This interview is one of four interviews which make up the 2023 Special Feature. The Feature is focussed on exploring the intersections between identity and creative and performative spaces. Each interview addresses a different creative or performative space for individuals based around the South-West England and Wales.
Krystal Lowe is a ballet dancer who was born and raised in Bermuda. She is an Associate Artist with Ballet Cymru and moved to Wales in 2012 to dance with the company. Krystal uses her work to consider womanhood, race, neurodivergence and the importance of representation in performance spaces. This interview was conducted by IPICS Associate Editor Gifty Andoh-Appiah.
This transcript has been edited to improve clarity of expression and therefore some words and vocalised pauses have been removed. The editor has tried to add keep as much to the original record using brackets and punctuation where possible to clarify sentences and has been reviewed and approved by the Interviewee.
GAA: Could you tell us first of all what the Krystal Lowe story is?
KL: Well, I’m originally from Bermuda, and I grew up there. I moved to Wales when I was 22 years old to have an apprenticeship with Ballet Cymru (Ballet Wales) and I started my apprenticeship in 2012. I did a year as an apprentice and then continued on as a full company member, and danced with Ballet Cymru until the end of 2020. Now I’m an Associate Artist with the company, so I have more time. I was always freelance from 2012, but leaving the company allowed me more space and time to do my own projects like Whimsy.
So, coming from Bermuda and living here in Wales, how would you describe your identity and how it relates to your performance?
So yeah, Bermuda is quite a mixed country. […] I mean I grew up there. I was born and raised in Bermuda and so a lot of the struggles that I faced here [in Wales] don’t even exist in one sense [in] Bermuda because it is such a mixed country and it’s a predominantly Black country. So, I think for me a lot of the representation issues I never considered, because I didn’t have to [consider them] when growing up. It wasn’t until I moved here that I realized just how bad the situation was in regards to representation and diversity and true inclusion, not just people being allowed in the space, but [being] actually included. I think for myself, even […] growing up as a Black little girl, I would have seen women, Black women in power, and Black women, leading, and Black families with money, and I would have seen all these things, and so […] I never had to question if things were for me because I saw other people who looked like me with them as well.
What does inclusion mean for you? And you mentioned that before you came to Wales you weren’t aware of the problems with representation and diversity here, so how did you encounter those issues?
I think for me, as far as inclusion is concerned, it’s about not just allowing people into the [creative] space, but ensuring that they’re safe and comfortable and able to thrive in that space. A lot of times I’ve seen spaces that talk about access and inclusion, but any kind of difference wasn’t allowed, but it’s never overtly stated, which is why it’s so difficult. It’s always something that you have to do: you come in and you think you’re welcome, and then you start to present as yourself and you’re quickly told, ‘No, that’s not how we do things here.’
It’s never ever stated explicitly, but it’s like, ‘We want you in the space, just don’t be you in the space’ and that’s what these [performance] spaces are like. So, I think what I meant by how bad it is here is that the lack of representation is stark, and it’s to the point where the times that I have seen representation of Black women or just Black people in general, oftentimes that representation is still washed in the dominant culture. It’s kind of like they have the skin of a Black person, but they must act and be like a White person.
I think that’s quite difficult. It happens a lot in ballet where they say, ‘OK, we’ll do diversity’, and then they just have Black artists, Black ballet dancers, performing in the same ballets with the same costumes, and so completely misses the point of what diversity actually is, what inclusion actually is. And I think oftentimes people think that it’s about just allowing people in the space, but that is just the law, so that’s not anything impressive, that’s just the bare minimum.
Are they supposed to wear the same costumes and behave in the same way, because ballet is ballet? If you compare it with African and Black dance performances, you wouldn’t see a White person going into that space saying, ‘Because I’m White, I want to wear a different costume.’ So, is it just that ballet is ballet? Or would you expect a different form of doing ballet, and would that even work?
