Interview: Ivan Michael Blackstock

The dance artist and choreographer on the intense process and personal experiences that went into creating the award-winning Traplord.

‘Dance is the way I communicate’, says Ivan Michael Blackstock. ‘I’ve never thought of it as something separate from me’, a truth that makes itself clearly felt over the course of an hour’s conversation with the 36-year-old choreographer and dance artist, whose award-winning show Traplord was commissioned by and premiered at 180 Studios. Though the setup of our chat is conventional – we sat across from one another on office chairs – the words he speaks convey but a fraction of the content of what he has to say. The rest finds its voice through jaunty gesticulations, postures and physical illustrations, flexing an ordinary context with ecstatic artistic expression.

This feature was originally published in Fact’s S/S 2022 issue, which is available to buy here.

The same applies in reverse, with his work for both stage and screen taking the lived experiences accumulated over the course of a youth growing up in Peckham as its point of departure. The result of a process of self-allegorisation, his practice fuses dance, physical theatre and spoken word to create surreally poetic meditations on what he calls ‘Black masculinity in crisis’. It’s in Traplord, a cycle of stage and film works that have appeared at Sadler’s Wells Breakin’ Convention, Théâtre Paris-Villette and as part of Channel 4’s Random Acts series – and which was premiered in full at 180 Studios in spring 2022 – that this makes itself most powerfully felt, with Blackstock peeling back stereotypical facades to reveal an emotional and psychological texture that’s seldom seen in depictions of Black men in the cultural mainstream.

That said, stories of young Black men growing up in London in the 1990s and early 2000s are seldom heard. ‘I know it’s a narrative that’s been around for a while’, Blackstock concedes, ‘but with Traplord, I was interested in exploring it on a deeper level – in contemplating what happens inside the minds of these men in these environments, on these estates. We see films and TV shows that go inside the home, and you see these boys being raised by single parents and all of that, but there are other layers that aren’t being penetrated. You never see what happens inside their hearts.’

In researching, Blackstock mined his emotional archive for memories of being warned about the threat of racist Milwall-supporting hooligans at the age of six, of ‘seeing kids who were eight to ten years old next to Aylesbury Estate smoking weed and getting caught up in a certain lifestyle’ and of the decision to steer his own life in a different direction on discovering dance at around the same age. More than uniquely personal experiences, though, the memories he chose to access were those that spoke to dormant socio-political truths. ‘I was trying to create something that was authentically Ivan, but also something universal – maybe even archetypal – that other people could resonate with’, he says.

Accordingly, the process was then expanded to include the perspectives of his peers by way of what’s perhaps best described as a cathartic group therapy session in 2015. ‘It was like a brothers’ circle. I just got a bunch of men together in a space, and we started speaking about our shit’, he reflects. They discussed nostalgia – hazy dreams of becoming dancers, music producers and MCs – pet peeves and traumas – tales of family members murdered on London’s streets, stabbing survivals and childhood sexual abuse. ‘I just gathered all that energy and put it into a piece of work’, Ivan says, which was first performed in 2015. As befits the subject matter, the response to the work was seismic. ‘Everyone was shook. They were like, “What the fuck is this?”’ And we even had to call an ambulance because someone was in shock.’

There’s no denying the uniquely arresting, anxiety-inducing qualities that define his work. This is particularly exemplified in Traplord Have Mercy (2020), a short film that combines erratic camera work, poignant spoken word reflections by poet Magero on themes of abandonment and loss, and vulnerable depictions of men caught in the balance between fiery machismo, anger and despair. ‘Reflecting on that film, it was really about summoning an energy, an intensity, that I remember’, Blackstock says. ‘You really don’t know what might happen – what they might say or do. You find your mind jumping over hurdles trying to figure out what it all means.’

What does he want his audience to take away from Traplord? ‘I can’t say much about the audience’s journey and what they feel – but I just want them to really feel’, he says. ‘For some people, it’s all too much’, he admits. ‘It feels too real, as they’ve lived it and know the nuances we’re tapping into. You could come out pissed off, you could come out happy, you want to come again.’ What he hopes above all, though, is that it will go some way in bringing nuance, depth and texture to perceptions of people who look, think and feel like him. ‘When I was growing up, there were only certain images of Black men that were presented to me’, he reflects. ‘When thinking about the options for what I could be, it was things like: An MC? A footballer? A shotter? And I still feel that that’s the pattern. But we are, and can be, so much more.’

This feature was originally published in Fact’s S/S 2022 issue, which is available to buy here.

WORDS: Mahoro Seward
PICTURES: Furmaan Ahmed

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