Lucy Suggate and Cool Company

Cool Company is a dance improvisation ensemble for people aged 55 and over, based in Nottingham Contemporary. Referencing current exhibitions, they explore and develop relationships between visual arts and movement. Key to these workshops is the integration of social and creative elements, which empower the work of the group. Workshops are facilitated by Deane McQueen, professional choreographer, director and Backlit Gallery Studio artist.

Lucy Suggate is working with Cool Company during nottdance 2025 to present Tender Stones. For more information and tickets, visit the festival website. 

Visit Cool Company Dance and Movement Workshops at Nottingham Contemporary

The Houdini club (Deane McQueen)

the houdini club has a membership of one, created and donated by french surrealist Allain Prillard who recognised them in a past life. the houdini club is a neon sign active when lit. the houdini club thinks, collaborates, makes, shares, exits, panics, disappears and returns. Escapes completed, yet to be achieved. Recorded details in misplaced notebooks never found. No archive. No social media. Present. Live. the houdini club is about connections and relationships, severing, rupturing and sometime continuity. The artist does not wish be seen, not recognised. Absent.

Lucy Suggate is a dance artist based in Yorkshire, working in performance, making, education, dramaturgy, and mentoring. Her work highlights how movement – dance – choreography can respond to the ongoing age of crisis and prolonged uncertainty by focusing on embodied practices and the physical and perceptual shifts that occur when engaged in long-term moving and thinking. 

Visit lucysuggate.com 

Visit nottdance Festival 

Visit Fabric Dance 

Music by Tom Harris listeningspace.xyz/

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com 

Fabric is an Arts Council England, National Portfolio Organisation. 

Transcript

Becky Bailey, Fabric: Hello. Welcome to dance moves people, a podcast from Fabric. It's a short series of chats between Fabric artists, friends, and collaborators to celebrate the launch of our 10 year strategy. In this episode, Fabric's artist, researcher, dance artist, Lucy Suggate, is in conversation with the Cool Company, a Nottingham ensemble of older performers based in Nottingham Contemporary, led by artistic director, Deane McQueen.

Joining the chat is Deane, Susan Roberts, Penny Shields, Steve Stickley and Julie Boot. They talk about their experience of being a member of the Cool Company and working together with Lucy to reimagine her work Tender Stones for nottdance 2025. Thanks for listening and don't forget to keep an eye out for the next episode.

Lucy Suggate: So how long has Cool Company been going then?

Deane McQueen: We began in the summer of 2022, but not as Cool Company. And it was Sharon Scaniglia who was running Artspeak, who actually approached me and invited me to run some dance workshops. They'd already got photography, they'd already got live art, they'd got lots of different things, but not dance. So I had a big think about it because I had a concern about running a conventional dance program. because it didn't suit my practice, which is interdisciplinary. So I thought to myself, right, I'm going to have a look for a venue, and I chose Nottingham Contemporary and the space, and they agreed. I was really surprised, I have to be honest, because it's a beautiful, beautiful space in the basement of Contemporary. I piloted the first four workshops and was able to have a technician with me so we did a beautiful lighting wash and I developed a playlist and in came 17, 60 plus, very nervous individuals. We bonded, we gelled, and it went very, very well. And the fact that we weren't working in a way where we were learning steps, routines, what I call sort of decorative choreography, it wasn't coming from that place at all. It was coming much more from dealing with the body in the context of a gallery space. So they gave me a tick, Lucy, they said good. And the evaluation went well. It was good. It was a philosophy of ensemble. And we haven't looked back. And I decided to call the group Cool Company. So by the time we set off the following autumn, with the next series, they were Cool Company.

Lucy Suggate: Great. I'm going to turn to you now, Julie, and ask you, do you have any strong memories from any workshops that you've done that you can share with us?

