Mele Broomes on her new dance company: 'We have been scattered across the world, but then we come together'
Mele Broomes has been challenging the status quo for more than a decade. As she launches her own company, the multi-disciplinary artist talks to Lucy Ribchester about collaboration, creative processes and finding connections through the diaspora
Is there ever a good time to launch your own cross-form performance company? For Glasgow-based Mele Broomes, the ambition to helm her own troupe had been present for many years but it wasn’t until now that the stars aligned. Over Zoom, Broomes says she is not only creatively ready but has the experience necessary to take charge of an organisation. ‘My collaborator relationship has evolved: the style of the way I direct performance work, having a better idea of the foundations we need as a company, the logistics, the strategising, the considerations of how we’re making and developing work with practitioners from various artistic backgrounds.’
Collaboration has always been a strong force in Broomes’ work, from 2021’s online dance piece Wrapped Up In This, which used verbatim recordings and digital effects, to the multiple projects she has undertaken in recent years with cellist Simone Seales. Working as a creative mentor, says Broomes, has helped her forge relationships with a range of artists from different disciplines. She has worked as ‘sounding board’ for some, acted as curator for others and kept relationships going until the right project came along.
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While Broomes will take on the mantle of artistic director, her methods of creation remain egalitarian. ‘I might have a lyric or melody but then I’m throwing it into the space: “try this, let’s move here”. Someone’s dancing and that might be like, “the way you’re moving feels in keeping with what we’re doing”. And then I evolve the movement there or the choreography.’ Her goal is usually to try to capture a performer’s pure expression in real time. ‘And then we land on it and we continue to build, rather than having lots of preconceived ways of shaping it.’
This new company, Moniqux Ensemble, are currently in rehearsal for their first piece, Dictations: The Heart Of The Sea, which premieres at Tramway. ‘I don’t think you get to choose what is your first piece,’ says Broomes. ‘It just aligns.’ In the case of Dictations, she was inspired to begin creating the work after reading Grace Nichols’ poem ‘To My Coral Bones’ which sparked thoughts about diaspora and chimed with the connections she was forming with different artists.
The poem, says Broomes, speaks to ‘the scattered children of the diaspora’, a phrase that stuck with her. ‘I just could feel it in my heart, being in a space with people from all parts of the world but all living here; and our families, be that direct families that we are in relation to right now or family from the past. There’s a weight to it, but there also felt a lightness to be like, “yeah, we have been scattered across the world, but then we come together”’.
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The theme of family has a particular resonance with the ensemble’s debut piece, as Broomes named the company after her sister. ‘I was processing a lot around name and family, lineage, heritage and things like that. My surname is colonial. It’s hard to trace our family heritage because it’s been given to us; it’s been imposed on us.’ Her family has Caribbean roots, and because a lot of their ancestral names have been lost, Broomes wanted to take the opportunity to pay homage to the names they have chosen. ‘I would like to hold something that’s within my own family, to be reheld in a different way.’
Dictations: The Heart Of The Sea, Tramway, Glasgow, Thursday 30 April & Friday 1 May; main picture: Izzy Leach.