Dancer now calls own steps

Press, 27 July 1981, Page 4

Dancer now calls own steps

Don Asker decided to make the change from dancer-choreographer to fulltime choreographer “before I started doing my own steps in someone else’s ballet."

The end result of his move is the Human Veins Dance Theatre, an Australian company that performed in Christchurch on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Mr Asker does dance with the company but now the steps are his own.

Human Veins was born in 1979 when Mr Asker left the Netherlands, where he had been working, to return to his native Australia to work on his own dance style.

This style today includes colourful costumes, a touch of the theatre, singing, and musical instruments.

The name of the company itself is highly individual. “A composer friend gave us the name because we performed in a human vein, dealing with human issues rather than the abstract," Mr Asker said.

Although the company itself is young, most of its members’ have been' with dance in a variety of ways for many years. But Mr Asker says that he was a late starter.

“I did not begin to dance until I was 18,” he said.. “When I did start it was in a very idealistic, romantic way."

Mr Asker performed with the Australian Ballet, the London Festival Ballet, and the Netherlands Dance Theatre, as well as a variety of smaller companies, before starting work with Human Veins. "I went to the Netherlands determined to become house choreographer, but with dancing as well it became too much,” he said.

The working combination and the lack of social expression at the Netherlands Dance Theatre pushed him towards smaller companies, he said.

The expression was not there because most members of the company were not a part of the country, but were an international group. He said that he still hoped to return to the Netherlands, but this time he would .present his own style of dance.