 Julie Boot: Not so much from the workshops. I think it was actually plucking up the courage to start, to join Cool Company. I'd just come out of caring long-term for my dad. And everybody says to you, oh, now it's time to do something for yourself. And I'm thinking, I've not done anything for myself for so long. What am I going to do? And I got an email from The Contemporary and I read everything and I scrolled through and I saw the blurb about Cool Company and I thought, oh, that sounds fun. That sounds, oh no, it's contemporary. Maybe it's not for me. Maybe it's got to be a little bit too arty and a bit too precious. But however, my kids were like oh go join in and I contacted a friend who is a professional dancer and just said do you know anything about this Dean McQueen woman in Nottingham? She said never heard of her but she just said you're open-minded the worst that's going to happen you're going to have a cup of coffee and chat to some people and then you don't have to go again but I think I was smitten from the get-go and it was like, oh wow, everybody was so similar but in a different way. Everybody had got, not baggage, that makes everybody sound very needy, but everybody had come just to have a good time, a nice time. and do something different. And I felt welcome from the get-go. I didn't feel obliged to explain where I'd come from, what I'd done, what I hadn't done. And it was just like, yeah, come on in, join in. I think Dean's first words were, come on in, sit down, grab a biscuit, get a cup of coffee. And the second week, vividly, because I wore jeans, I still wear jeans a lot, was, you'll have to change those because you need a loose gusset. So I feel like I sort of need a T-shirt with that on. You need it, Lucy. You're stating this up, Lucy.

Deane McQueen: I never offer biscuits before we work.

 Julie Boot: Those first sessions, though, we did, didn't we? Because we used to go... There was another room we went in where everybody did the drawing downstairs, and there was coffee in the corner and biscuits, but that was then, not now. Funding's wound up. No biscuits.

Lucy Suggate: You're making me think, Julie, about this idea of confidence, gathering, crossing a threshold. So then I'm also curious about that idea of building a community, but also the what you do when you're in that space together feels very particular. As Deane said earlier on, it's not necessarily about dancing or moving in the normative way or the normal sense of learning something. So I'm wondering if anyone can sort of think back to some sort of experience or process that you think sort of marries building a community but also making art or doing something really creative at the same time. Penny, you look like that's chiming with you.

Penny Shields: I came to Cause with a background of doing a couple of classes in dance and drama and such like. And I came to it thinking, is this going to be more of the same? Because I'm not sure I can fit more of the same into my weeks. But actually it's the most original thing I've done for years. I've never done anything like it. It's the whole melding of visual art and dance and movement. It's hard to describe, really. I mean, when people say, what do you do? I have to think. And I usually say something like, it feels a bit like movement as part of art installation. It's that sort of blending of across. I don't know whether you'd agree with that, Deepa. That's what I kind of try and describe it as. And certainly when I'm talking to friends about it and they're thinking, Should we come or should we give it a try? That's the sort of thing I describe and I have to actually describe what we're doing in what circumstances in order for them to get a feel for actually what it is. But I think it's great. It's just really different and original and inspiring.

Deane McQueen: My practice, and Steve probably would be interesting to have a comment from you on this, but my practice evolves from performance art, live art, and it comes really from transitioning from A-level dance into much more of a wider contemporary performance practice program. Back in the day for the National Diploma, where I was very curious about developing an integrated language. So I was looking very much towards performance art practice, theatre of mistakes, forced entertainment. And at that time we were drowning in Leicester because we had the brilliant Phoenix Arts. and we had an endless stream of people coming through. So that changed my practice. So I was always looking to work in non-conventional spaces, to work in spaces where there was no single front, hence the space, that was technical, multidisciplinary. We've worked with film, we've worked with photographers, we've worked with artists in the development of workshop practice. and that's combined with working as an ensemble. So the calls have really become quite advanced at being able to repeat quite accurately, to watch each other when they're in process, and to just riff off each other.

Lucy Suggate: And a process quite complex. concepts and information and approaches as well. I think that's, you know, from a kind of position of working with and being in space, the embodiment that happens, the seriousness, the energy, the commitment to exploring ideas feels really strong. Sorry, Steve?

Steve Stickley: I was just going to say, for me, our time with Cool Company is a bit like coming home. It's a place that I'm very familiar with. Having spent my whole life doing multi-arts, I trained as a drama teacher and really heavily into physical theatre early on. And I'm a child of the 60s. I was at Happenings in St John's Wood in London with some really weird people. We hoped Yoko Ono would pop in one day, but she never did.

Lucy Suggate: Not yet anymore. Not yet.

