's a lot where this kind of whether

00:48:47.420 it be critical race theory or career theory is coming through because the art sits still sometimes

00:48:52.160 over there but it's the learning and participatory departments that have just been allowed to kind of

00:48:57.520 not learn their trade properly not go out there with like a really pure clear message about the arts

00:49:04.820 they're there for other reasons to push through ideology what do i think we need to do in the arts

00:49:09.940 i think we need to speak we need to do um we need to be it we need to be it and and and make like

00:49:20.440 just keep making stuff it i do speak i do want to speak out but that only takes it so far i've got to

00:49:28.340 keep practicing my art form and and and get it out there and it's the only way to also stay real still

00:49:36.260 stay sane stay embedded you know grounded in that discipline in that practice and yeah i want to do

00:49:43.740 i want to do some works that might be seen as political this year but i also want to go back to

00:49:48.080 maybe some pure dance and have that freedom to do that so i think we need to do we need to speak and

00:49:55.080 we need to be we need to live it you know we need to walk the walk that's absolutely true you know

00:50:01.180 this is i've stopped doing stand-up since the pandemic but we're working on some interesting

00:50:06.180 things comedically and whatever and i think that's you you know when you were talking before about we

00:50:13.600 have to stand up and talk to the you know and advocate for our generation and you know the point

00:50:20.780 you're making yeah i was just thinking i think the solution to this really is to prove that what

00:50:26.880 we are doing and the content that whatever that content is whether it's dance or comedy or online

00:50:32.220 stuff or whatever is more popular that's what you have to do you have to get past the gatekeepers

00:50:38.900 that's really the problem in art it's the gatekeepers yes exactly because you've got people making

00:50:42.920 decisions who are not making them purely on the basis of what the public want absolutely they're

00:50:47.780 making them on basis based on ideology and we saw this with comedy where you get people being

00:50:52.980 promoted because they are trans or because they are this or because they're that um and uh that is

00:51:00.920 actually if you can structurally find a way to get past that very then easy to prove that that isn't what

00:51:06.560 the people want because the shows that do that on tv comedy wise they're all canceled now yeah because

00:51:11.480 no one watches them yeah right yeah so if you if you create stuff that people do watch i think that's

00:51:18.120 the answer but you know what i think it's even more existential in the arts i think there is an attack

00:51:24.960 on live arts and live performance uh not not necessarily a direct

00:51:31.080 but it's audiences aren't returning those big buildings i i think you know and if you're putting

00:51:39.980 on work that is ideologically steeped i mean i honestly think audiences hate it but i also don't

00:51:47.340 think they're necessarily striving to run out and see great new challenging avant-garde work either

00:51:54.680 and so that worries me and and and i do agree that you know it should be meritocratic it may be that

00:52:03.640 we have to kind of accept that those institutions are too far gone and set up our own ways to do it

00:52:11.020 whether that be institutions or in new ways holding on to our values um but but i but i yeah i worry

00:52:18.340 just that we we're now moving to a non-live world and yet i also you know i believe sitting in that

00:52:27.740 auditorium when it goes dark and something live is about to happen in front of me you know it's the

00:52:33.780 best most incredible experience in the world i love it and i think there's nothing and i love being in

00:52:39.000 the audience and i love performing there's nothing else like it to communicate deep humanity the greeks

00:52:45.280 great you know there's a reason why we need to be and see and think about difficult subject matters

00:52:53.580 portrayed by people in real time it does something to us it's so important i remember my dad bless him

00:53:00.340 who's been had a tough life he's been through his struggles and it was in the early noughties i took

00:53:05.420 him to see um death of a salesman the arthur miller play yeah and it was i can't remember the name

00:53:11.560 who the guy played woody lowman he but he brian dennehy and i remember watching it and i was

00:53:19.080 thinking this is brilliant and i looked over at my dad who'd never really gone to the theater a lot

00:53:24.320 he doesn't really come from that world he comes from a working class background and because i was

00:53:28.800 worried i was like is dad enjoying it yeah he was literally on his head of his seat like this

00:53:32.600 and it was because it's just such a powerful i mean miller's my favorite playwright yeah and

00:53:38.820 particularly when you look at things like the crucible which is more relevant than ever yeah and

00:53:44.460 it's so important it's because it's primal it's primal it's about all of us being together around a

00:53:51.500 metaphorical campfire telling a story and we need that and we can't forget it i mean i i studied the

00:53:56.880 crucible at school and i i never thought i'd be living through you know yeah an equivalent of

00:54:03.180 the witch hunts it's just unbelievable and i think that's you know something that really needs to be

00:54:08.300 talked about more like the bullying the bullying that this is just allowed the bullies to get

00:54:14.860 into positions of power and to leverage it and and it's hard to stand up to bullies i get it i get why

00:54:22.060 people are scared but the only way to stop bully is to say that that's it that's enough and rosie

