Seriously Playful with Freddie Opoku-Addaie  
Interview by Donald Hutera

"Not winning the Place Prize is not such a bad thing," claims the young British choreographer Freddie Opoku-Addaie. In 2006 his breakthrough ensemble dance Silence Speaks Volumes reached the final and although if failed to win, launched him on the UK and international touring circuit.

The irony is that Opoku-Addaie never intended to become a choreographer. Football, and then acting, were his chief career goals until dance took precedence. Born in East London but partly raised in Ghana, he studied at the London School of Contemporary Dance. On either side of this intensive training period he amassed a wealth of valuable experience, dancing for the likes of Saburo Teshigawara, Wayne McGregor and the late Rashpal Singh Bansal. The latter was featured in the Dance Umbrella's Brief Encounters series in 2005, when Opoku-Addaie performed in his friend's work, Parallels.

Now, in 2010, Opoku-Addaie has earned the right to his own Brief Encounter. Mis-Thread is the name of the piece he will present on 19 and 20 October at The Place. Commissioned by the Robin Howard Foundation in 2009, this intriguing study of potential misunderstandings and miscommunications focuses on an eccentric outsider who tries hard to crack the bond between a self-absorbed couple supremely indifferent to her efforts. Featuring a live score for electric cello, the piece is anchored by a rough-hewn wooden sculpture of the German artist Friedel Buecking.

"Everything in the space is subject to misinformation and mistakes," says Opoku-Addaie. And, he adds, "It's populated by three misfits who can't even count up to three." Mis-thread fits in well with the handful of other works he's made to date. Like Silence Speaks Volumes and Bf, a foot-stomping existentialist duet created and performed with fellow dancer Jorge Crecis, it lays bare Opoku-Addaie's keen interest in the countless little quirks and hidden codes, broken rules and power-shifting games of trust and betrayal in which human beings indulge. "The piece might look disorganised," he says, "but the three performers are always very present in it."

This notion of presence and the present-tense is a key quality in Opoku-Addaie's dances. "As a performer myself," he says, "I like being present onstage without necessarily presenting something." What he's talking about is a sense of unpredictability and play, but with serious undertones and always shaped by craft. "I like the intelligence that's underneath the playfulness." He places a high value on things that are "not perfect and not quick-fix. I like the indeterminacy of an event in a performance space. There's a sense of devious structures in what I do. I always think about how I can shake my dancers up to get it a bit more raw." For him, dancers need to be technically proficient but at the same time somehow almost naive and certainly open to what the moment may bring. "We all play by the rules, but you can be yourself as well."

As a hugely promising young artist Opoku-Addaie is getting his fair share of opportunities to play in the public eye. This year he's created a new work for The Balletboyz national touring programme called The Talent, and he and the German-born choreographer Frauke Requardt are in the running for the 2010 Place Prize via a newly commissioned dance to be premiered this autumn. A year later he'll unveil the work that crowns his two-year stint as an associate artist of the Royal Opera House. In the meantime there's the remounting of Mis-Thread for Dance Umbrella. Opoku-Addaie sings the praises of Dance Umbrella director Betsy Gregory. "She's straight and to the point. No waffling. She told me, 'This work can stand in the Dance Umbrella programme.' You can't underestimate that kind of support."

© Donald Hutera, 2011