And Tigers Mingle 5

You can see from the picture above, that Sonia is getting to grips with the house in a very real way (and it is the right way up). Starting to explore movement in the actual spaces, and finding a way through to the performance by experimenting directly with what is about her.

Then there is a mass of information about the house and the Mander family, which we are trying to get to grips with. The house itself is stacked to the gunnels with beautiful things. It is a really rich and vibrant setting to work in. Yesterday I got to see some of Burne-Jones’s sketch books, small pocket sized books full of writing and sketches, some of which look like ideas for poses or details of pictures. One page had beautifully drawn pairs of hands folded through the barely legible writing.

All that contrasts with the house as family home and the stories which come back in relation to that. It seems to have been a cold and empty place to have been a child in – the introduction to the guide book, written by Anthea Mander, who grew up in the house, is a very personal and passionate piece. It has revealing phrases like “visitors were a welcome relief in the bleak bell jar of family life” and “there is a marvellous archive about the family….giving clues to numerous betrayals and abandonments” and “painful memories make me reluctant to go round the house.”

Yet when we talk to visitors (as we have been doing) most people like the house because it “feels like a family home”. Apparently Geoffrey Mander was fond of telling his daughter “Remember Anthea, we have given our home to the public!” The Manders were the first family to give their house to the National Trust whilst they were still alive (and living in it).

In amongst all this rich material, Richard and Sonia are trying to find their places as dancer and poet. Exploring how Kathak and Hip Hop sit in this environment and with these stories and what it is they want to tell.

Ideas emerge, which we like for a time and then they fade or change. There is a story of how two brothers of the family married Indian princesses (two sisters), but the sisters never visited the house. Sisters keep popping up – the two we met on the first day, the two maharanis and two sisters called Paint who met two Mander brothers who were on a trade visit to Canada, selling…paint – and then married them and came to Wolverhampton.

Today, childhood is a theme we’re exploring. Childhood in the house, children of the house.