Steve Stickley: There's always time. Coming to Cool Company is a case of, at last, I can breathe. It's been fascinating to meet people of a similar generation to me, all of whom have had so many different walks in life. And I feel as though, I mean, it's not my space, it's our space. I mean, Dean has opened the door for us, but it feels like, come in, come on and have a notional cup of tea, I guess. And I felt very safe there, very welcomed, very included. I found it very moving as we all learned to draw breath together. There's that sense of we are being one together and learning from people from different walks of life, and I know I've had a long chat with Penny on more than one occasion, comparing life's experiences, and that's what's so wonderful, to realize that at this stage in life where we are, how valued you can feel and be, and as our bones clunk and crick, As we move together, I'm not making out that it's always noisy, but I think, well, we are in this together and especially if some people have got to this stage in life where a sense of meaningfulness and of purpose and so on perhaps resides more in the past than in the present. You know, nearly all of us had families or grandchildren there is that sense of you can't help but feel that society is starting to push you to the periphery. And you're no longer in the hub of importance or activity or focus. And especially as we're doing stuff with Deane, and incidentally, all Deane's practice just reminds me of my own, over very, very, very many years of leading drama workshops, for example, with adults.

Lucy Suggate: I'm going to move us on to think about time because you brought in this idea of time or this sense of the more you live or the longer you live, the more time that is behind you rather than feels like it's ahead of you in that kind of conventional way of how society is structured or how we think about older people in our society. And I guess I'm going to turn to you now, Susan. Because I guess I suppose part of the interest to reimagine Tender Stones for Nottdance alongside Cool Company was this attention or this commitment to attending to ideas, materials. There's a real commitment to what you do in your workshops that it's almost like entering a space. It's almost like deep space and deep time. It's inside spiritual. Yes, for me I feel quite overwhelmed at times. And particularly I think with some of the qualities that I'm looking for in a work like Tender Stones, which is this something that marries together the material, the physical and the spiritual, practices or thinking in work, and you were talking earlier on about dance and sculpture, and I'm just wondering if you can reflect on some of your experiences, A, with the Cool Company, but also with maybe working with the material of Tender Stones or the workshops.

Susan Roberts: This is just my second term, so I'm a newbie to this, but I'm very, very keen to carry on doing it, because it's giving me things that were separate elements in my life for a long time, because although I started off going to ballet school, like all the little girls, and even though I did some dance at university as well, After that, there didn't seem to be a way that I could combine the various interests I had in art. They were always separate. They were always cut off from one another, even though there'd been a lot of work done, I know, by people like Dean and by you too, Steve, and many others. But just for someone like me, there wasn't any immediate way of integrating it, even though my degree was actually interdisciplinary the whole three years. So I was sort of thinking, well, you just have to do one or another. And then I did start dancing again two years ago. But again, I was happy with it. I enjoyed it. But I didn't realise you could do this. And now that I know that you can do this, then there's no, this is a game changer. There's no going back because we haven't got forever. And you want to say and do the things that you need to do at this time of life. And I have to say that although it's very exciting, there's a sort of a meditation in some of the things we do. So the slow work in your work, for example, is a really good way for us to be in our bodies, in the space. and be able to reflect as you're going. You know, you actually are able to work on more than one level. It works on you in more than one level. Because you're moving your body, you're thinking, you're moving your hands and doing things that relate to the group task, if you like, this reworking that we're doing. But at the same time, you're still thinking about where your body's going to end up next. So that, to me, doesn't really get much better than that, does it? That's really integrating all the parts of your body and brain. But it does get a bit better because it actually makes you think more expansively. You mentioned that, where it opens up ideas when you're thinking about rocks, one of the most fundamental things in the planet, in the Earth. which apparently we have no direct relationship with, although I'm sure all of us have collected pebbles on the beach and we've had lucky stones and all sorts of things like that. We're having a conversation, us flexible, soft beings, with rocks, the rigid things, the things that last so much longer than we will ever last. And so it's that sort of a little conversation going on between geology and time. and our time on this planet, which is really profound and moving. And, you know, we all get goosebumps, I'm sure, just thinking about it. Yeah, thank you very much for bringing that work to us, because it's really helpful. at any time of birth, I'm sure, but I think it is quite helpful for our age group.