I see what you’re saying. Yeah, it definitely does work. And I think the difference in the styles is that, while ballet was created in France, it wasn’t created to represent Whiteness, or it isn’t stated to be created to represent Whiteness, whatever that would be. Whereas if we speak about specific African dance styles, they were created to represent the culture of those people. And I think for me that that’s where it lands differently. When actually the style isn’t meant to be the representation of White culture, and if anything – OK let’s say it was meant to represent French culture, but we’re OK to move it away from that as long as it doesn’t represent Black cultures. And that’s where I find that it falters.
And so I think in the same way people White people do street dance and dance it like a White person would dance street. They embody the style, but they maintain their same hair, they don’t have to change. They don’t make their hair afro suddenly, so that they can dance street. They wear their same clothes, they have their same skin color, all of those things, they’re not required to be less White to dance in any of the styles that were created by Black cultures. And I think that’s the difference.
Whereas in ballet it’s not just about not being in a tutu, it’s about not having to be a White person here in order to fit in. It’s about your skin not having to be a White person’s skin, or they won’t allow you in the group, or your body shape having to be different. If a White person does African dance, no one says, ‘Oh, if only she had wider hips.’ No-one says that; they let her be herself within that style, but ballet doesn’t do that. If your body looks too much like a Black woman’s, then you’re not… [Ponders words]. It’s not just that that’s discriminated against, your talent isn’t seen the same.
Wow. It’s interesting what you say about having White people having to change how they look or how their hair looks, for example, in order to fit in. I’m curious as to what your thoughts are about Jessica Krug. She’s a White American woman who used to be with the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People). She had a son who was mixed race, who dressed and behaved like a Black person, and everybody thought she was Black too until they found out she was actually White. She said she wanted to take up a Black identity, because although she is White, she feels Black. I don’t know if you’ve seen that story?
No, I definitely haven’t. That sounds creepy.
That’s exactly right. Netflix actually just recently did a documentary of her story, and the Black people they interviewed were really furious with her. They said it’s a sign of White people trying to take over everything, including Blackness. Personally, I watched it and thought, ‘What’s wrong with wanting to be Black? If she says she’s Black, and she’s braiding her hair and wearing clothes that Black people wear, there’s nothing wrong with that.’ But the Black people involved in the story said, ‘You have stolen everything from us, and now you even want to steal our identity.
Yeah, I think the correct term for it is ‘cultural appropriation’, and I think we should never put on someone’s identity as if it’s clothing. I’ve experienced that with a lot of my work, especially on Whimsy, which works a lot with the Deaf community, and it’s really easy to get excited about sign language and all the things that are part of being in the Deaf community. However, I have to be sure that I’m not trying to put on Deafness, because it’s not a costume. I can’t say, ‘Oh, I really value Deaf people, so I want to pretend that I’m Deaf and not use my hearing anymore. Instead, I’m going to use sign language and teach people sign language.’ But hearing people do this, it is cultural appropriation. What it does is it completely invalidates the privilege we have as hearing people, and it allows you to treat someone’s existence like a costume. And I think for me that’s the line.
So, who is treating the culture as a costume? Is it the person who is trying to take it on, or the person criticising that behaviour?
I would say the person who is putting it on […] like a costume. I think it’s a bit strange to put on someone’s identity, like I would never try to say, ‘Oh, I really love gay people so I’m going to pretend I’m gay. And I’m going to’, I don’t know, ‘walk like a gay person’, which is already sounding offensive, ‘and talk like a gay person and dress like them’. You know, because I really value them, but that’s someone’s identity. And I think if I did that, and a gay friend of mine said “actually that was really offensive”, they wouldn’t be appropriating anything; they would be calling me out for appropriation. And I think it’s OK for individuals to say they feel that way about cultural appropriation, just as it’s OK, individually, if people don’t feel that way.
