Archives for March 2007

The Beginning
Imagine…. A World Wide Web with no blogs, no streaming video, no Google, hardly any graphics worthy of the name. A 56.6K modem was the newest, fastest way to get yourself on the WWW but only the really cool people had them. In 1997, this primitive world was real, and voiceofdance.com stepped up to try to integrate the physical world of dance with this new, still quite mysterious medium. VOD is now celebrating its tenth anniversary, and while the site’s name and fundamental mission have remained constant, the changes in and around it have been steady as well.

In 1997, we could not have imagined just how the Internet would settle into the pervasive resource that it is now. What makes Voice of Dance’s story timeless (at least, timeless in terms of the very short lifetime of the WWW), is the story of people seeking a cheap, effective way to speak back to those who would not listen to them, and to connect directly to their community.

At the time, the San Francisco Chronicle had one full-time dance critic. VOD co-founder Lori Smith Sparrow was a fundraiser finishing a capital campaign for the San Francisco Ballet, and she had the unpleasant experience of being told that donors wouldn’t give because the local reviews had been poor–even though critics in New York and Paris had been positive. The sense in the dance community was that this critic, Octavio Roca, was writing reviews that went beyond negative and actually discouraged people from seeing dance. Many were afraid that, as Smith Sparrow puts it, dance “couldn’t survive an assault from inside.” Reviews, of course, impact audiences, but negative ones can also cripple artists’ ability to write compelling press releases and strong grant applications, which affects whether or not they are able to continue to make dance. The dance community was at the mercy of one person’s viewpoint, which is not a good deal for anyone.

There was a series of community meetings, bringing together many of the strongest forces in the Bay Area’s modern dance and ballet community, including the San Francisco Ballet, ODC, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, and Dancers’ Group’s Wayne Hazzard. The upshot was the founding of VOD by Smith Sparrow and investment banker F. Warren Hellman. VOD began as a place for Bay Area dance lovers and dance makers to be heard, to prevent the conversation on dance from being a series of monologues by critics. As Smith Sparrow points out, if you write a letter to the editor, it may not be printed; and usually, this is the only chance you have to present a different point of view. So, when the site started, it included traditional reviews but also, significantly, a forum where users could write their own reviews of performances of their choice.

The Middle: Unexpected Changes
Once Voice of Dance went online in 1997, it began evolving almost immediately. One change was that the public turned out to be either shy or lazy, and didn’t leap at the opportunity to shout out their own reactions to the dance they saw. Instead, Smith Sparrow found that people wanted to know where they could take dance classes and which performances were coming up. So, VOD listened to its audience and added class directories and a calendar of performances by VOD members. Also, though VOD was intended to be a local site addressing the lack of critical dialogue specifically in the Bay Area, within three months it had started to include national information because it had visitors from across the U.S. Within a year, its scope was international, again because of its visitors. These changes directed the focus of the site away from the local critical issue; Smith Sparrow points out that the national and international visitors “couldn’t care less” about it.

The Present, and the Future
At this point, VOD is a two-person operation, with Carmen Carnes, also a choreographer, assisting Smith Sparrow in the day-to-day site operations; contractors help out with technical matters and design for the site. You would never guess this from visiting the VOD site, which has a wide range of resources and is updated frequently. What’s included in the site is constantly changing. The featured professional critics now include a letter from London by Barbara Newman, Anna Kisselgoff (formerly of The New York Times), Mindy Aloff (also from NY), sometimes Rachel Howard, and longtime contributor Allan Ulrich (both SF). VOD is starting to work more with video, a natural for dance: a video they produced is already available and more are to come. Early on, the site offered online chats with notable people in the dance world; Smith Sparrow would like to revisit these using video, so the audience can actually watch someone respond to questions. They’re also considering offering podcast previews, so viewers could access an interview with a choreographer right before going to their show.

Smith Sparrow has never lost sight of the initial impulse behind the creation of Voice of Dance, and the technology is finally getting ready for her. Soon, anyone visiting the site will be able to comment on reviews easily and quickly; the technology is much more user-friendly now, so people should actually do it. This tool brings the site a lot closer to its longtime goal of allowing discussions of dance to move beyond statements by critics to a more multi-dimensional, conversational model. Blogs are another method for encouraging a wide range of people to contribute their ideas about dance, and VOD is in the process of starting several geographically-based blogs in areas where there are both dance audiences and a reliable moderator (SF, NY, London).

