Kevan Allen talks KVN Dance Company’s unmissable Coppelia on tour!

Kevan Allen walks tall in the world of dance, with a truly international body of work encompassing America’s Got Talent, the titanic 2012 Jesus Christ Superstar Arena tour, music videos for Tom Jones, and stages from the West End to New York, and around the globe. In 2017 he created the London-based KVN Dance Company, thus fulfilling a dream of many years. In 2021 the curtain rose on KVN’s first production, Allen’s take on the beloved classical ballet, Coppelia. Rave reviews and a sell-out season followed. Now that show is going on the road, a UK tour kicking off at the Leicester Curve on April 10th, before taking its final bows at Worthing Connaught Theatre from Sunday the 30th of June.

Kevan was kind enough to sit down for a chat with me a couple of weeks ago, to share his infectious excitement, philosophy as a creator, and his absolute dedication to nurturing talent. Read on dear reader, read on…

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Kevan Allen, thank you for talking with me! Firstly, how are you?

I’m slightly exhausted from dancing around the studio for a week and a half in rehearsals!

In a past life, I ran a dance school, so I’m familiar with that particular mix of elation and exhaustion.

Yeah, and also is that thing of dancing and talking all the time at the same time! Anyway, I’m fine.

No rest for the wicked, or indeed dance professionals…

Completely. I think this is the most ambitious thing I’ve ever tried to do. When I did the London run, it was off my own back. I self-funded it, pulled it together, did everything, and I never even knew how to do it!

And we lucked out; had amazing reviews and full houses. And since then, people have been saying, ‘When can we see it again?’, ‘We’ve missed it.’ So I’ve spent these last few years trying to raise funds to take it on a tour – which has been unsuccessful.

I thought, well, let’s just give it a go again! So I’m now self-funding it like a crazy person, managing it all again myself, and I’m learning every day, but so far, I’m kind of on top of it.

It seems to be working!

Yeah, all go, no rest for the wickedly bonkers. But we’re loving it. We’re all absolutely loving it.

I reckon that love is how we know we’re on the right path, however bonkers. So Kevan, Coppelia, what particular joy do you find in taking something old and making it new?

Growing up, I loved all the classic ballets, but Coppelia always kind of bored me. I loved the score. I loved the magical element of the clockwork doll, and the magic workshop and all that kind of thing…but I always thought there was more to explore there.

So when I was looking to do a full-length ballet, our first piece at KVN, I thought, let’s try and do something with that story, but expand on it. I love the fact that you can take the traditional classical store and reverse engineer it, redub…almost reinvent it. There’s so much in that well we can draw from.

Also, I do love the idea of the clockwork element, which gives you a tick-tocky rhythm as a basis. It makes the whole thing about the rhythm of time, the rhythm of thought, the rhythm of cogs ticking, the rhythm of movement, and uses that as a basis. So it’s just lovely to look at it in more depth. I always thought there was more to the story than what the sugar-coated ballet gave us. Like, I never understood as a child why they accepted a clockwork doll sitting in a village shop window. Like that’s normal!

So I wanted to delve much more into why Dr. Coppélius made the doll. What are his reasons? How attached he is to the doll, what the doll means to him, and how the doll affects the villagers. We can explore the villagers more. They’ve all got characters, they’ve all got names, they’ve all got relationships.

So now it’s more of a community. We look at how the community ostracises and accepts people and so make it more relevant to today.

Wonderful, quite an undertaking! Now you’re someone who is on record as saying you want to bring the same immediacy and urgency of being in a room with dancers to people in the audience. How do you begin to close that gap with Coppelia?

Yeah, well being in studios all the time, I think the most magical moment is when you finish all the rehearsals and you do the final run-throughs and you’re dripping sweat, but you’re close to the dance. You can feel them breathing and living and moving. And what I call ‘Joe Public’ never gets to experience that.

They’re always sitting away from it, watching it on a stage and seeing the polished, finished version. They don’t get that energy and that magic and that rawness of what dance can be. So my ultimate aim, especially with the London one, was to bring it more into the round using a thrust stage – So it becomes a more intimate affair. My complete dream would be to have a site-specific place where they can go into a workshop surrounded by Dr. Coppélius’ ideas.

The KVN dance company is a real mixture of styles. We’re not classed as any particular style of dance, I would say. We’re a company that finds movement through story and storytelling through movement. I wanted to bring in street influences, electronic influences and more, but still keep the classical there and mix it all up. If you were only following dance through a love of classical ballet or contemporary, you might not go and see a more ‘streetzy’ hip-hop show, but with this, you can. And it makes you go, oh, that’s interesting; it’s the same with the music.