But I think I’m very aware of where I sit [in] my own identity, and [I’m] not trying to clothe myself in someone else’s identity out of any kind of feeling, out of respect or excitement or eagerness. And definitely as I’ve worked recently with a lot of Deaf artists, I made sure that it wasn’t that I was trying to pretend I was Deaf because I loved it so much. That it is their identity that we’re speaking about.
Speaking of identity, I know you’ve touched on where you come from a bit. So how would you describe yourself in, and racial and gender terms?
Oh, I guess for me, racially, I’m just a Black Bermudian female, a woman.
And your work seems to consistently feature a lot of women, young or old. Is that intentional? Is there some effort towards reclamation, and would you describe yourself as feminist in that context?
I was just thinking about this the other day. I think, in general, I never describe myself as anything – not feminist or environmentalist or whatever. I think for me, what’s important is that all people are treated equally, with equity. I believe in equal rights for all people, and I think for me that transcends [individual identity], that’s for anybody. And so, whether it’s marriage for gay couples, or whether it’s… whatever it is, I think all people should be treated equally and so that would make me a lot of things if I titled them individually. But I wouldn’t title myself individually, I would just say that I believe in an equal society, and equity in that sense.
So, would you say you are feminist in terms of an intentional effort at reclamation of some sort, because you feature a lot of women in your work?
Yes. It’s not by mistake. I think that I use my art as a way to explore my own identity. And so, as a woman, […] the stories end up being stories about women and/or empowerment for women, and so they do end up being told by women. I guess in general, in my work, when I do seek to […] give people leadership roles, I am seeking that reclamation that you talked about. We are adjusting the imbalance of identity in that sense, especially in dance. There are loads of women [who] take up dancing, but there’s a tradition of male empowerment in dance, and I do want to change that. I want it to be far more equal, so I do aim to give women positions of power and leadership roles, which is a form of reclamation.
Would you say it’s working? Is it producing the sort of results that you expected?
Yeah, I think so. I think I try to take risks with people. I can’t remember the percentage, but they say men are far more likely to apply for jobs that they don’t have the experience to do, whereas with women, they have to meet 100% of the job criteria or they don’t apply for it. And so I think a lot of times, not as an insult to men in power, but I think a lot of times there are men in leadership roles that aren’t necessarily more qualified for them. They’ve just been socialized to go for it. I like to take risks and give people roles that maybe ask for something that’s not on their CV, but I think, ‘OK, they’re transferable skills, let’s go for it’ and I think for me that has that has been the product of it.
In terms of whether it’s working, I think it’s going to be a many years before I see if my contribution has made any difference to the art sector, as far as rebalancing power. But in the short term, what I can see is that people are being given opportunities that they wouldn’t necessarily have been given otherwise.
That’s great. Now, let’s talk about Whimsy.
So, Whimsy is a story that I originally wrote in 2014, and then after I finished it I thought, “OK, what am I going to do with this?” And my first thought was that I could create a dance show out of it. So first I applied for Arts Council Wales funding, through Jubilee Park Primary school, to do a creative collaboration with them. And I took the story into the year six class, and they helped me to turn it into a dance show, a dance-theatre piece, where they were the performers and narrators and musicians. And we did this whole thing, which offered me a chance to, number one, create a children’s story with young people to actually get what they would want in a story, but also it helped me to just explore what the work could be, so that was a really important time.
Following that, I got an Arts and Culture Wales Grant, at the Big Flash Festival in Newport in 2019. And after that it was my plan to do a 2020 tour of the work. However, COVID-19 struck, but for me that was kind of perfect, because it enabled me to apply for Arts Council Wales funding to do research and development of the greater accessibility of the work. So, we added all of this audio descriptive text to support blind and partially sighted audience members. And there was really exciting music. That I way I thought I was including people who couldn’t see the work clearly or at all. But it was like 900 words of text that was added, so then I felt Deaf audiences were really missing out or being excluded.
