LONG before Billy Elliot ever made it to the big screen, a young East Cornwall boy with a passion for dance was setting his sights firmly on becoming a professional dancer.

Now, following a 20-year career as a performer, Theo Clinkard is making his name as one of the world’s most sought-after choreographers of contemporary dance.

This weekend, Theo will be bringing his exuberant and experimental work ‘The Listening Room’ to the Theatre Royal Plymouth — one of three dance pieces to feature in a show by Cuba’s vibrant flagship contemporary dance company Danza Contemporánea de Cuba (DCC).

Theo was born near Kit Hill in the ‘Silver Valley’, the son of the late Robin Clinkard, who ran a clothing, gift shop and ‘general social place to hang out’ in Calstock and cameraman Julian Clinkard.

His love of dance began at the age of six when he started going to weekly dance lessons run by Brigid Albrechtsen in Luckett.

‘Brigid’s classes were really popular both with girls and boys,’ said Theo. ‘There were 12 boys in the class and this was the mid 1980s, pre Billy Elliot, so that’s quite impressive.

‘Those formative years are really important in triggering your curiosity and mine certainly was triggered. Brigid was a very inspiring teacher.’

At the age of 11, Theo had the choice of going to Callington Comprehensive School (community college) or dance school.

‘Callington was so sport-focused at the time I thought I would just get swallowed up there so I auditioned for Elmhurst School of Dance and at that time grants were available to pay the fees, so it was an option for my family.

‘We did tap, ballet, jazz, flamenco — we had four and a half hours of dance on top of a normal school day. It was hard work and intense but it was also thrilling. I became immersed in it. 

‘At 15, I was accepted for the Royal Ballet Upper School but I found it so Dickensian in the way we were taught. I thought it wasn’t for me and I turned down my place. It wasn’t an art form where I could flourish or expand my creativity — I did not want to be a prince in white tights!

‘I wanted to experiment and the formal, classical work was not sustaining my interest. It’s much better now, but at the time it was about fitting in, hitting the standard lines and adhering to uniformity. You also have to be right at the top — a superstar — only 0.001 per cent of ballet dancers get the interesting roles. 

‘In contemporary dance I found I had more room to be me, so after Elmhurst I joined Rambert School.’

Theo started performing professionally at 17, when he appeared in Matthew Bourne’s ‘Nutcracker!’ at Sadler’s Wells. He then went back to school for his final year before landing a role as a cygnet in Bourne’s flagship production of ‘Swan Lake’ performing in the West End and on Broadway. 

In contemporary dance, Theo found a connection with the audience; people who didn’t easily connect to ballet could relate to it and the style of dance celebrated and acknowledged diversity.

He continued to work with Matthew Bourne and also Wayne McGregor, who is now associate choreographer at the Royal Ballet. He also ran a company for five years with Antonia Grove called Probe in which he performed but didn’t choreograph — but it was on the cards.

Then, for the first time in 30 years, Theo wasn’t sure if he wanted or needed to dance anymore: ‘It was also a case of not being able to find the work I wanted to perform,’ he said. ‘So I thought maybe I should get off my ass and start making work myself.

‘It was also around the time, in 2010, when my mum died and I started to reassess my life. I needed to be confident, to get on with my life — seize the moment, I guess. So I got into the studio and invited some dancers to join me.’

The result was ‘Ordinary Courage’ which, thanks to Theo’s contacts taking a ‘leap of faith’, played 13 dates across the country. 

‘I had never made a piece of work in my life but I knew a lot of people by that stage so they helped me get the show out there,’ he said. 

‘Ordinary Courage’ was about loss, based on Theo’s own experiences of losing his mother and observing those people around him as they learned to cope with a new reality.

‘The piece was about how we deal with loss differently, how we support each other and how we endeavour to stand on our own two feet after something traumatic. It was performed by six dancers and a concert pianist. I designed the costumes and sets and there was a life-sized brown bear in it. I even sewed and glued the costume!

