“People often have this idea that I’m trying to be grotesque, or be shocking, but it couldn’t be further from what I’m trying to do. I’m just trying to be honest,” says Holly Blakey. “I’m a female choreographer and I want to own that space, and be allowed to be all things: stupid, beautiful, hysterical, sexual, ugly, unapologetic,” she adds, shivering in a north London rehearsal room, quiet-voiced but certain of herself.
Blakey’s dance, whether in music videos, fashion campaigns or her live work, isn’t always what you’d call pretty. It can be warped and scuzzy, repetitive and relentless, bluntly sexualised. “I want to play with what’s acceptable on the contemporary dance stage,” she says. But it isn’t meant to be alienating; it’s meant to be recognisable. “I’m trying to be earnest. I’m trying to respect people and say: ‘We’re all like this.’”