I wanted to explore that. But I wanted to explore it in its fullness, and not just say, ‘OK, I’ll just get an interpreter in’. I consulted some theatre companies and Deaf artists, and they really opened up and gave me a full picture of what being Deaf really meant, of [what] their experiences of accessibility and inaccessibility were in theatre, of their experiences of growing up, everything. So now I really understood what the experience of a Deaf audience member was, instead of just, ‘OK, this is a checklist of what I can do’.
[…] Following on from that, a grant from Arts Council Wales opened up a Connected Flourish Fund. So, I reached out to Deaf Hub Wales, and they hosted, along with other partners, […] a 18-month project called Intersectional Identities. And as part of that project, Whimsy was used as something to develop and share with audiences, but also as a way to explore how we ensure that our working practices are just as inclusive and intersectional as the end product. We […] end[ed] up having created this really incredible […] show, but the process of getting there wasn’t actually multilingual or wasn’t supporting artists.
And that project ends in December this year (2022), and it’s been, yeah, really exciting. This summer Whimsy did a tour to Grange Pavilion, The National Steadwood Chapter Art theatre, the Riverfront Theatre, Greenman Festival, and then to Butetown Carnival. And it was really great to have this festival work that we had taken the time to develop into something sincere and genuine, and then take it around the country. This time it was a three-person work, and we offered it multilingually – in British Sign Language, Welsh and English – and bilingually in British Sign Language and Welsh.
Why did you choose to address Deafness specifically in this project?
Well, I thought, ‘How can I make this accessible?’ [but] the funding bodies didn’t require that from me. The grant I received requires inclusion in general, you know, basic human decency in your productions. But they don’t specify to what degree, or even which communities. So, I could have explored loads of different communities, but I choose Deafness because there was so much text in it, and I felt like visually it was quite strong, but I was leaving Deaf people out because of the text.
And were the performances specifically targeted at Deaf audiences?
Yeah, it was definitely targeted to Deaf audiences, Black audiences and Welsh-speaking audiences. And for this show specifically, it was about the intersections of those audiences. So young Black people who were also Welsh-speaking, and Welsh-speaking families who were also Black, and Deaf people who were Black. And not just saying, ‘OK, we’re going to do a show for Deaf people, but it’s only White Deaf people’, and then forgetting that there’s a whole culture of Black Deaf people who are still left out still excluded even within Deaf communities. It was about not doing that, and Deaf people have been incredible at supporting that process, by learning and developing, and ensuring that they check whatever gaps they may have in in how they’d reach out to the Deaf community.
Wow, amazing stuff. So, it’s ending in December – what will you remember most once it’s over? What’s the most striking part of it for you?
Goodness, the most striking part… I think it’s been how people felt about the project throughout. I think that’s been the most striking part, how, during the rehearsal period, people felt safe and secure. So, knowing that the time we’ve been taking has been worth it, hearing the partners say that they’re changing how they work, and how they engage and interact with people, and the people who have been following it for the whole 18 months. It’s been really great, and in October there’s going to be an event to share what we’ve learnt, and help others do the same with their work, so I am really looking forward to that.
Amazing, thank you. So, you’ve already mentioned some societal expectations – what would you say are the societal norms or conventions within the performative space? What norms have you recognized, and how have you upheld or diverged from those norms?
I think for me, one of the main societal norms in art is this idea of overworking yourself, meaning long hours and no self-care. You’re physically exhausted and mentally drained, but you keep pushing through, and all of that definitely hits with ballet, though it’s a general societal thing as well.
In the rehearsal period, we didn’t do that, and that was really important to me. I’m a single mother, and so it’s important to me that I’m actually there, that I’m able to be there for my son as much as possible. And so, our working hours were 9:30am to 3:45pm, which was just while my son was in school. And then there was a performer who said, actually, you know, for me to be at my best, I need to come into the space at midday. And so, first there was a moment of, ‘OK, well, how is that kind of scheduling going to work?’ but, it wasn’t that they couldn’t work earlier, they just couldn’t come into the space earlier. And so, they did two hours on zoom, and then came into the space for midday, so they didn’t miss anything.