It’s like a hotpot of everything. So we call it like, ‘reimagined and revisited’ to, hopefully, inspire – not alienate – the widest spread of people.

To create that mix of dance in your performances must require a great deal of careful work assembling your company. How do you approach this? That must present you with quite a challenge.

Yes, it does. I mean, I’m very lucky as a choreographer and director. I work in all fields of the industry, so I’m constantly going from urban street stuff to pop stuff to classical stuff and back. I’m always moving among the different worlds, not just moving in one style. So I’ve got a wealth of people that I’ve worked with, people that I like working with, that I trust.

So when I cast a company, I ask various people that I feel fit the roles. I’ll ask around too. I love to work on kind of word-of-mouth and recommendations because I feel in an audition situation a lot of dancers don’t always show their best because of the nerves, intimidation…the cattle market feel of things.

I’d rather we do open classes where I can meet and find people in a relaxed way and say, ‘Actually, you’re amazing. You’re just not good at auditions!’ I want to give everyone a chance.

From my experience as a choreographer, I work in different mediums and styles. I meet a lot of people, and amongst them are people you share a vibe with, and the same energies. If they have an idea of someone we might love, or who might chime with how we work, they’re pretty good at pointing them out to us.

So I truly benefit from a diverse network of people who have a deep passion for the art that they’re pursuing.

No one ever got into the performing arts to make their fortune!

Especially with a self-funded company! I just have such a wonderful group of people around me. My wardrobe lady and my Composer: amazing artists, taking the chance to showcase their art and get it out there because they’re so invested in it. And as a company, we all chip in: we all help build the set, sew the costumes, paint a bit, do this, do that. There’s no segregation.

Taking that original show on the road presents you all with the challenge of moving between sometimes very different venues. How has this influenced Coppelia on tour?

I know well, number one, because to take it on tour, I had to take away the thrust stage element, because I couldn’t secure only thrust-stage venues. That was simply impossible, especially with no promoters behind me or producers.

So, I thought, well, I’ve got to reinvent it that way, first of all, but without losing the intimacy. So I’ve designed the show to operate within like a nine-by-seven-metre stage size. We’re keeping everything within that box, and that fits into the stage of every venue, but it’s a black box in which anything is possible: it’s an environment in which bodies tell the story.

For the bigger venues, we can expand it to have a bit more space, but it works in the smaller ones and hopefully, it should just be a kind of plug-and-play situation. That set has been sitting in my attic for the last two years now, you could say we thought well ahead! It’s like a Lego set, designed so we can take it apart and rebuild it easily. I’m trying not to be over-ambitious: the beauty of KVN dance is the movement and physicality that tells a story.

You could have just a blank space in truth, you don’t need anything else. It works in the studio beautifully, moving people to tears. We ran Act 1 yesterday for the first time – we’d only done bits in isolation before – and we were all so moved! It’s just a thing of beauty and human energy.

The icing on that cake comes when we put costumes on, and throw in a bit of lighting, but if it works in a raw state, then I’m not too worried about conjuring up a big set and a dazzling lighting rig. I don’t want to make it razzle-dazzle!

I think a lot of shows nowadays are very much about branding. It’s a lowest common denominator approach to get bums on seats. I completely understand why, but it’s often the glitz and sparkle that brings those audiences in. I’m trying to say you don’t need that. If the core of your work is amazing, then that’s what it should be about. Anything else is something sparkly on top. But let’s not over-egg it, let’s not gild it when it doesn’t need it.

You’re making me think of the last time I saw Carlos Acosta’s On Before. Minimal staging, and very simple costuming. Nothing to distract from the dancers’ physicality, talent, and the choreo.

Yeah, absolutely. That’s what it should be. You go to hear a singer because they’ve got an amazing vocal, but some performers do like to throw the kitchen sink at their shows. I’m not dissing it, I think there’s room for everything.

But I think my core, and why I do what I do is because I’m so moved by music and human emotion…and what the body can do physically. That’s the core of it. That’s what I’m trying to stick to.

Yes, and as you say we need variety. We need Matthew Bourne out there inserting sparkly vampires into Sleeping Beauty, we need Carlos Acosta, we need Rambert, and we need your unique approach to dance as well.

It’s interesting thinking back to when we did the London run. A lot of people were interested in pushing the show to the “next level” and they wanted to expand it.