“Always the plan was to have many voices talking about dance, not just one,” says Smith Sparrow. She sees dance as a living art form which may change from performance to performance; she’d like to include several reviews of the same piece or even of the same performance, so dance could have something like the range of perspectives focused on movies. She compares dance to wine, because people without specialized knowledge feel intimidated and unable to evaluate what they see; some are even discouraged from going to see it in the first place. Many reviews are “unreachable”; VOD may play with how they present reviews to make them more immediately approachable.

Hearing Smith Sparrow talk about how dance and dance criticism interrelate offers a glimpse of an alternate reality, one where dance’s immediacy and changeability are understood and no one is afraid to react to what they see. Choreographers, dancers and audiences benefit from true, open, intelligent, engaged criticism, and dance is strengthened. Utopian, yes; but if no one imagines the future how will we get there?

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This article appeared in the March 2007 issue of In Dance.

Constant change is par for the course in the dance community –the idea of lost or outgrown space, lost sponsorship, lost partners or lost dancers is quite common. Yet dance artists in the Bay Area continue to prove themselves committed enough to keep moving forward in the midst of change. Such was the case with the Dance IS Festival, which is now entering its fourth year.

Heading into the planning of this fourth year last June, we were facing a whole new scenario. Due to restructuring at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, the Dance IS Festival fell into a category of programs that the center could no longer support. Given the blessing to take the program on ourselves, Jill Randall and I, the co-directors of the festival, decided to run with it and keep it alive. We met with Wayne Hazzard at Dancers’ Group to try to convince him of our commitment to the festival and of our potential for partnership. Wayne was very supportive of our process and agreed to a partnership which we’re still working on defining – as Wayne put it, “We’re figuring it out as we go.” The support of Dancers’ Group was just the thing we needed to feel confident about moving forward.

Believe it or not, Dance IS really started on September 11th, 2001. That happened to be the day we had planned a Town Hall meeting at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, asking the dance community how we could help and what we could offer the world of dance. We had thirty-one RSVPs on September 10th as we were planning our agenda. Coming into the office on morning of the 11th, we thought we needed to cancel. But one by one, more than half of the confirmed attendees called or e-mailed to see if we were still meeting, so we went ahead. The commitment of the dance community, on such a chaotic, frightening day, to come out and talk about what was important to them, convinced us that we were focusing our efforts in the right place.

In the beginning, our steering committee was dedicated to the idea of creating community. Many of them had participated in festivals where they’d simply shown up and performed, but didn’t get a chance to see the other performances, or even to talk with any of the other dancers or choreographers. What came about from this concern was the Dance Shares. We decided that the choreographers and their dancers would come together a month before the performance to get a chance to see each other’s work and to give and receive feedback.

To an outside viewer, Dance IS may look very similar to how it’s looked over the last four years. But from the inside, we’ve been working to refine and improve the festival – largely based on feedback from the participants and audience members each year. By distilling the elements of the festival down to their essential components, we fine-tune the experience for the dancers, choreographers and finally for the audience.

The support we’ve received from Dancers’ Group was enhanced by other community members and groups who have shown up for us in so many ways – saving us money, giving us a new look, documenting the process of the shares in February… Rebecca Johnson has been with us since the very beginning of the creation of this festival acting as our PR representative all four years, and this year stepping up to become our graphic designer – giving us a whole new look for Dance IS. She’s also one of the panel-selected professional choreographers presenting work this year. Sue Li-Jue secured space on the UC campus this year for our shares, and Rob Kunkle who beautifully captured the essence of the shares on camera last year, is lined up to do the same this year. ACOE (Alameda County Office of Education) inspired our name with their Art IS Education Month campaign, and they continue to support the festival with promotion and outreach. Without all of this community support, Jill and I just would not have been able to create the quality program that this year’s festival is turning out to be.

Looking forward to year five, we would like to hand-select our professional choreographers, commissioning the creation of new works based on the theme of the festival. We are already grant-writing, seeking funding to make this possible.

So why come to the Dance IS performances this year? Co-director Jill Randall suggests, “Have this be the year of surprises. Come with an open mind; let go of the categories of ‘professional’ and ‘student.’ Come to a show and see who and what is catching your eye, inspiring you, and giving you hope for the role of dance in our society.”

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This article appeared in the March 2007 issue of In Dance.

