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Rose Rouse is a London-based writer who used to be a freelance features journalist for the Guardian, Evening Standard and Independent. Before that, she wrote for The Face – interviews with French and Saunders, Jimmy Boyle, Germaine Greer and Test Department – Time Out and music paper, Sounds.
‘We had a lot of freedom at Sounds, one minute I was writing about the effervescent pop and distinctive hair cuts of A Flock of Seagulls, the next minute, I was reviewing Frankie Goes To Hollywood or researching an article on heroin. I relished the eclecticism of that era.’
In 1997, musician and publisher, Caralinda Booth invited her to edit a new arts magazine for women, The Passion. Each issue came with a CD of new music – from Babble to The Georgian Folk Ensemble. There were accompanying salons in bohemian locations too with subjects such as Heaven and Hell.
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During the mid-2000s - an uncomfortable time for freelance journalists when newspapers and magazines were cutting down on commissions and the Internet was threatening their existence - Rose was commissioned to write Missing. It was to contain the often unbearably painful personal stories of relatives of missing people who were inevitably and horribly caught in limboland. After that, there was a second book Last Letters To Loved Ones – final letters for instance, written as poignant goodbyes from pilots during the Second World War as well as moving letters to their families from people dying with terminal cancer. They were tough emotional terrains.
By 2010, she decided she wanted to start a new book project that she initiated herself. She embarked on four year mission to uncover/discover Harlesden where she lives in a way that she hadn’t known it before. Walking and talking was her modus operandi. The interview on the move - where she aims to take in the landscape as well as aspects of the other person. It became a blog Not On Safari In Harlesden which then became the book A London Safari – walking adventures in NW10.
Her neighbour at the time, Louis Theroux – they went on a wander through Harlesden High St and ended up at a Victorian hotel in the middle of Stonebridge checking out a room together, an extremely bland room that Louis managed to wax lyrically about - referred to her as ‘Harlesden’s blog laureate’ later in his introduction to the book. She also walked with Rhoda Ibrahim, a Somali community organiser; Amjad/Danny who ran the newsagents, Sweetland; Johnny, the gregarious hairdresser and one of the Park Parade originals; Faisal, the international artist/barber. They all helped her re-imagine Harlesden. A London Safari was serialised in the Independent and Brenda Emmanus interviewed her for television’s BBC London news.
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During this walking and talking book project, she felt drawn to interact with Harlesden differently. Inspired by the artist, Sophie Calle – who personalised telephone boxes in New York and gave people the opportunity to leave messages – she made a sign saying Talk To Me and took a chair down to the Jubilee Clock which is a landmark in the centre of Harlesden. People often strolled by with bemused glances but Gloria who was preaching nearby, came over though and was initially dismissive – you gypsy woman – but later keen to recount her own sexy stories with billowing cackles. And then there was the gentleman who thought he was JFK. He ended up having a hug with Rose. ‘I realised,’ she says, ‘that I hadn’t thought about how to stop people talking to me but in the end, it happened naturally.’
And there are the dance videos too. Dance Willesden Junction (2012) - ‘There are beautifully, atmospheric and tender moments’ The Londonist - directed by her son Marlon Rouse Tavares and Tania Pedre, saw her gather nine friends (mostly 5 Rhythms dancers) together, invite them to dress in red and interact with both the landscape and passers by. Rose asked them to consider – ‘Can the bleak be beautiful?’ – they found it could.
It was the tenderness of that dance that affected her. The softness of their connections in a dank, piss-stenched tunnel as they danced to Al Green’s I’m Still in Love with You. She took this gentleness and vulnerability to the middle of Harlesden in 2013 with Dance Harlesden. One Sunday, she invited ten friends come to her flat dressed as though they’d been up all night and then walked in silence as in pilgrimage down to the landmark Jubilee Clock. There, their movements unfolded amid cars and lorries. Some locals were entranced, others puzzled, others amused. Phil Dale’s bassoon was the hypnotic call at the core of this improvised performance. Some of them rolled across the concrete; others simply embraced as if the end of the world was nigh.