Could I get someone from Strictly in the group maybe? A big name?

And it’s like, NO!, because that’s totally not what this Coppelia is. It’s totally missing the point. The reason we sold out, the reason we had such a buzz going, is because it was something very different – you didn’t have to know who was in it.

It was directed at audiences who wanted to see a beautiful piece of art. If they didn’t have an expert understanding of dance, then the costumes, the overall artistry is beautiful, the set is beautiful, the programme design, everything is like a work of art on its own. I’m very finickety about the final appearance of everything. I design the artwork myself, I mould it. I do everything because it needs to be something of beauty that affects and moves people no matter the element. And thankfully, these all complement each other. I would say that but trust me, they do! It seems to have worked!

Well given the audiences and reviews, you’re clearly doing something right Kevan! Keep doing it. I thank you for showing the programme some love; sometimes I feel they are the unloved stepchild of the theatre. Shows and venues know they need to have one, but so many feel like a product of going through the motions.

Well, it’s the one token you can take away from a show. More and more nowadays people don’t buy them because you can just find the programme information online.

So we’re not doing an online programme. If you want one, there’s this beautiful kind of brochure programme with beautiful photos, a whole background synopsis, plus other stories. When we did the London run, I made a programme that unfolded to become a poster. It’s like a piece of origami, so you could put it on your wall. It became something you’d want for as a memento. We’re going back to a more normal brochure for the tour because it gives us more scope, but we’ve got beautiful artwork and it’s actually like a coffee table book.

And when it comes to that experience, when did you first know that the show was hitting all the right spots?

It’s always strange for me because everything is in my head. So what I’ve seen and what I’ve produced are exactly what I was imagining.

So for me, I’m like, ‘I know that was great!’ I forget that everyone isn’t in my head, though and they’re seeing it for the first time. So it’s a weird thing.

In London, the most joyous thing was that we brought in an audience that had never been to dance before. So many people came up to me during the interval and said things like ‘I’ve never even considered coming to a dance production. I never knew it could be this exciting. I never knew it could be this accessible.’ So the people who were normally alienated were coming to the show. The second way I knew the show was going over came, strangely enough, after a sort of lull amongst the audience at the end of Act 1, like they hadn’t quite known what they’d just witnessed. But then there was this eruption! I thought, Oh My God!

People thought they were going to come see the Royal Ballet or something, and it was so different from that. The response was so heartwarming and quite breathtaking for me. After the first two or three shows, people were repeat booking, shows were selling out, and very quickly you just couldn’t get a ticket.

The buzz went around and the audiences were a complete mixture of ages, from children to OAPs, all different ethnicities. It seemed to embrace everybody, and it was kind of like a whirlwind once it took off. By that point I was in the thick of things, doing everything. I’m dressing the set, sorting the lights, I’m doing sales, just helping make the whole thing happen. It’s a wringer, and you get spat out at the end!

Then I was like, Ok, now I need to think about what I’ve just created – what we created. I always say I’m only as good as the people I work with – and I have the most amazing people supporting me – talented people who believe in what I do. Without them, I’d be absolutely nothing.

Especially my dancers.

I’d always say to them, my job as a choreographer is not to do the best steps I can, it’s to make you look the best you can, working together. So I work with your body, your physicality. I tell them not to be afraid to throw ideas in. We’ll work together, and we’ll redevelop it, because this is your chance to do what you’ve trained for years to do, and I want you to be completely comfortable in it. I’m not going to fight that.

I push them, don’t get me wrong, to take chances and do different things, but also what’s interesting is because you have so many diverse styles in the company, they’re all learning from each other. We do a company class every morning, and a different member takes it. So one morning it’s the Hip-hop class. Today we had a lyrical ballet class. Yesterday we got, like, a yoga session. So every day we’re all just crossing boundaries, and it’s like a growing experience for everybody.

And did Coppelia arise naturally from this vibrant melting pot of experience and styles that you work so hard to cultivate?

Yes, it did. I think it’s because I’ve never been put into a box, as one kind of choreographer, so I’ve never been able to be pigeonholed. So I think when I wanted to do Coppelia, I naturally reflected this in the show. This is something reinforced every day with KVN, and the melting pot of creative, talented people in the studio.

It was never going to be a ‘standard’ production. As a dance audience member myself, I’ve been to lots of shows throughout my life where I’ve felt alienated. I know how brilliant a performer’s technique is, but I’m bored. I only get that much because I know the technique and what it takes to be at that level as a dancer. but my mum wouldn’t know, or my sister.

