Dance didn’t want this troubled young dad. Then he did something big

It can be hard to reconcile Botis Seva, an easygoing man with a big smile, with the darkness of the dance work that won him one of Britain’s top stage awards. Seva, a 33-year-old British choreographer, is the creator of BLKDOG, a deep dive into alienation and trauma that won the Olivier Award for new dance production in 2019.

Performed using the angular, spasmodic gestures of street dance styles such as hip-hop and Krump, and soundtracked by a score built on stomach-massaging bass and skittering breakbeats, the work comes with a slew of trigger warnings thanks to its simulations of violence, sex and sexual abuse.

On a break from rehearsals in north-west London with his dance company Far From the Norm, he seems to all intents and purposes like a man untroubled by the world. Dressed in head-to-toe black – his T-shirt bears the words “To God the Glory” – Seva exudes a preternatural calm despite an itinerary that will have him ricocheting between London, Melbourne for the Rising festival and Luxembourg within a few weeks.

Botis Seva’s BLKDOG was a response to the inner turmoil he felt as a young father. Credit: Getty Images

In a sense, the contrast between his chilled demeanour and the frenetic hellscape of his best-known work shouldn’t be incongruous. BLKDOG, part of this year’s Rising festival, is all about our shadow selves, the dark thoughts we hide behind a public facade.

It was the birth of Seva’s first child, a boy called Shiloh, that triggered the turmoil that inspired it. Seva was a busy 25-year-old focused on making a name for himself as a choreographer. Neither he nor his partner, Lee, a former dancer at his company, were contemplating parenthood.

“At 25 you’re still thinking about what you’re going to do with your life,” he says. “It was a big shock. Shiloh’s birth made me think about my own father, about love itself. For about a year and a half I really went into my own head.”

His reaction was rooted in his childhood. His mother, a Congolese care worker, raised him and his siblings in Dagenham, in east London, but his biological father played no part in his upbringing. When Shiloh was born, Seva began to question his father’s absence and the nature of fatherhood itself.

“I didn’t have the opportunity to go to another man and ask him questions about what you do when you have a baby,” he says. “At first I found it a hard struggle to find a connection with Shiloh, even though I have a beautiful connection with him now.”

“The whole show is the story of an introvert, a person trapped in their own mind,” says Botis Seva.Credit:

Asked to describe his feelings at the time, he opts for “inner turmoil” rather than depression. Indeed, he has said BLKDOG is not a reference to “the black dog”, the phrase Winston Churchill coined to describe his dark moods, but rather a nod to underdogs, dark horses and black sheep.

“My turmoil would come at random times,” Seva says. “I had a lot of questions and the only thing I could do was make a piece of work about those feelings.”

BLKDOG was commissioned in 2018 as a work celebrating the 20th anniversary of Sadler’s Wells, the London performing arts venue and linchpin of the British dance scene. Seva insists he’d not heard of the Olivier Awards when Sadler’s Wells informed him he’d won the new dance production category against competition from nominees including the Royal Ballet and renowned American choreographer William Forsythe.

“I had messages popping up on my phone congratulating me and I had no clue what was going on,” Seva says, wide-eyed. “I had to check out the Olivier Awards online. Then I was, ‘Oh, my gosh. This is a big deal’.”

“Oh, my gosh. This is a big deal”: Seva accepts the award for new dance production at the 2019 Olivier Awards.Credit: Getty Images

International success has edged him closer to the dance establishment, but he remains an outsider, happily so. His stated aim is to get hip-hop performances into venues now dominated by ballet and contemporary dance.

“It’s still not shifting,” he says. “There has to be change. When you look at the venues in the UK, there isn’t enough variation.”

He discovered dance via his interest in Grime – a very British form of hip-hop that emerged in London in the early noughties. As a teenager, he wrote lyrics and rapped. “Becoming an MC was what I wanted to do for a career,” he says a little wistfully. “I wanted to be a conscious person who spoke about life and what’s happening around the world.”

He took his first street dance class at secondary school but insists there was no Billy Elliot moment.

“No, man,” he says, laughing. “I used to go to the £1 shops and buy fitness DVDs with a bit of dancing on them. I’d put them on and try to copy the moves.”

When he told his mother he was skipping university to become a dancer she was horrified. To this day, he has had relatively little formal training. When he auditioned for DV8 Physical Theatre, the acclaimed London-based company co-founded by Lloyd Newson, he barely had time to warm up.

“Five minutes into the audition, Newson said: ‘If you don’t have any ballet or contemporary technique it’s best for you to just leave’.”

Seva’s lack of formal dance training has forced him to create his own movement style, “something that’s mine”. It’s rooted in street dance and hip-hop, of course, and it’s influenced by the African dance he saw at parties growing up. “It’s all blended with a free form way of moving,” he explains. “Some of the dancers in the company come from a contemporary dance background and learn hip-hop, others do the same in reverse. It’s like a saucepan, and I’m just throwing in ingredients.

BLKDOG is part of this year’s Rising festival.Credit:

“When my [three] kids dance, they’re just expressing themselves, they’re not thinking about the style. I’m always interested in watching people who express themselves first. The layers of technique come later.”

How does he know a dancer will be right for his company? “It’s weird to say this, but it’s their heart,” he replies. “There’s one dancer who auditioned for me two days before my son was born. When I saw her, I instantly knew. It was her persona, the way she carried herself. There are certain moves she has that I really like.

“A good dancer has a certain energy. And I like humble people, man. People who don’t brag about stuff but just like to do the work.”

The fact he’s a young black choreographer from London causes some people to make assumptions about his work; that it’s about knife crime or gangs, for example. “It happens all the time, man,” he sighs. “People look at BLKDOG and go, ‘They’re wearing hoods’. It’s not a hood. When you look closely at it, [the cap] has lines on it like the surface of the human brain. The whole show is the story of an introvert, a person trapped in their own mind.”

Seva no longer dances BLKDOG with his company. He’s older, of course, but there’s something else – performing the piece would return him to the dark place that inspired it. “It’s one of the reasons we have rehearsal directors working on the show,” he says. “I know what every image, every movement means. It’s part of my life, so I need to disengage from it a bit.”

His Christian faith – he grew up going to church but spent long periods in lockdown “trying to understand the Bible” – is another bulwark against darker thoughts. He’s also realised the importance of erecting a firewall between his art and his home life. He and Lee now have three-year-old twins as well as Shiloh, now 8. “An artist doesn’t have to be their work. That only causes destruction,” he says. “Your family won’t want to be around that kind of energy.”

BLKDOG is at Arts Centre Melbourne, June 4-7, as part of the Rising festival. http://2025.rising.melbourne/