00:54:27.440 one of the things i want to ask you is why you decided to do that and i know that it ties into

00:54:31.880 some of the work you've made actually so talk to us about that um so um i'm just about to bring

00:54:38.100 five soldiers back and going on tour from april and what is five soldiers so five soldiers um and the

00:54:45.180 subtitle to it is the body is the front line um i was struck by how the body the physical body the

00:54:51.680 human body is still essential to warfare in the 21st century no matter how the technological changes

00:54:58.100 have changed warfare it is the human body and it's the human body that's trained to fight

00:55:02.640 um so quite a long time ago i was doing a show in london and i suffered a really bad injury

00:55:09.000 and i was told i'd never dance again take me about a year to recover and following the operation of my

00:55:15.680 leg um i think the anesthetic did something quite profound to my brain um i dreamt i was lying on a

00:55:21.260 desert battlefield and my leg had been blown off and i could see my leg over there and my first

00:55:27.040 thought it was sort of bombs going off and flames and things and my first thought was oh shit but

00:55:33.280 then my second thought was quite weird my second thought was like well is my body my soul like

00:55:38.520 where does my soul reside like i've trained since i was three as i said to like be a dancer but like

00:55:43.320 you could chop my arms and legs off and i'd still want to dance i would and so i went downstairs it

00:55:49.260 was the iraq war at the time i put the telly on and i saw the faces young men killed in iraq

00:55:53.880 and and i just thought i wonder i wonder if how they train i wonder how you train not just to risk

00:56:00.280 injury like i do in dance but to risk your life and maybe it's not like the movies maybe they're

00:56:05.660 not brainwashed maybe they really really love their jobs and that allows them to take such risks

00:56:11.240 that they're willing to risk their lives and what what is that process and i thought well there's

00:56:16.200 war poets war artists um there's war photographers but the medium of their job is their bodies maybe

00:56:22.860 i as a choreographer could go in i'd never seen a work of dance that captured like the realness of

00:56:28.160 it um so it took me years it took me ages but i got an attachment to an infantry battalion and i

00:56:34.660 spent time with them not realizing bit of an idiot 10 females in the army oh it'll be 10 female no

00:56:40.800 it's an all-male infantry battalion roadie it's all male so i ended up on dartmoor straight away

00:56:46.440 three days and nights and a big exercise and i started off absolutely terrified literally hiding

00:56:51.780 behind people i had like full bergen helmet body armor and then i got it i just started watching

00:56:59.160 and realizing oh i can see what's going on here like that needs a formation now i started to understand

00:57:04.180 the sort of physical tactics of it got quite into it so over several weeks i went from being

00:57:09.520 a terrified pacifist i thought bystander so i had my own rifle i was invited to join a battle against

00:57:17.560 a rival battalion and i was leaping out of windows chucking grenades and you know you do like you really

00:57:25.140 rehearse war and they try and make it as realistic as possible so there's like smoke and sounds and

00:57:30.840 like they hate each other these different battalions you know it's really full-on and um i got it i got that

00:57:37.740 experience i was like okay i just jumped out of a window never mind my my my poor left leg i i just

00:57:44.400 did it i did that thing i was like yes sir boom oh my god i'm flying out of a window um i then spent

00:57:50.980 time at headley court um which is the rehabilitation center and by then the guys i was with training with

00:57:58.540 they'd gone out to afghanistan and it was like one of those worst years really bad years and the

00:58:05.000 taliban changed tactics from firefighter um improvised explosive devices ieds so the guys

00:58:11.640 that i was training with they were now coming back with these complex traumas and getting their legs

00:58:16.200 blown off basically put no finer points on it and then some of the people i actually knew people that

00:58:22.200 become friends were injured so i went to selioke very near where i live in birmingham and i visited

00:58:29.320 a friend who had lost both legs in afghanistan as well as multiple other injuries um but i went to

00:58:35.960 selioke and it was like ward after ward after ward of young people with now disabling injuries and yet

00:58:45.000 you know there's still that army banter going on in that vibe and the government were not releasing

00:58:49.400 the injury figures they're putting a delay on it but they weren't you we were getting the

00:58:54.040 casualty figures so there's like remember wooten bassett so there's this outpouring of grief for

00:58:58.020 the dead but there's there's going to be like hundreds of people that are going to be living lives

00:59:02.520 for decades that the british public are not going to be aware of this before help for heroes and all

00:59:09.400 these kind of charities they were starting up around the same time anyway long story short i made a show

00:59:15.040 about it uh it's a one-hour show and it did okay but when i brought it back in 2015 it just went

00:59:21.820 in the arts world massive like not not amazing but massive like five star awards globally touring i was

00:59:29.580 touring it right up until covid struck i was touring the us with this show and it's like a one hour

00:59:34.860 you sit there you think oh god dance and military how crap is this gonna be but we've had like serving