I spoke with Kate Mitchell and her collaborating guest artists, Brittany Brown Ceres and Katie Faulkner, about the upcoming project, “Spirit House,” its themes, and the process of building a collaborative work. It is a seven section, evening-length work for seven dancers. The theme is based upon the concept of the human longing for transformation. Many of the visual elements come from Thai Spirit Houses which are built as containers for spirits. In this work the imagery is the result of asking how to house spirits in a modern western context.

How have the themes of transformation and spirit informed each of your choreographic processes?

Brittany–I had the good fortune to work with a section that is actually completely about transformation. I came in wanting to know who the dancers were as individuals and what they were going to bring to the table. I had a preconceived notion of a starting place of a phrase that I wanted to see in my body and instead of showing it to them, I wrote it down and read them the words. That’s where the individual choices came, so that I could use their first instinct as a starting place.

Kate–In my choreographic process I’ve moved within each section from a transmission of data- it started out with clear concept and specific dance steps- to evolution and transformation within each section. This piece started out with ideas that I have been thinking a lot about. One was becoming aware of the degraded state that our President has put us in as torturers. How can people do that? If they can do that it suddenly means that every human being has the capability, and then how do you contain that? How can you transform that? And then secondly, reaching a certain age and looking back and realizing that life is not infinite. And wanting to make sense of that and make peace with it. At least try to really put myself out there while I am here. Even though I often find otherwise, the more I go out on a limb, actually the better it is. The more rewarding, the more satisfying, and I think more satisfying for other people, because then other people can respond to something specific and tangible as opposed to something vague.

Katie–What I was really drawn to was the challenge of it. Could I choreograph something that really came from me despite it having been some one else’s idea? My section is the fifth section, and the ideas that Kate gave me were a small palette of words: communication, connectivity, lushness, green. So ostensibly there has been a transformation that has already been occurring through the process of the piece, to the point that we are at this connectedness between the dancers. I had less of a spiritual anchor and more of an interest in the choreographic puzzle of it.

The structure you have created for this collaboration is quite unique in that you are each creating sections separately and then coming together in the end to co-create the final section. Have you seen each other’s sections or is it more independent? How much input is given?

Kate–We have each been choreographing independently and visiting each others’ rehearsals during the process.

Katie–When I started I hadn’t seen anything, and I really didn’t see anything for quite a while, until I was halfway into having made my section. Which was both terrifying and interesting.

Kate–I have offered some input to both Katie and Brittany because I have the overall view, the steering wheel. And I’m hoping that they will have some input for me. As the work evolves we three are becoming more connected. One thing that I found fascinating was that working independently we have already come up with dance motifs that echo each other and trace invisible lines from one piece to the next.

What process do you use when co-choreographing the collaborative final section, section seven?

Brittany–I think that Section seven has been a lot about listening. Particularly because of the journey the dancers have been on up until now, and it is the last thing that we have attacked. We wanted to listen to them in a way that was different when creating the other sections. And I think that has come into play also with each other. We’ve really paid careful attention to the energy, as opposed to walking into the room with any kind of agenda.

Kate–We also all sat down and free associated what is meant by the word “spirit” and what is meant by the word “house.” And there was a lot of synergy.

Brittany–We asked the dancers to pick movements that would represent each section. They came up with things that we wouldn’t have said “Oh, that’s a quintessential movement!” But to them it spoke and that’s a really exciting thing. Because I am thinking of my own individual journey of things that pop out as learning moments are not necessarily this great class or this one individual, they are just these little moments in time where something finally sunk in. Which is exactly what this is about.

We’ve spoken a bit about how you have had themes pop up by serendipity through the work, but what have you done to cultivate continuity so that it does read as a complete piece? Do you foresee changes in choreography happening?

Kate–I don’t think that major choreographic changes will need to be made. It’s going to be a subtle aesthetic tweak here and there. But we don’t want to hammer people over the head.

Katie–The reality is that we are each contributing our own take and that being the case there is going to be some diversity in the way the whole evening plays out. Kate, what was it about this particular project that made you want to collaborate with other people?

Kate–I had been wanting to work with other people on a project. I’d thought about working with other people before, particularly as a designer with another choreographer. Then also I really like Brittany and Katie’s work; I just think that it is so fresh and dynamic. I guess maybe subconsciously I wanted to learn from them. And yeah, it is risky. You know, a lot of times people say to me, “Wow, you are so brave!” Which usually makes me feel more nervous. Like, oh I must be doing something really stupid if they’re saying that. But you know, we all took a risk and it is turning out to be really, really fruitful. Collaborating turned out to be really, really well suited to the whole concept.