Lucy Suggate: Thank you. Anybody else have anything?

Steve Stickley: I'm glad you said that, Susan, because I was thinking something similar. And what I've got from your project, Lucy, the twice that we've done it, is that wonderful paradox of permanent impermanence or impermanent permanence, whichever way you want to look at it, and you can look at it both ways, We are dealing with something that's so soft and malleable with a concept of something very permanent, very hard, apparently unchanging. And then we can revert and we can flatten it out again. And it changes us, if only the graphite on our hands. And it changes your concept of rock and stone and softness and all the delicate things in life. I have found that really quite moving. And you said, Lucy, about there's more of life behind us than there is in front of us. And I have a particular preoccupation, and people will tell you whenever I talk to them, I like to talk about death. I like to talk about when our life is finished. And for me, that's not a wholly negative thing. and I'm interested in the processes of death and dying. And this project in particular, there is a sense of being a creator, as it were, you know? Our very fingers are creating this illusion, this wonderful illusion of something that is so... Well, it's to do with earthiness. It's what you said about the rocks beneath our feet, really.

Lucy Suggate: It's interesting though isn't it sometimes like somebody asked me in preparing to do Tender Stones for Nottdance and being asked to describe it a lot or what's it about and the more time I spend with it the harder it is to find the language to tell. And it's interesting because we use words, we use language, you know, to communicate. It's one of our primary sort of tools, our technologies in society. You know, we place it quite high up as a means of disseminating information. But the more and more I spend with it, it's like the language just disappears from what I'm doing. And it's like, I I can't quite find the right words to describe what it is or why I would even embark on asking people to make these paper stones, but somehow it feels important to do.

Steve Stickley: I think it's vital. It feels vital. For me, anyway.

Deane McQueen: It's surreal, isn't it? It's interesting because as an ensemble, following your first invitation to come and work with the company, and they experienced your workshop, and the feedback was actually phenomenal. If you remember, the evaluation was absolutely phenomenal. But I do have to say that the invitation to perform with you in the Nottdance Festival was somewhat overwhelming because we do from time to time lurch into performance because I'm very process driven. I thought it was very funny and worth mentioning that they decided that they would have the workshop with you, after which you were interrogated kindly, but all the questions were asked, if you remember, and then that ensemble on the spot. went and ticked their names and every single one of them wanted to work with you. And I think that's very important because this is not a performance group. This was never set up as a performance group. So it's an absolute credit to your process that we've almost got a perfect alignment.

Lucy Suggate: I like the idea of aligning, it feels really important and it's nice to, it's nice to experience those things rather than force those relationships or those occurrences. It's interesting about performance because I feel like when I've witnessed the workshops that you've done or again participated in a couple or tried, you know, wanted Ellen at Bartlett, I feel like there's a sense, even though it's a workshop, there's a real performance intensity to what you do, even in your short gatherings. So I'm wondering if you can talk about that experience of how you sort of reach those states of concentration, like what it feels like to, yeah, if you can explain what happened.

 Julie Boot: I can't think of anything else that I do or that I have done over recent years where I am absolutely, totally absorbed and in the zone for two hours. Forget about everything else that's happening out there. For me, that's part of I am in that world. Whatever workshop we're doing, yes, we stop halfway for refreshment or whatever, a loo break, but I just find it so, almost like you were saying, Susan, meditative, sort of go in a zone somewhere and inhabit that world of wherever we're being led by Deane or yourself. And I find that incredible, really, because there are situations where I can have the attention span of a gnat and my mind's flicking all over, thinking, have I done this? Have I done that? But no, core company. And it's just like, just is.

Susan Roberts: Key thing for me is that it is improvisation. So you can't get it wrong. So that gives people confidence as far as performance is concerned. Having just sort of had to think quite hard whether I could do the kind of performance that I used to do when I was younger, more recently, and thinking, I don't know that I've actually got that anymore. It all to be about, you know, your steps and exactly performing something exactly the same again. It made me very nervous to feel that way about it rather than being able, as you've just said, to be absorbed in what you're doing and have the confidence to be able to go with it a bit so that it is a performance. I mean, especially when those beautiful lights come on in the space. Whatever you do, you're more or less just walking across the rooms of performance, isn't it? So you don't have to be so anxious, as I have been, about performance, because anything goes, I suppose. Whatever is important and special to you. Yeah, and as long as you're fitting, you know, the whole thing's all like a sort of amoeba. It's all happening all at the same time without talking about it. then it becomes something. And whether you would call that performance or collaboration or whatever you'd want to call it.