00:59:41.780 soldiers a guy that just come back from afghanistan he sort of said my god that show he said it's like

00:59:47.980 doing a six-month tour in one hour and then he came back the next night with his wife and teenage kids

00:59:53.800 and i said i want to show them because i can't explain how intense it is but this show does so

01:00:01.280 we're bringing it back um i'd love to see that i think it's good to have a show that's about fighting

01:00:06.280 because i need to remember that discipline yeah i think it's relevant the afghanistan evacuation last

01:00:13.580 year brought everything back for anyone if whether they're still serving or they're a veteran it was a

01:00:20.380 shock all that sacrifice that people had made for for beliefs and values they believed in didn't

01:00:28.120 believe in all of it they believed in the values of you know helping particularly women in afghanistan

01:00:32.840 you know what's going on there and then we've got ukraine and this idea you know the left the

01:00:39.180 lefties when i did five soldiers like oh it's a bit right wing looking at the military and i was like

01:00:43.860 but it's happening it's really happening we have a professional military that are at war i think ukraine

01:00:49.500 has made people think ah you know that's on europe that's on our land and i think people are looking

01:00:58.180 at well how do you defend your borders in a different way so yeah i think five soldiers is

01:01:03.080 still sadly very relevant and it's it sounds like brilliant art because it can express the things

01:01:10.780 sometimes even a person who's been through that experience can't express for themselves so i really

01:01:16.640 look forward to seeing thank you and it's about those contradictions and that's what i love about

01:01:20.800 dance is you know one second you read one thing and the next minute you read another and whether

01:01:25.700 that's be around the body or emotions or like the role of soldiering it it's lovely and i don't

01:01:33.000 try and have a political message with it i try and be as authentic to those stories and experiences that i

01:01:39.640 had fantastic well i look forward to seeing i'll make sure to do that it sounds great uh rosie k

01:01:46.040 before we let you go we always ask our final question but uh before we ask that and of course

01:01:51.040 questions for our locals only supporters uh tell everybody where to find you uh so i have a website

01:01:56.640 called uh k-2co.com i'm on twitter rosie k k2co i'm on instagram and i'm on facebook and yeah just uh

01:02:07.620 find me and reach out and go and see five soldiers um so what is the one thing we're not talking about

01:02:14.140 as a society that we really should be i think we're not talking about joy enough joy pleasure fun

01:02:25.620 i think talking about ideas about real joy like joy that lights the soul that lifts us up that elevates

01:02:34.600 us beauty like like not not a superficial level of beauty but but but a real like gorgeousness of the

01:02:43.840 world these are deeply unfashionable things right now and i think that does relate to this this this

01:02:51.240 this melee that we're in like being able to really have fun if you can't let go and you're worried

01:02:57.660 about you know censorship or fear or whatever you can't have fun can't because it takes away all

01:03:04.200 spontaneity so i'm really interested in like how do we elicit like feelings of joy how do artists

01:03:11.240 help that i think it relates to your world like joy and humor and beauty not a lot of beauty in comedy

01:03:18.740 trust me and that's maybe not talking about these things but then that's why i'm in dance and not

01:03:24.100 not not not not in politics i suppose it's like because these are things that are felt these are

01:03:28.580 things that are lived these are things that are in our bodies and we can't just keep like you know

01:03:33.460 what is it there's this this ape in a meat shack meat meat sack you know we can't keep this

01:03:39.040 discarding kind of like separation from the mind of the body we need to get into our bodies we need

01:03:43.560 to have fun and we need to have pleasure that be eating or dancing or all those other experiences of

01:03:50.220 finding like fulfillment in ourselves and and that's up to us you know we have to do that

01:03:57.380 i completely agree and sometimes fun can be naughty as well which is why i think the fun police come

01:04:03.540 along because they're like no this must be fun in set parameters and you're like that's not fun

01:04:07.760 exactly you just killed it yeah perfect it's been such a pleasure thank you so much for coming on the

01:04:14.720 show and for everybody watching we put out interviews on wednesday and sunday 7 p.m uk times

01:04:22.140 and raws always go out at 7 p.m uk time as well and for those of you who like your trigonometry

01:04:27.120 on the go it's also available as a podcast take care and see you soon we'll see you on locals for

01:04:33.060 the bonus questions that you've already submitted for us take care what are the hopes for art as

01:04:38.960 intended to create beauty to entertain and to console to transport and transcend

01:04:44.500 broadway's smash hit the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise is coming to toronto the true

01:04:55.960 story of a kid from brooklyn destined for something more featuring all the songs you love including

01:05:01.220 america forever in blue jeans and sweet caroline like jersey boys and beautiful the next musical mega

01:05:08.000 hit is here the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise april 28th through june 7th 2026 the princess

01:05:15.220 of wales theater get tickets at mirvish.com

TRIGGERnometry - February 16, 2023

Defending Women Cost Me My Business - Rosie Kay

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