‘I was already designing by the point I started thinking about going it alone making my own work and although dance always came first,  I had always enjoyed art-making and working with my hands to create things. In choreography and designing my work, it felt as if all those parts of me were coming together — the design, the dancing, the teaching. Most choreographers focus on the dancers and the dancing but I kind of conceive the whole thing.’

Multi-talented then, no, just multi-curious, added the modest Theo.

Needless to say the show was a success and Theo, who says there is ‘grief and mischief’  in everything he does, has continued to develop work that explores the communicative potential of the body and the empathetic nature of dance.

Since launching his own company in 2012, the choreographer has swiftly built a reputation for creating compelling and visually arresting dance.

In 2015, Theo was one of three choreographers selected to create a work for one of the world’s most celebrated dance companies Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch as part of its very first evening of new work in six years, since the passing of its founder, the visionary Pina Bausch in 2009.

The piece entitled ‘Somewhat still, when seen from above’ tackled ephemerality and involved nine dancers and nine theatre technicians. The latter could be seen going up and down six-metre high aluminium ladders with hand held hazer machines creating moving and evaporating clouds above the dancers.

Other works included ‘Chalk’ inspired by the chalk cliffs of East Sussex where Theo is now based, which looked at the abstract properties of chalk and man and the environment and how, like chalk, people could crumble or could be robust like a cliff and ‘Of Land and Tongue’, which took foreign words that describe familiar ideas and experiences but elude direct translation into English and were performed with audience participation in small non-theatre spaces.

‘The Listening Room’ premiered in Cuba in May 2016. Set to Steve Reich’s driving score, ‘Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings’, the piece is a celebration of expressive and instinctive dancing. As the performers in headphones respond to an alternative soundtrack of wildly diverse music and text, the piece invites the audience to create their own relationships between what they hear and what they see. 

Theo was selected from 12 British-based choreographers to work with DCC and given the tall order of not only teaching workshops but also coming up with a 30-minute piece all in the short space of three weeks.

Working with these highly skilled, highly trained dancers, Theo was able to bring a new concept where, using improvisation, the dancers have permission to create their own performance within the piece and it is his intention that the audience would meet the individuals on stage as people rather than dancers. He considers himself like a host in this process.

The different music sounds pulling them in all directions also reflects a nation which is no longer sheltered from influence. Theo said the Cuban spirit was evident throughout his trip to Havana.

‘Everyone is out on the streets in Cuba dancing, playing football, parents sitting on their doorsteps drinking rum and there is music everywhere. The internet is still not easily accessible, so they still look to social interaction for their stimulation. I wanted to try and get that live community spirit in my piece and these dancers are absolutely incredible at bringing their culture onto the stage.’

The dancers from DCC will also perform ‘Reversible’ by Belgian-Colombian choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, which delves into the path of gender matters, sudden changes in relationships, the games, rivalry and pleasure in opponents and dissidents and ‘Matriarch Etnocentra’ by the company’s resident choreographer and dancer George Céspedes, which portrays the tension between the fluidity of music and dance and the regimented nature of daily life in Cuba.

Following the UK tour of this mixed bill of work for DCC, Theo will be premiering his own twelve-strong company’s new work ‘This Bright Field’ in Brighton on May 25 as part of the prestigious Brighton Festival, before a UK tour in October. He is currently patron of Propeller, a new dance training programme for young people across Cornwall for whom he will create a new dance work in May. He also continues to perform.

For Theo, dance doesn’t need subtitles or a script, it is how each member of the audience interprets it that interests him.

‘If I could explain my pieces they should be documentaries,’ he said with a smile. ‘Dance is a language of its own, the body is doing the speaking. People see different things in a dance, that’s the beauty of it. If you watch a dance expecting to understand it in a logical or linear narrative way you might be disappointed, but if you allow it to almost wash over you and notice the range of sensations and emotions you experience as you sit there, it might just be transformative.’

Danza Contemporánea de Cuba comes to the Theatre Royal Plymouth from Friday, March 3 to Saturday, March 4.

For more information about Theo’s work visit www.theoclinkard.com or to find out more the Propeller dance programme visit www.propellerdance.co.uk