Meet the Dancer and Choreographer Transforming the Royal Ballet

This piece appears in the columns section of frieze 246, ‘Dance’

In 2023, the Royal Ballet presented ‘Rhythm in Resilience’, a festival curated by choreographer Joseph Toonga, celebrating Black histories and achievements in dance. This month, principal dancer Joseph Sissens will be curating a new iteration titled ‘Legacy’. The two met this summer to discuss their programmes and their experiences at the Royal Ballet.

Joseph Toonga The catalyst for the ‘Rhythm in Resilience’ festival was the film of the same name, in which you featured, of course.

Joseph Sissens It was beautiful. As dancers, we have our own voices but, in your film, we spoke about our experiences differently. We really owned up to our race, which sounds odd but, in the ballet world, you can be so invested in assimilating that you forget who you are. But our stories matter, the glimmer in our eyes matters. If you don’t see my race, you don’t see me. Your entire programme came from an honest and connected place.

JT I’d been at the Royal Ballet for two and a half years at that point and had never seen Black bodies and voices being celebrated. I wanted to make that happen.

I had many conversations with the company about how important it was to show the video around the space itself, not just online. And it worked. Audience members would tell me how it felt to walk into the Royal Opera House and see images of different Black people. They told me that they attended – and brought their kids – because they saw ballet as being for them. We found out that 43 percent of the audience was new, for every single event at ‘Rhythm in Resilience’. It was the most diverse in ballet history.

To make progress here, you can’t just commission new works by Black artists, you need to bring in new audiences. Part of that is about consistency. The programming needs to be in people’s faces saying: ‘We’re here!’

JS ‘We belong! We’re breathing!’

I wouldn’t have believed that ‘Legacy’ could be possible if you hadn’t done the festival. The programme came out of the title. I am the physical legacy of the hard work of others – like Carlos Acosta, Fernando Montaño and Eric Underwood – who were here before me. I didn’t know I belonged in the ballet until I saw their images outside the building.

I’m leaving a legacy here by even existing. But it won’t be one based on the roles I play; that’s my career, and it won’t affect anyone else. My legacy is the work I do to assure others have a better experience than me.

I want to make the Royal Opera House a Black space for three days. And not just with dances by you or Marcelino Sambé, but also with dances by Eric and Fernando; I want to acknowledge the history.

My legacy is the work I do to assure others have a better experience than me.

Joseph Sissens

JT For me, collaboration is massive and comes down to my upbringing. I’m the son of a refugee and was raised by my entire community. It’s always been instilled in me that, to create new ideas, you need a village.

I’ve always tried to make sure that I bring in others who haven’t been in this space. I will invite audience members to my rehearsals, and fellow dancers are shocked by this. But bringing others in makes your work better, because you have other voices to challenge you and provide unique insights. Working alone, for me, is always a struggle.

JS I don’t exist unless someone else is in the room.

Collaboration is the only way you can progress. Part of ‘Legacy’ will be a panel discussion that will include the lighting designer, the programmer, etc. This is not only my dream; it’s the result of the hard work of an entire team, of which I am one part.

We’re also going to be running a programme called ‘Chance to Dance: Connect’, which is aimed at kids from a global-majority heritage, giving them access to Black and brown teachers in a summer-school curriculum. Ballet can be lonely and competitive. It’s also time- and energy-consuming, especially when you’re trying to climb a ladder or get a job in a company when you’ve just left school.

It can feel very lonely if you are on the receiving end of microaggressions, or have teachers talking about how your face looks, and you don’t have someone to go home to or have a coffee with and say, ‘This happened to me,’ and they reply, ‘Oh God, well this happened to me last week.’

The beautiful thing about ‘Chance to Dance: Connect’ is seeing 30 kids creating relationships with each other. They don’t actually know how much they will have to rely on those at some point.

JT The Royal Ballet is now making sure that its educational emphasis is not just on ballet, it’s on connection and family, because the company realizes those are the most important things. Parents will think a programme like this is a waste of time because the teachers won’t understand their children’s struggles. But, if those young dancers can see someone who looks like them, who’s had a similar life experience and can tell them, ‘This is going to be the journey,’ that is going to make all the difference.

When the students from ‘Chance to Dance: Connect’ see me, they want to approach me. One time, a group of parents asked me if it was okay that their kids said hello to me. I was baffled but, apparently, some of the other choreographers don’t speak to the students. I was like, ‘Any time they see me, they can say hello – unless I’m eating!’ The relationship that working professionals have with younger people is so important; it changes them.

JS In one of your rehearsals, because you spoke in a certain way, I felt like I could do the smallest thing: kiss my teeth. It’s a part of my Jamaican culture and is something I do almost daily if I’m mad or even just annoyed at myself. You didn’t blink an eye but, usually, when I come in here, I code-switch and avoid doing that. If I were to kiss my teeth at a different time, say surrounded by Caucasian people at the Royal Ballet School, it might be interpreted as aggressive. A teacher may think, ‘Is he going to hit me?’ It can mean they go into a staff meeting and say, ‘He’s a little bit difficult.’ And all because I have a different culture and show it in a different way. It’s important that those kids’ mannerisms and the way they talk is welcomed. If that happened to a 13-year-old, it could scar them for life. It’s finding ways for those little moments that can define someone’s journey to be less traumatizing.

JT That is the question: How do you bring people’s backgrounds into new spaces and facilitate that, making sure that people who are going to criticize and receive it understand what they’re doing? Because it hurts, and it leads to people of colour stepping out of dance. As soon as I share a little piece of my life story, people revolt against it.

JS Because it’s politicized. But your existence is not political.

JT The film for ‘Rhythm in Resilience’ was about seeing us. Someone said to me, ‘Oh my God, it was a piece of protest, it was really political.’ I was like, ‘The only reason you found it political is because you saw the main characters were people of colour.’

If I wanted to be political, I would be political. Companies want to bring in new voices, but they need to create the culture and the environment for those individuals to feel safe and to talk about their experiences.There’s no point in bringing in a Black artist, if they can’t talk about the Black experience and can only talk about what suits the company’s pre-existing ethos.

I want to do something about what’s happening right now in the world, but how do I do it? How do I protest or speak about what’s happening in the current environment without fear? That’s the fight. No one’s trying to break ballet. We’re just trying to say: ‘Look at what’s not working: let’s try and fix it’.

This article first appeared in frieze issue 246 with the headline ‘Temps Lié’

Joseph Tonga’s premieres his new work as part of Encounters at The Royal Ballet, London, from 22 October – 16 November

Joseph Sissens presents Legacy at The Royal Ballet, London, from 29 – 31 October

^{Main image: See Us!!, 2022. Courtesy: © ROH; photograph: Andrej Uspenski}