Deane McQueen: We work. It is work. It's work. And it's interesting because we sound a humorless bunch, Lucy, but we're not. We scream with laughing and that's part of it as well. I think these workshops are quite complex. They take me hours. I mean, let's be honest. I'm surrounded by pieces of paper and I'm crafting a journey, actually. And the journey will usually be aligning with the practice of the artist that we're studying. So very, very much their culture, the form they're using, who are they. And I think that in that sense, this is the very important thing to say, they are working together and they naturally are observing and watching each other and operating all of their senses. At the same time, it's not a single sense. You know, if they're reaching or they're gesturing, it's because they are... Absolutely, it's coming from their core, from their centre. And they're not watching each other and saying, oh, I did that better than she did. I'm the best. It's simply irrelevant. They help each other and praise each other. And sometimes it can be, you know, can say, well, that worked better than that did. And laugh, because I will say, that was absolutely dreadful. What on earth did I do that to you for? You know, it was a complete misstep in terms of the flow of improvisations to get you to a particular point. Or I'd say things like, good grief, I thought you'd do this. And you've just done that? and it's so much better than I'd imagined. So mistakes are valued, because mistakes are often the new direction. So we try to have a culture, which is the sort of theatre of mistake, which is, you know, it's great to go wrong, because in going wrong is a signpost often.

Lucy Suggate: So you're embracing experimentation, risk-taking, and this idea of giving people permission to explore. As I explore the materials.

Steve Stickley: We're also embracing frailty. I'm certainly well aware of that with having long COVID and knowing that my body just can't do what it used to do. And I think there is that sense underlying everything that, hey, we're all a bit old, actually. Yeah, and that's really important, I think. And so that sense of support feeds into that shared experience that things become, I think, that little bit more valuable working together.

Deane McQueen: It's true and it's interesting because when you look at my generation, and I'm 70, you know, I need to keep reminding myself, but I was working with Yolanda Snaith and with, you know, Emlyn Clayed who's still going, Lee Anderson who's probably not quite that age, but all these people who've been into, in and out of, not dancers, because not dance itself is quite aged, which is great because we can go back and look at the practices that we were watching and it's amazing and so valuable for me to have this group because I'm just sailing on with my practice. And being taught by them, I think that's the permeable membrane. I'm learning. And they don't feel old to me. Quite the reverse. They're a fantastic experimental company. I find us tricky to control at times, Dean, don't you? Well, the other thing that I think works really well with SIP is they're not allowed to talk. Once we start, they don't talk. They're not allowed to talk. So they're not allowed to have endless conversations about what they're going to do next. They have to find it within movement. Is that fair? Yeah. I'm quite horrible really, aren't I?

Lucy Suggate: There is this one quote by Samuel Beckett which is done first and think later.

Penny Shields: Yes, because you have to suspend the cognitive parts of your brain in order to access the other part. I find I have to anyway. So I stop thinking and I concentrate and really get into the sort of emotion and feeling of what we're doing and just don't think about it and you feel much more absorbed and you've gone somewhere else then rather than stayed in yourself, which is great.

Deane McQueen: Just to say, Lucy, that we did a performance, which was my work, called The Book of Dead Time, where they literally sat still for two hours. No, absolutely nothing. And they did it. They were absolutely phenomenal. So it's finding the contexts for me that the older body can work in. And I remember years ago following Merce Cunningham up a flight of stairs and watching these arthritic, slightly interned feet. And I thought, I was so amazed by the way that he just adapted and adapted and adapted and created material that suited the body he had. And he was not trying to recover the younger body. and throw himself about on a stage and then look enormously compromised and that's always stayed with me. Work with what you've got because what you've got is incredibly important and valuable.

