The Way I See It: Ted Rogers

Between 2023-2024 Ted Rogers was appointed as Performance Artist in Residence at the Tracey Emin Foundation (TKE) in Margate. Eloquent as ever Emin commented: "Ted's dancing is electric, gravity is not an issue. There are highs and lows, moments of anger and calm. Exploding, deep, heavy, moving – a constant roll of integral feelings, from inspiring enlightenment to the end of the world." 

This "constant roll of integral feelings" informs Rogers' approach to movement – something thats tap into deeply emotional aspects of humanity – expressing anything from anguish and despair, to vulnerability and glee. Whether that be in their own choreography, visual arts, film direction or the dance workshops they run for non-professionals – feelings rule.

Despite being still in their 30s, their astonishingly varied life experiences encompass competitive highland dancing when barely out of toddlerhood, suicide attempts, drugs and drag stripping in London go-go bars and world class performances on the international stage.

Non-binary in both gender and thought, their mordantly witty philosophical questionings deliver stimulating Ted Talk, probing what it is to be an artist – no matter the medium. And what it is to be alive.

Above: Rogers choreographed and performed in Future Island's promo for The Thief, directed by Ivana Bobic.

I’ve been dancing since I was three, so that’s thirty-one years of dancing. And I’ve not been dancing casually since I was three, I’ve been dancing daily since I was three. I was three when my parents took me to the Edinburgh Tattoo and I saw people dancing over swords. I later understood this to be highland dancing. At the time I was living in Lanarkshire in Scotland, where highland dancing’s a thing. 

Then I saw a highland dancer talking on the telly and said, “I want to do that and I’m going to be a famous dancer.” So started doing highland dancing competitively. 

I became a stage school kid. I went hard at being a stage school kid.

I moved to England at seven and a half. Continued highland dancing for a bit – but eventually it kind of trailed off, because highland dancing in England isn’t as good as highland dancing in Scotland. I discovered a local stage school in suburban Milton Keynes where I did jazz and modern and tap, then eventually ballet and acting and singing. I became a stage school kid. I went hard at being a stage school kid.

My secondary school teachers could not understand why I didn’t want to go to university as I was so academic. They suggested I do a dance degree. I said: “Why? I want to dance, I don’t want to read about dancing? I would like to read about philosophy, I’d like to read about psychology, I do not want to read about dancing, I want to dance.” “But you’re so intelligent,” they said. “What part of being a dancer do you think is unintelligent?” I replied.

It’s a very complex place, where everyone tells you how articulate you are, yet they can’t understand you.

I was at stage school four or five nights a week after school. It was an expensive hobby. I was privileged, with supportive parents. But it was undeniable that that was the thing that I was absolutely the best at. I loved it, I lived and died for it. As a teenager, people didn’t understand me. It’s a very complex place, where everyone tells you how articulate you are yet they can’t understand you. But when I danced on stage everyone understood me, a million per cent, intrinsically. So I did that. 

Above: Rogers' movement showreel reveals the choreographic language they've been developing for years.

I got very bullied at secondary school and had a very horrible time. At sixteen I had my first proper breakdown and attempted to take my own life. 

I ended up in the mental health system for eight to ten years. I just about survived my A-Levels with an institutional stay. I wasn’t sectioned, I went there voluntarily for around eight weeks. 

I came out the other side even more confused because: (a) I hadn’t succeeded in taking my life and (b) the doctors were all mental. 

I came out the other side even more confused because: (a) I hadn’t succeeded in taking my life and (b) the doctors were all mental. 

 No therapist could relate to me, they said: “We don’t understand what’s wrong with you.” 

Above: Dazed x Gucci editorial, directed by Tom Dream, starring Arlo Parks, with choreography and performance by Ted Rogers.

I’m thirty-four now. I was a gay autistic person in a conservative suburban environment. So all that needed to happen was that I needed someone to acknowledge it, show me the way and help me move to London.

I became a more extensive drug addict during my time at the college because, honestly, it’s an unsustainably competitive environment.

It was all very dramatic. I don’t really cite it all the time; it’s quite heavy information, it’s not what most of the world particularly wants to talk about. When they do they’re like, “Oh! Are you okay?” and I’m like, “I was not okay, nothing you can say will ever make that experience okay, but am I alive, have I found ways to live, as much as possible, yes.” 

When all that was all kicking off I somehow still managed to get into Performers College. I auditioned along with 1,800 others to get one of 14 places.

I became a more extensive drug addict during my time at the college because, honestly, it’s an unsustainably competitive environment. I just wanted to take drugs, to not be in my body.

Above: Rogers at the Tracey Emin Foundation in Margate, Kent.

There was a near comedic level of training. It was such a hard-core culture. There was pride in not quitting. No matter how disgusting the attitudes or amoral the treatment, you prided yourself on the fact that you could not be killed off.

