From Bollywood to Calendar Girls the Musical and bucket lists

When we sat down with Calendar Girls the Musical Choreographer and Intimacy Director, Stephanie Dattani, she arrived with wet hair and a very good reason: she’d just been for her first wild swim in Derwentwater.

It turned out to be more than an invigorating start to the day. When Stephanie turned 40, she wrote herself a bucket list of things she wanted to experience and achieve. Wild swimming was on it. So was working on a musical. And so was coming to Theatre by the Lake.

With Calendar Girls the Musical bringing her to Keswick this summer, Stephanie has managed to tick off all three and, after taking the plunge in Derwentwater, she discovered she loved wild swimming too.

It’s perhaps a fitting introduction to someone whose career has been all about embracing new challenges.

From Bollywood movie sets to creating work in the round, Stephanie has built an extraordinary career around movement, storytelling and making performers feel confident on stage.

As Choreographer and Intimacy Director for Calendar Girls the Musical, Stephanie has a particularly fascinating challenge: bringing together music, movement and actor-musicians in the round, while carefully choreographing the famous moments of nudity that are so important to the humour and heart of the story.

From Bollywood to the stage

Stephanie’s route to Theatre by the Lake has been anything but conventional. After training at Millennium Performing Arts, she travelled the world as a dancer before establishing a career in India’s Bollywood film industry.

“I was a dancer there and then I gradually got to assistant choreographer, and then choreographer, and then I was creative director.”

Her career has encompassed movies, music videos, adverts and major awards ceremonies. Her credits include India’s version of Strictly Come Dancing, Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, and she has worked on more than 300 music videos and movie songs, choreographing more than 50. After having children and returning to England, Stephanie moved away from performing herself and increasingly concentrated on choreography.

That eventually led her to the Stephen Joseph Theatre, where she began working on productions in the round and developed a career that now allows her to combine theatre with freelance film and choreography projects.

For Calendar Girls, her role encompasses choreography and movement across the production.

“Because it’s a musical, movement runs right through the production,” Stephanie explains. “My role is a mixture of choreography and movement direction, from the dance within the songs to the smaller moments of movement that happen alongside the music and underscore. It’s about using movement throughout to help tell the story.”

Creating something empowering

Calendar Girls has also seen Stephanie take on intimacy direction for the first time. Intimacy work, she explains, can encompass far more than nudity. It can involve physical relationships between characters, touch, kisses and other moments where clear communication and consent are important.

“The bottom line of all of it is communication,” she says. “Putting those boundaries in place and making sure people stick to it.”

In Calendar Girls, that has been particularly important when creating the show’s famous photo shoot. From the beginning, Stephanie and the company were clear about what the scene needed to be.

“The first thing that we ever said about this moment was that it’s not a sexy moment. It is an empowering, funny moment.”

The women initially rehearsed the sequence in closed sessions, with only Stephanie and the performers involved present. They took their time, establishing what everyone was comfortable with and exactly how the sequence would work. That process created a moment Stephanie still remembers. “The first time we all did it together, there was this empowering moment that actually reflects now on stage. Everyone had a cry. Everyone had a moment of, ‘Oh my God, you look amazing.’”

It is a feeling the company has tried to hold onto throughout the run. “It’s so gorgeous now to see that what we created in that room maybe eight or nine weeks ago, just us in that moment, we try to remember that feeling to bring on that stage.”  Although the scene feels spontaneous, nothing is left to chance. Every movement has its place.

“Everything is choreographed and nothing is left for chance to be improvised,” Stephanie explains. “Everything has got its place.”

That structure allows the performers to know exactly what will happen each time, giving them the freedom and confidence to concentrate on the comedy, characters and story.

Thinking in 360 degrees

Creating work in the round isn’t unfamiliar territory for Stephanie. In fact, she prefers it. Her extensive career in film has taught her to think about movement from multiple viewpoints rather than one fixed perspective.

“I think my film work comes into play because filming is a 360 angle,” she says. “When I work in the round, I actually prefer it. I think you can be a lot more creative. You can think outside the box a bit more.”

Rather than performers simply turning out towards an audience, movement needs to remain alive and natural while ensuring different sections of the auditorium are drawn into the storytelling.

“When you are end-on, you’ve only really got one side to do it and one frame to go for, but I think you’ve got no limits when it’s in the round.”

Adding actor-musicians into the mix

As if that wasn’t enough to think about, the performers in Calendar Girls the Musical are also actor-musicians, switching between characters, singing, movement and playing instruments.

Stephanie’s solution is to build the work in layers.

She might begin with the basic movement or footwork before considering how that particular character would perform it. Instruments and musicianship are then carefully incorporated. “With the actor-musicians, I will always be led by them,” she says. “I’ll know what the beat is. I’ll ask them what they’re capable of, what works.” The result is movement which supports the musicians rather than competing with what they need to play.

“It’s about layering for me.”

Adding intimacy direction to Stephanie’s work has felt like a natural development. While it is a distinct discipline requiring its own training, protocols, and skills, she found connections with the work she was already doing as a choreographer and movement director. For Calendar Girls, it has brought many strands of her career together… movement, music, trust, comedy and the ability to tell a story from every angle. And this summer it has brought something else too: the chance to tick three experiences off that 40th birthday bucket list.

A musical? Tick.

Theatre by the Lake? Tick.

Wild swimming in Derwentwater? A very enthusiastic tick.

Interviewed by Rachel Kearns for TBTL

Calendar Girls the Musical is playing at Theatre by the Lake until Saturday 5 September.