Practitioner focus: DV8

It was devastating to hear Lloyd Newson announce his retirement and the closure of DV8 in April 2022. Newson formed DV8 Physical Theatre in 1986 with a small collection of dancers who wanted to challenge the meanings created by traditional dance forms and confront the aesthetically driven work dominating the field. With a background in psychology and social work in Melbourne, he was lured to England by a scholarship at the London Contemporary Dance School. This training and experience inspired his style of work, ‘DV8 is dance about something… I feel genuinely frustrated by most contemporary dance’ (Newson, 2015).

DV8 are a perplexing company within the performing arts curriculum, referred to as dance, dance-theatre, and physical theatre, with Newson regularly being categorised as a choreographer. This is complicated further as he openly acknowledges Pina Bausch as his principle influence (Evans, 2019; Murray and Keefe, 2007). Dance theorists also problematise the style, ‘DV8 Physical Theatre, has pushed dance-theatre into areas previously unexplored by dance’ (Bremser, 1999, p. 173). Whichever field you situate them in, it cannot be denied that their body of work changed contemporary performance forever.