We caught up with Manchester-based performance company Quarantine to learn more about Wallflower, which comes to Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts from November 23-24. Their Artistic Director Richard Gregory tells us more about how Wallflower works and what audiences can see on our stage.

How does Wallflower work?

The performers are responding live in performance to a task that was set for them at the beginning of rehearsals – to try to remember every dance they’ve ever danced. They have a very broad definition for what counts as dancing – from remembered performances to social dancing to embodied memories of everyday movement.

Their spontaneous memories – the majority of the duration of the work - are framed by material that we know in advance will happen – for example, each performer will at some point occupy the space for an extended solo and there is a repeated group dance that happens 4 times. This framing offers us a structure to work within and against.

In what ways do you think that dance can resurface memories?

As witnesses to dancing, whether as audience or as a performer watching another performer, we’re reminded of our own experience of course, but there are other things that occur – an instinct to respond or reply with a dance of our own, and - if and when we start dancing - some kind of ‘memory’ in the limbs, the body, that lets us know that what we’re doing has happened before… There can be both frustration and delight in trying to rediscover what the body has already done. And they talk as well. Sometimes the performers only describe their dances. Sometimes they only dance them. They can take themselves by surprise with the narratives that unfold but this process is balanced with a complex awareness of what they’re constructing as the piece uniquely takes shape with each show.

What kind of portraits can be painted through dance? Are they the most genuine portraits of who we really are?

There’s always a huge generosity in the performer who invites us simply to look, to gaze at another human. Dancing is an active, hugely complex and varied performance form to do this through. And, of course, so familiar. We’ve all experienced dancing, one way or another.

I don’t think they’re necessarily the most “genuine” portraits, no. I’m not sure that such a thing exists. They’re portraits of these people dancing, in a particular room in front of a particular group of people at a particular moment in time. What they think they’re showing and what you think you’re looking at might, of course, be quite different things. We don’t know what you might bring to the way you witness the work. That’s part of the joy of doing it.

Why are you looking forward to bringing Wallflower to ACCA?

I’m looking forward to being back in Brighton for the first time for a few years. Some of the performers have a strong relationship with Brighton – that’s always an interesting thing, because memories may resurface that are located in the town.

Who will the dancers be in Brighton? What are their remembered dances? How do you hope people in Brighton will respond?

The dancers in Brighton will be Jo Fong, Charlie Morrissey, James Monaghan and Karl Jay-Lewin.

I don’t know what their remembered dances will be yet – they’ll emerge during the performance. Collectively the performers have already remembered over 2000 dances and all of them are recorded in a printed archive, part of which will be exhibited alongside the performance.

I hope that people will get in involved in advance of the performance by sharing some of their own remembered dances. I hope that people will come along to the performance and see a work that offers them space and provocation to find something of their own in it.

In the run up to the performance we will be inviting local people and groups from Brighton to share their own remembered dances with us. We will upload them at www.wallflowerdances.com alongside dances that we have collected in other locations over the duration of this tour – creating a sort of online map of remembered dances across the UK.

For more information on this particular show visit here