What am I trying to say? I think I’ve always veered away from that approach to dance. I’m more about the physicality and the emotion. People ask me where my inspirations come from, and it very much starts in music. As soon as I hear music, images come up, ideas, and my body is already interpreting the sounds I’m hearing. That’s how it leads to different styles, it crosses over in me.

And how did you approach the nuts and bolts composition of the show itself?

So I work with Rickard Berg, who’s an amazing composer. He’s an electronic whizzkid. He’s very into Dance music and the Rolling Stones. He’s very kind of rock and roll. I first worked with him on a corporate show. I had him playing live rock in this massive show that we had when I had this idea, and I said, ‘Now, Rickard, I’ve got this idea about the thing. Could I give you a bit of this score and see what we can do with it? He’d never thought of doing classical music. He took it away, and the minute he sent it back to me, it was exactly what I wanted. It’s like I hit gold. His brain is exactly where my brain is.

He’s never worked with dance before so he would come into rehearsals, and he said, “You’re [Kevan] picking up rhythms I never knew I’d put in there!’, because I hear different things to him. So we kind of worked together. I eventually asked for a stronger beat. So we recomposed it for London, and this time around, we’ve kept it more or less exactly the same.

We’ve added a couple of new sections to expand the story a bit more, which I didn’t have time to do before, but it’s naturally evolved. And the same thing with Wendy (Olver), who does the costumes. I would give her the rough ideas as I’d like, this kind of look…this kind of feel. She would come back with wonders: she can make anything out of a piece of string and a bit of sticky tape, and you’d think it was out of Harvey Nichols! She’s got that brain. So between Wendy and Rickard, I don’t have to worry. I can just say ‘This is what I’m looking for’, and they come back with something that feeds me, and it gives me more ideas and more inspiration.

I struck gold when I started working with these people.

Despite received wisdom, sometimes life does work out just fine! Now talking of yourself personally, what gets you out of bed and into the studio on a cold Winter’s morning when the sky is grey?

Well, it was like that this morning, let me tell you. Do you know, and this might sound really corny, and I don’t want it to, but it’s the company of dancers I have! They are so excited and so invested, and they’re so enthralled to be part of it, their enthusiasm and hunger from their hearts! I’m like, ‘My God, I’m going to school!’ Where people just are sponges. They just want to learn so much.

That atmosphere kind of propels you to go in. I always try to create a really loving experience and atmosphere: a very accessible studio. There’s no tellings off, there’s no arguments. We’re working together to create a beautiful piece of art. We’ll all enjoy performing, people enjoy just coming in to see what’s new today, and I’ve been in lots of rehearsal rooms where it isn’t like that.

It really lifts me up when people always say, ‘Your jobs are always so enjoyable, you always get great people.”

It comes down to treating others how I would like to be treated. It trickles down, and they treat me well right back. We’ve all got respect. We’re all supporting each other. That gets me out of bed!

Plus, now we’re revisiting Coppélia, which means I’m revisiting it! I can always find something to improve. I can tweak it, particularly if I’m working with a new dancer in a role. I can see what they can do, what they can bring to it. So I’m excited at consistently reinventing my work, it keeps on evolving, and that gets me out of bed too.

So when it comes to your reinvention of Coppelia, what are you trying to say with your view of the story itself? What do you feel you can do with a reimagined tale?

I think the whole thing is acceptance and prejudice. We’re very much in my story. In my story, Dr Coppélius was a very revered and established toy maker, a magical person, and his wife passed away and in his grief, he became more and more of a recluse. He’s just trying to fill her absence – ‘I’m going to make a life-sized doll to fill this life I’m living on my own.’ So that’s why he went to start to make Coppelia. It’s about delving more into the strangeness of it and the magical world of it.

So I’ve explained why he became a recluse. Because of his weird process of making this doll, how does the outside world perceive him? Well, they find him a bit repulsive or strange, so there’s that whole prejudice going on. We then see how that affects the villagers. We see at the end how much the doll means to him, how there’s so much confusion, and in the end, how he becomes accepted by the villagers. It’s like a whole arc to show how everyone in this world is different. Everyone in Coppelia is different.

So he loves a clockwork doll, let him love a clockwork doll! Why should that be an issue? But it is! My Coppelia is trying to say all these barriers need to just go. Let people be themselves. It’s about acceptance.

Featured Image: Roger Robinson

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For more information on the KVN Dance Company and the UK Tour of Coppelia, please click here.

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