Ben Duke tells David Bellan about his one-man version of Milton’s classic

Ben Duke came a long way round before arriving in the world of dance.

“I started off doing an English Literature degree, and after that I went to drama school, and while I was there I got interested in physical theatre and movement classes, probably more than the dance classes,” he explains.

“But I was then asked to create something that involved dance, and I did a foundation class at Lewisham College, then trained at London Contemporary Dance School at the place.”

Starting off so late in dance was quite a brave and demanding project for Duke.

“It was very hard work. By that time I already felt I knew something about performance, and about being on the stage, but I didn’t really know much about the body, or the pattern in coordination that people who train in dance develop. That wasn’t there in my body, and so I did find that very frustrating, and I did find it very difficult,” he admits.

“It was a strange mixture of having experience of one art form, and being completely inexperienced in the other. Dance classes were very alien to me.”

Perhaps driven by his perceived limitations, Duke launched an alternative career as a choreographer and performer.

In 2004, with dancer Raquel Meseguer, he formed a company called Lost Dog, and in 2011 they won the prestigious Place Prize for their duet It Needs Horses.

A difficult piece, but not the seemingly unclimbable mountain of playing God and other characters in Milton’s poem Paradise Lost.

“It’s a poem I love, and I’ve thought about it for a long time. I felt I wanted to make a solo, and that was the hardest, most epic thing I could think of,” says Duke.

“One of the first things that came to me was the idea of the creation of heaven. That’s where I began, and once I had a physical idea about how I would do that, there were certain other sections of the poem that I was drawn to, that I wanted to stage in some way.

“I approached this in a variety of ways. Some of the sections didn’t turn out as I expected – I might have started on a section of text and found that it turned into a section of dance.

“I’d also try to be as honest as I could about its parallels with my own life.”

The story follows the creation of our world, the fall of Lucifer, the creation of Adam and Eve, and of the serpent who causes their downfall. Duke plays all the characters in the story, debating and conversing with them throughout.

“God is the character I spend most time being, but then I play out the conversation that God has with Lucifer, and the talk that Adam and Eve have together, then of course God speaks to Adam. There is also the confrontation between Eve and the Serpent; I try to embody a variety of characters, including myself – I’m a role too in this piece.”

I asked whether he has different voices for each of this striking bunch of characters.

“That’s an interesting question. I have a sense of different characters, but I didn’t want it to be a virtuosic display of my ability to switch between them.

“I suppose I am never really escaping the fact that it’s me doing all of them.”

Where and when
Ben Duke’s Paradise Lost is at the North Wall, South Parade, tonight