New dance piece that explores identity, borders, love, family and belonging heads to York Minster

Of Anglo-Sicilian heritage, Lo-Guidice was born in Palermo but grew up in Middlesborough; his mother is British and his father Italian and the piece is semi-autobiographical, reflecting his own experience of a mixed cultural upbringing. “My mother is from Saltburn and my father is from Palermo, so I was brought up with both cultures jostling up against each other,” he says. “The work is first and foremost about that – what it means to belong, what it means to be from the North of England and what it is like to be othered.”

Lo-Guidice describes the dance theatre pieces that he creates as “a blend of folklore fantasy, nostalgia and working-class anxieties”. Roma features all these elements but the narrative at its heart is particularly personal. “The concept for it came from the story of my mum and dad,” he says. “Of my mum finding love with someone from another country, but which sadly culminated in their separation and divorce and her coming back home to the UK. It is about family and heartbreak and break-ups, but there is also a lot of joy and love.” Lo-Guidice’s parents separated when he was five years old and he has vivid memories of leaving Palermo to begin a new life in England. “It all happened quite suddenly and I remember the day when we got on a flight and I met my English family for the first time,” he says. “It’s such a striking moment that I’m able to hold on to it. I remember starting school in Middlesborough and speaking Italian and not having friends, not fitting in. I wanted to tell the story of my parents but also of that feeling of being an outsider. So many of us experience a way of not belonging, it’s a universal thing.”

He started to make the work in 2020 during lockdown, and as part of his research he sent his parents a series of questions to get their perspectives on each other and on their relationship. “It was an interesting process – they had very different takes on things,” he says. “Those two questionnaires informed how the work was going to be made.” He worked with the performers – four dancers and two musicians – to develop the work further, shaping his parents’ accounts into a series of fleeting memories and creative imaginings, to portray the complexity, the push and pull of a love story across a cultural divide, all set to a specially composed score, played live, that is a mixture of Sicilian and traditional English music. “The four dancers are aged between 30 and 66, so there is a real spread of age and experience on stage which is something we were quite passionate about,” says Lo-Guidice. “The performers who represent my mum and dad are the same age that my parents are now. Their movement is so virtuosic and human.”

Lo-Guidice’s own journey into dance came about, he says, “completely by chance”; it wasn’t something he had ever thought about. “I had no direction in life really, then a friend called Jenny invited me to an after-school dance class. I went along and the ballet mistress said ‘you can’t just watch you have to join in’. She saw a rough potential and told me to come back the next week, even though I couldn’t afford to pay. It was through her generosity that I found my path; she really nurtured and pushed me; I was so inspired by her.” Roma has been touring to Northern venues and as part of the tour, the company are working with young people at each location they visit. “I grew up in one of the poorest communities and through our engagement work we want to show that you can be from the North of England and have a successful career in the arts. Visibility is so important.” Lo-Guidice hopes that people will relate to the themes in Roma. “It’s a universal story in many ways. And I’d like people to take away a sense of pride about the North and the beauty of all those diverse communities that so much of the North is built on.” For him personally, the performance in York will quite significant as both his parents will be in the audience. “They haven’t seen each other since my mum left and although I have a memory of living in Italy, I don’t really remember my parents together, so that performance in York Minster, for all sorts of reasons, is going to be very special.”

Roma is at York Minster on November 25 at 7.30pm. yorkminster.org