Lucy Suggate: Yeah, that's a beautiful reminder really, isn't it? And I think as we, you know, are entering such as, or we're in such a strange world, to remember that what's there is sometimes enough. I think that's really important and especially the fact that a framework or a choreographic framework or a kind of organizational sort of attempt at reorganizing space and bodies in space and time and how that can be a really important practice right now. especially as the framework that's given to us just feels so difficult for so many people. How do we find space in that confinement?

Susan Roberts: and meaning. Yeah. How do we find meaning with so many confused narratives and so much cruelty in the world and all the rest of it?

Susan Roberts: So how do you find that peace and resilience to keep going? It's very true.

Penny Shields: You join cool company. Certainly doesn't do you any harm though, exactly.

Deane McQueen: I meant to say, the strange thing is we're working with graphite. The thing that we haven't mentioned is that consistently from the beginning, each member has had a sketchbook. and uses charcoal to sit down and mark make their experience that they've just had in movement and they've done some beautiful, so it's a bit like dance, oh I can't dance, oh I can't draw, oh I can't sing, which says something for the arts education in this country. In terms of our era, we're working off the negative, suggesting that you have to have this skill training before you can actually do anything, which you can tell I'm not particularly fond of. So the fact that they were continually got filthy charcoal mitts, work quite nicely into your graphite yeah absolutely yeah because they were well into that process of mark making there's a lovely short book called inhabiting the negative space and it talks about

Lucy Suggate: Yeah, the outline or the space in between or where we place our attention and especially in an economy and a structure where so much of our attention is taken by other things, people, information, responsibilities, how do we find time and space to attend to our senses, our embodiment, the practice, our kind of integrated selves. You know, going back to the first comment that you mentioned, Deane, about this integrated language between art practices, finding understanding with and alongside each other feels really paranoid so thank you for gathering and continuing to gather and I really hope that the performers on the 8th we can create a space that you can get to continue that work and go a bit deeper but actually it is a continuation of what you're already doing.

Steve Stickley: Another very significant thing, and maybe it was that lost thought from earlier on, it's about challenging perceptions, which your project does so beautifully. And I remember reading the line, the only difference between rock and sand is time, and getting our hands dirty. It's been very, very important as part of us engaging, not just with each other and in this space and all that abstract stuff, but the very tactile stuff of life. And it's been wonderful to get Dirty Hands together. Some of my joyful moments have been seeing some of the, if I may put this politely, some of the more elegant members of Cool Company. I've just got to wash my hands, sort of waving these black hands in the air, running to the loo. And all of those little things are just as important as those kind of mighty perceptions that swamp over us. It's all about celebrating life together in an elemental way.

Lucy Suggate: Yeah, because as children, we wouldn't have battered an eyelid. Of course not. Get in there. And making and that continuing to make and feel materials. Again, we're in such a built world that, you know, everything we feel is highly processed, designed, you know, a lot of plastic. And then you're really going back to those surreal, but also organic materials. Working with the owner.

Deane McQueen: That's absolutely it. And it's about intuition. It's about trusting our intuition. And it's young. It's about the subconscious. It's about dreams coming through. It's about... I mean, we share books. We talk about film. It's really quite lively. And it's about being alive. We are alive. And playful. And being extremely playful. Very. Very, very serious. Child-likeness. Lucy, they do remind me of teaching FE students at times because they really are naughty.

 Julie Boot: They like to challenge expectations.

Deane McQueen: And they, you know, I'm always ready for them to turn on me, which they do from time to time. Those are the best. Yes, anyway, I don't want us to sound like a stuffy lot, because we're not, but the experience with you has been enormously successful. And we're grateful.

Lucy Suggate: Absolutely. We are very grateful. I'm grateful that you joined me on this challenge and journey and this remaking. You know, I'm really interested in work that's never finished. Yeah, there's something about that that's really interesting. So to be able to reimagine work constantly or in this way, I'm very grateful that we're trying to make it happen. And it's all an attempt, you know, everything's always an attempt and it's in that spirit.

Deane McQueen: But I think we understand that.

Lucy Suggate: Yeah.

Deane McQueen: I think there's a tremendous alignment. Yeah. And just a quick call out thanks to Fabric for funding us. Yes. Well, we hope you're funding us. I'll just throw that in.

Lucy Suggate: Disclaimer on there, yeah.

Deane McQueen: Thanks Lucy.