It was about allowing people not just to work and have fun, but to be their best when they were working. And that is something that I think I’m going to continue to explore and continue to digress from the norm. Because the norm is that you prove yourself by overworking, and not only does that not work, it also doesn’t yield the most creative work. It doesn’t yield people’s best work, so I definitely want to avoid that.
What would you say have been the challenges that you faced, especially tying that into your identity.
Well, I’ll give you the big picture first, because that’ll help me to narrow it down. So yeah, I’m a Black neurodivergent woman, and I think for me one of my challenges is how people perceive me as a Black woman. And how sometimes being neurodivergent, can kind of end up reinforcing people’s prejudices of me.
If their prejudices are that Black women are strong, and they can take pain, and they don’t need to be treated gently, and then I present within my neurology to be quite stoic, even when I’m quite hurt and quite sad, that supports their assumptions about me. Oftentimes I’ve had experiences with people who are far more harsh with me than with others, and far more dismissive of my pain than of others’, simply because I didn’t display that it was painful, so I think my neurology often backs up their assumptions. They saw a Black woman that wasn’t in need of gentleness or softness, and then, because I was quite stoic in the face of their harshness, they continued, and felt OK with it.
And so, I think that’s a big, big challenge and struggle for me in all spaces, but especially thinking of people in the arts. Because it is that kind of space where you know you have to hear criticism. But I think if I was someone who people first saw as needing gentleness, that would make a difference with how they treated me. And I think I’ve experienced a whole lot of harshness that I wouldn’t have had if I wasn’t Black, and then, also, if my neurology didn’t, didn’t back up their assumptions, if I expressed sadness and grief, and pain in the social normal way.
I guess within the rehearsal period I felt really supported. I mean, I was the director as well as a performer. I wrote this show, I directed it and performed it. And I did feel like it was a safe space for me as well, so I didn’t have to go through a thing where I needed space from it. And because the days were shorter, it allowed me to work and then step away and re-energise myself, so that I didn’t [feel] overwhelmed with any sensory issues or anything like that. But I often end up in situations that are too much for me, and people assume that I can just handle it, so they just leave me to it, or worse, push me to handle it when they don’t realize just how hard it already is for me.
Would you say that these challenges have impacted your creative output?
Goodness! Yeah, definitely. I mean, there are times when things get too overwhelming and I can’t put anything more out, and I can’t create. But at other times, the challenges can drive what I create, like when I experience something and think, “OK, this needs to be spoken about.” For example, at the beginning of this, or in 2020, I wrote a kind of a poem, or a letter or speech to the art sector and it was called, ‘There’s room for me too’. And that was directly developed out of my frustration with how I was treated, not only as a Black person, but as a Black woman. That people felt like they had ticked the Black box, and so they didn’t need to do any more work, and yet Black women were once again being left behind. But once again, it was a man, and so for me it was just that anger in not being heard enough.
So, those kind of challenges definitely drive what I produce and what I create, because it’s my way of sharing with the world what I think needs to be shared. Even Whimsy as a show, for children, for family audiences, I mean that work is about that imbalance. It’s about a little girl who sees what’s dominant around her: nature, and it’s beautiful, and she wonders, how she as a Black little girl, is beautiful as well. So, she seeks these things out, and she doesn’t see what’s in her, because it doesn’t present like the animals she sees. She sees bravery, she sees freedom, she sees grace, but she sees them presented in bodies that are unlike her own. And so, she thinks she has to look like those bodies in order to hold those things, so she goes through this adventure. And it’s not until the end that she has this moment of introspection to see herself fully, and she sees just herself. Nothing else crowds her, it’s just her. And she realizes her own beauty, her own grace, and that it looks different to the existing dominances around her. And for me that is a story about a Black little girl who sees that she’s different in this culture, and in this country, so she questions what is beautiful if it doesn’t look like what is beautiful on the outside, that she already sees.