I got clean three months before the end of the three-year course. I declared homelessness so that I could move into a dry house in London as opposed to moving back to the suburban town I had come from. I thought if I moved back there I’d end my life.

I’d wanted to dance in heels. It was always very frowned upon in the musical theatre world for a male-bodied person to do that.

I started going to castings, while simultaneously doing a 12-step programme and was invited to join the subculture club night Sink the Pink.

Above: Trailer for a live performance of Cowpuncher, a collaboration with the late Vivienne Westwood. Rogers danced to choreography by Holly Blakey and music by Mica Levi.

So I joined a crew of nightlife reprobates. It was the first time I’d seen queer bodies; trans people; the expression of the feminine. And I’d been craving that; I’d wanted to dance in heels. It was always very frowned upon in the musical theatre world for a male-bodied person to do that – you had to be a masculine man. 

East London clublife was wicked: I met people who celebrated my body. I’d had a lot of body shame before that. I had never really had any positive sexual experiences.

I did feel stifled by what I describe as a sort of faux socially engaged arts thing.

It was liberation. I could be as freaky as I’d always wanted to be. I could experiment with performance; I had a stage for a six-hour shift and I had to keep the people entertained, even if that stage was a bar top.

My first proper dance job out of college was a musicals megamix show in a casino in Niagara. A proper dancer life: living in a casino, very strange. I had been offered a cruise and I said no because I thought I might not survive the ship. I was still very vulnerable.

Are you really engaging more with working class people if you are doing a fucking herb walk?

Then I started working for Holly Blakey. Our first job was at The Serpentine Pavilion, dancing in a piece for an artist called Hannah Perry and the Oscar-nominated Mica Levi.

It was a good blend between the beautiful wildness of my club life and a grounded technical discipline. Holly’s probably the biggest part of my dance (and life) education pre moving into fine art. She changed everything, she saw me for who I was, she utilised that in her work.

I think with a lot of dancers, nobody cares about their individual stories and lives, you’re just there as a sort of body to make these shapes or emulate emotions without really having your own.

Above: The influence of one of Rogers' heroes Bob Fosse lurks in this astonishing film expressing "the rage that so often accompanies the neurodivergent experience." Directed by Ted Rogers with DP Diana Olifirova. 

In 2019 I felt I needed to understand what I was going to make of myself. Open School East [a Margate-based art school] bought me a ticket out of everything I was doing because I could tell my agent and people in the shows I was working in that I was going to do this art school thing for a year.

Culturally, I’m not surprised that England doesn’t dance much. And if we do we have to be high or drunk.

I did feel stifled by what I describe as a sort of faux socially engaged arts thing. Some people do it really well, with authenticity. But there’s a lot of demi-liberal, fragile attitudes towards being socially engaged. Why is your community more of a community than the communities I’m involved with? Is it power, is it money, is it class? Are you really engaging more with working class people if you are doing a fucking herb walk?

Now doing a soup kitchen, I think that’s a socially engaged practice. I think going to 12-step meetings is more socially engaged, personally.

A lot of people seem to strive to be in [the art world], but then also judge it. They might say it’s full of arseholes but then simultaneously want to be part of it.

If the UK engaged in social dance on a wider cultural level, like Argentina or Brazil or Africa or Greece – where people actually dance together with no purpose other than to be together and dance – we would have a much healthier culture.

What we’ve got in England is a lot of don’ts: “Don’t be loud, don’t show off, don’t be overly exuberant, don’t wear too much colour.” Culturally, I’m not surprised that England doesn’t dance much. And if we do we have to be high or drunk.

There’s something very clipped about our uptight, colonial culture that denies humanity’s primitive bits. It’s trying so desperately to force its view of what it thinks civilised is.

Above: Rogers choreographed this short film for New York Fashion Week 2023, directed by Tom Dream.

I think the problem with a lot of England is it doesn’t invent its own culture, it steals culture. England is a nation of stealing and pillaging and killing.

It’s busy being shameful but also not acknowledging what it’s done, so instead of the shame being exalted and released and moving through and repairing, instead it’s denied and shoved down further and becomes a twisted thing.

A few people who’ve watched me paint say I very much paint like a dancer. It’s an observation that everyone else makes.

I’m sort of in the belly of the beast of art right now which is a very complex world to exist in. A lot of people seem to strive to be in it, but then also judge it. They might say it’s full of arseholes but then simultaneously want to be part of it.

I potentially feel more at home where I am now in visual arts [at the Tracy Emin Foundation] than I ever did in dance.

I generally have more agency here: when I express, how I express, the care that I need to take of myself so that I can express. And also because I have saleable objects that aren’t literally my body.

I can see how everything relates back to movement. A few people who’ve watched me paint say I very much paint like a dancer. It’s an observation that everyone else makes. And I sort of find it gross… I don’t know why I resist it.

I don’t exactly [need dance and art] to be separate at all, I think they’re absolutely interlinked. It's just I’m very romantic; so I romanticise and wish to embody the life of a painter.