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Influences have been all manner of personal development workshops. In 1993, she split with the father of her son after 12 years together; she then embarked on a rich seam of experiential workshops. Group therapy was what really got to her blood and bones. It all started on Skyros in therapist and author Malcolm Stern’s session called Courage To Love, she realised that there was unconditional love that could be accessed. It promised a more nourished existence. There was a year group with Malcolm Stern, 5 Rhythms, learning to read Tarot cards, The Hoffman Process, Tantra workshops with Jan Day, the Field of Love for nine years, and the Path of Love, a 7 day intensive. Oh and Shadow work. And two women’s groups that she co-created. They acted collectively as a way of living differently, of being able to say what was wrong personally and feel okay, of knowing she was loved. She fell in love with group dynamics. She is still drawn to circles of people sharing deeply their personal stories, the ones they don’t usually tell at dinner time.
By 2015, she’d met Suzanne Noble – at a Lynne Frank’s event at the Hospital club in Covent Garden – and later that year started the Hot Tub sessions. Oh, what a delight. After the grief and anger of women’s groups – it’s a great thing to express them – here was something lighter and frothier and very funny. They spent amazing times in that hot tub. They still do. And it accompanied times when her mum had Alzheimer’s. It was a fabulous peacock feather in a treacherous swamp.
From the hot tub emerged the idea of Advantages of Age – these older women were sick of being portrayed as sagging, exhausted and unsexy – so they thought they’d create a group where the older members felt celebrated. Rose went away to Bali and by the time she returned, Suzanne had made a website. They were up and running in 2016. Photo by Linda Nyland.
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Rose and Suzanne became the co-founders, Dolly Alderton from the Sunday Times’ Style magazine explained that Rose and Suzanne described members of Advantages of Age as outageists but I prefer to think of them as the punks of ageing. They wouldn’t argue with that.
Arts Council England gave them a grant to put on a series of events – micro hot tub salons - that explored taboos around ageing. There was a Taboo club night, the Flamboyant Forever Bus – where seventy people all Over 50 dressed up extravagantly and strutted their stuff down the King’s Rd, at Hyde Parke – and create the Death Dinner performance and film. There were micro salons in the tub on death, style and sex. The FB group Advantages of Age – Baby Boomers and Beyond also started.
Also in 2017, Rose published her first poetry pamphlet Tantric Goddess on Eyewear. She has been writing the poems for many years on her own and as part of John Stammers’ The Group.
In 2019, she sent her partner, Asanga Judge ten poems and he produced ten watercolour paintings as illustrations, they became the book Wild Land which they exhibited as part of the Llyn Arts Festival that year.
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Also in 2019, she won a Brent2020 Culture Fund award to form The Willesden Junction Poets and create the book of their poems BeWILDering. The huge station with its wasteland, narrow side alleys, tracks and mysterious corners - became a theatre for the poets to experience and write about. One of the memorable visits was with botanist John Wells where they found over 40 types of wild flower. Another was with artist/filmmaker, Tereza Stehlikova who considers WJ a place of enchantment and wrote a blog about their adventure there called The Fruits of Willesden Junction. BeWILDering was illustrated by typewriter artist Keira Rathbone; her typics of pigeons and the building on stilts are a brilliant part of the project.
In 2021, Rose received an Arts Council England grant to create a dance performance Dance Me To Death with nine Over-60s non-professional dancers and the young choreographers, Rhys Dennis and Waddah Sinada from FUBUNATION. Rose was the main producer, ran workshops on ritual, death and dying plus danced in the production. The performance took place in Kensal Green Cemetery to much acclaim and many tears. ‘We faced into death and dying, we had a procession where we carried objects that represented our lost ones. We honoured our beloved dead as well as those who had died from Covid 19.’
A short film of Dance Me To Death – which is distinct from the performance and a way of using different locations in the cemetery to show off the dance – was screened at her local independent cinema, the Lexi, and is now going out to festivals.
She is about to return to editing and completing an unfinished non-fiction book UNsung London where she walks and talks to different people from mudlarker, Jason Sandy to musician Billy Bragg to academic and writer, Marina Warner. Watch this space. Photo by Birgitta Hosea.