Everything I make is about sharing with the world something that I’m going through and learning for myself, because I want to take others with me on that journey. There’s something that I’ve already learned, or something that I want to say. So yes, these challenges have definitely had an immediate and direct impact on my work and what I create, as well as when I create, and whether I’m able to create.
That’s deep. I really hope that this has an impact on young Black girls, not just in Wales, but across Europe, because they have to deal with the same kind of struggles every single day.
Yeah.
So, one final question, what does your performative space mean to you?
I think it’s my free space, even though obviously it’s all these people watching. There’s something really… there is some level of solitude. It feels a bit like, even though I’m in the midst of everyone, they can’t do anything, you know? The performances start, and they can’t stop me. They can’t. They have no control over what I’m about to say. They come, and they watch, or they leave. But I have that space, and I hold that space. So, for me, that performative space, even more than being a rehearsal space and a space for dancing, it’s the time I spend on my own. It’s my time of most solitude where no one engages me, and no one in like comes into that space.
Even when I’m interactive, in that space, I have the power to interact or not. And I think even just as a woman – without being a Black woman without being a neurodivergent woman, just as a woman – there’ s that expectation of women as we go into public that you have to smile, and you have to do this, and you have to look like this. And then, as a Black woman, constantly recognizing the prejudices that are put on you just as you walk across the street, and that burden of, ‘OK, do I want to ensure I definitely don’t look like that? Or maybe I don’t care. Maybe it’s for me to be whoever I want to be’. And then, as a neurodivergent woman, that constant masking to protect yourself. The constant masking of your neurodivergent traits, so that you look more neurotypical, so that people don’t question you or ask you to be something that you’re not. And I think recently it’s been that exhaustion in masking and realizing the multiple masks that I wear, you know and not, just the woman mask that all women wear to some degree, you know.
We fight against it, but we’re brought up to be [told] you have to be a woman. You have to run like a lady, and you [have to] sit like a lady, and all of that, masking that [everything] about us being ourselves – it’s about us fitting into the identity of womanhood. And then being a Black woman and wanting to succeed in life and be intelligent and outspoken, but not too assertive, in case people think you’re mean. And not too this and not too that, and not too intense. And people complain about that, and all of the things that we can’t be, because we’re always seen as too much of everything and not enough of anything. And then, as a neurodivergent woman, kind of always feeling like, I don’t fit in these narrow, neurotypical spaces. I mean, even in Bermuda, I was asked, ‘Where are you really from?’ you know?
And it’s always that kind of oddity, you know? My accent isn’t very Bermudian, and it never has been, and it’s not from here either. So that’s kind of like those masks that I wear, and the exhaustion of wearing them, and the need to continue wearing them at times to protect myself from the constant questioning or from the constant assumptions that are put on me. And I have to deal with them because I am a woman, and women have to deal with these assumptions. And women also have to deal with attraction, about not being too attractive, but still being a little bit attractive, and all those things you know, that we have to carry as women. So yeah, the exhaustion of masking, and making the performance place a safe place, and trying to find those safe places where I can unmask, that is a constant struggle for me.
One other quick question about your neurodiversity. Do you get a sense that people sometimes read their own meanings into your sexuality?
Yes, that’s a good point. Because women are meant to be sexualized but never sexual. It’s like you’re not to meant to- it’s not about your pleasure or your enjoyment. It’s about what you offer to someone else constantly.
And in terms of my neurology, I think people often think make assumptions about that, because I probably say more than others would say, in general. People think, “Why are you talking in that way? You should- whatever it is about your sexuality.” And I also think I can potentially seem very unfeeling, so people could assume that I’m almost asexual in a way.
Thank you very much.
Photo Credits: Sleepy Robot Photography
Website: https://krystalslowe.com/
Twitter: @Krystalslowe
Instagram: @Krystalslowe
Facebook: Krystal S Lowe
Our Voice Bursary: https://krystalslowe.com/2023-our-voice-bursary
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