I’ve come from the queer socialist thing where everyone’s constantly yammering that art is for everyone.

I could make a hundred shit paintings in here and never need let anyone in before I felt ready to show something. And that I value, the fact that I get the opportunity to have a private life. I have no private life as a dancer.

Above: Rogers recently performed a new version of their ballet VALENTINE at the Tate Modern as part of Tracey Emin’s current exhibition A Second Life. Stills and main image by Stevie O'Neill.

One of my recent reflections about art is that I don’t think art is for everyone, which is so counter to the place that I’ve come from; the queer socialist thing where everyone’s constantly yammering that art is for everyone.

Ideally, I agree that it’s a fucking brilliant reflective, ambiguous, rich, full thing that I’d love every person to experience. But, with regards to the idea that everyone could or should make art, my Machiavellian realism is: “Are ya’ll ready for that?”

[Bob Fosse] had a walk called ‘broken doll’; it was really twisted. 

Because there’d be so many suicides and so much crazy. Most people don’t reflect that hard, they don’t look inward that much – people would go mad and get lost and addicted and it would be hellish. As it is there are few structures in place to help manage an artist’s life, we do it all ourselves, so imagine the entirety of ‘the world’ embarking on an extensive inner reflection and hurling out images onto flat surfaces or into sculpture or into movement. People would lose their shit.

Mind you this quite horrible reflection of mine isn’t necessarily a fully formed thought, it’s more of a reaction against some forces that I think are just a bit misplaced.

Maybe I’m bitter because I have never been able to be a person who sits at a desk. Very quickly I become extremely unwell when attempting to function in a majority Western post Industrial Revolution kind of existence. I mean I actually crumble, I become crumbs and fall apart. 

I was a 14-year old boy getting bullied for being a fag and I had to wear a bloody thong for ballet. 

One of my influences is Bob Fosse [American choreographer, dancer, director – Sweet Charity, Cabaret, All That Jazz and influential figure in 20th century jazz dance]. He was an outlier and so gnarly, his style was built on all his imperfections. It was balletic and technical but also inward-turning with weird hip movements. It was broken. He had a walk called ‘broken doll’; it was really twisted. And there ain’t nothing better than Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. No one’s made it better since.

And Holly Blakey. Holly will reference something cinematic and then make a really insane choreography that isn’t just insane for its own sake, it’s also deeply embodied in [hers and the dancers’] personal feelings. That’s where the magic happens.

Above: Mango's AW24 Selection Evening Edition, directed by Tom Dream, choreographed by Rogers, starring Rianne Van Rompaey.

I used to love hip-hop dancing and break battles and Vogue Femme, which is feminine rage embodied – it is chaos and carnage and simultaneously so technical. So for me it’s always the things that have embodied extremity but also nuance and can find this strange tension between the two.

Skateboarding is my primary reference for everything. It’s the other thing I did a lot when I was a kid, aside from dancing. So I loved skateboarding [culture] because it was music, it was baggies, it was graphic design, it was movement. 

I’m probably a good dancer because I’m autistic and therefore I just do everything to a million per cent, I don’t understand a halfway on that.

There’s no culture at stage school except for stage school culture, like jazz shoes and leotards, which was never really my jam. It was the most uncomfortable part of being a dancer. I hated wearing unitards, hated having tight things on my body. I couldn’t understand why I had to wear a ballet belt. I was a 14-year old boy getting bullied for being a fag and I had to wear a bloody thong for ballet.

I don’t like leaning into symptomatic language. We live in a pathological paradigm, we have yet to acknowledge that it’s society that disables us, not that we’re disabled. For instance, I’m a person who cannot help but feel my feelings and it’s written all over my face and I’m a shocking liar. Everything has to come out.

Above: Last year's launch of The Very Collection, directed by Tom Dream with Roger's choreography. 

So being an artist isn’t really a choice, it’s a survival mechanism because how else am I supposed to live? I’m a sober person now, I don’t take drugs, I have no barrier between myself and life. I don’t medicate anymore. I did it for years. There were so many things that pushed me down. I’m just a person trying to function in the world, and for me the clearest route, the route that I’m most useful in and most welcome in is as an artist.. or a dancer, whatever.

I’m probably a good dancer because I’m autistic and therefore I just do everything to a million per cent, I don’t understand a halfway on that. It doesn’t make sense to me that you would half do something, I cannot comprehend lazily putting myself into the world.

The word ‘divergent’ is a term that has been really over sound-bitten, been sound-bitten off more than it could chew already.

Probably all artists are divergent. I’m evasive about discussing it without a wider context, but also the word ‘divergent’ is a term that has been really over sound-bitten, been sound-bitten off more than it could chew already. 

People are so desperate to be on the right side of history and I just think it’s so complex. There are lots of loud voices shouting for supposedly the right side of a thing.