Brittany–Yeah, here is inherent reverence in the concept. Which might mean that we come to it from a different space.

Kate–In the past I felt isolated as a person attempting to make interesting work. I don’t have people to talk to about it or to throw ideas around with. So this has really been great to be able to talk to other choreographers. It’s really been so wonderful for me to see how they work. Which is very differently. Katie I think works very much from the inside and expands outward, and then from what I can see of Brittany, she almost does the opposite.

Katie–I think that one of our challenges for section seven is that we all have a real gravitation toward form in our manipulation of material. I think that we all can get really seduced by just that. Our challenge is to really deepen it and have it maintain a sense of meaning because here it is, the point of arrival and we’ve gone on this long process together, and what, WHAT is this?

Brittany–So “make the point” as opposed to continue investigating.

Katie–But you know, I think that maybe we were drawn to working together because manipulation of material, form, structure and architecture and all of that is so appealing. So how do we allow that to have more layers?

Brittany–Speaking of architecture: Kate threw us a curve ball in the middle of the rehearsal process, which was that the audience is going to be on both sides. And who ever makes a dance that is going to be viewed from the back? And suddenly changing that whole concept of what is the back. So that was a very cool thing.

Katie–I was really nervous about it at first, but then it became really satisfying.

Brittany–And it’s been really exciting for the dancers. In talking with them they are just completely on. There is just never a moment when they’re not facing the audience no matter what they are doing.

Kate–Basically now there’s two downstages and then one center stage. There’s no upstage. I didn’t plan that. I had a more traditional seating arrangement in mind. But then after talking to Walter Holden, our lighting designer, and Wendy and Eric at ODC, we cooked up this alternate plan.

Brittany–I think a great opportunity for the audience actually too. To look through the dance and actually see a reflection of themselves on the other side. And think, “Wow, I am watching myself watch this.”

Kate–It squares off the room and creates more of a sense of a house.

This is Kate Mitchell’s third season collaborating with lighting designer Walter Holden and sound designer Richard Friedman. What has it been like to work with them this time around?

Kate–Richard Friedman is composing three sections of the work. He and I have really developed a shared language which we didn’t have in the beginning. I would say, “The dancers are flowing.” And he would say, “Huh?” It is important to note that he is actually serving as music director. He has included the works of several other composers, like Jacques Poulin-Denis, Alarm WillSound, and Evan Zipporyn. So with Richard, we’re trying to also create an arch of sounds and musical textures, so each section is individual but it makes sense that they come together.

Walter Holden has always listened to my ideas and then bounced back with a whole set of additional ideas expanding on my thoughts and improving them. I love to work with him because he is so enthusiastic.

Kate, I know you are the Artistic Director; have Katie and Brittany’s ideas changed your original concept?

Kate–Definitely they have changed how I’m thinking choreographically. Their ideas resonated with mine but also shaped and reshaped mine. Their energy is infectious.

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This article appeared in the March 2007 issue of In Dance.

Special Feature: dance & disability
The following articles examine questions of virtuosity and difference explored in Jess Curtis/Gravity’s Under the Radar, a full-evening work dealing with issues of ability and disability with an international cast of disabled and non-disabled performers. Events around the performance include a film series and panel discussion including CounterPULSE, AXIS Dance Company, the Arts and Disability Network, and the CSUEB Dance for All Bodies and Abilities Program. For event times and details, visit jesscurtisgravity.org or counterpulse.org.

How can our contact with another body or object change the range of our movement potential? Can two people’s limitations or “dis-abilities” combine to become virtuosic? When do our skills become liabilities? Which is more beautiful, our fragility or our strength?

These questions were some of the beginning points for Under the Radar, an international collaborative performance project by my company, Gravity, which features a cast of professional performers with and without physical disabilities.

Several years ago, I was invited by Rachel Freeman, the director of Blue Eyed Soul Dance Company in Shrewsbury, England, to come and teach a workshop in aerial dance for her physically inclusive dance company. Rachel had seen some of the aerial work that I had been part of in Company Cahin- Caha’s production, raWdoG, and wondered if our work with ropes and harnesses could be taught to people with mobility impairments. This experience led to my facilitating a number of events involving the use of Contact Improvisation and Aerial Dance as teaching tools for persons with disabilities ranging from severe mobility impairments such as Cerebral Palsy, and Traumatic Spinal cord injury to Blindness, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and severe Osteoporosis. After being invited to Great Britain by Blue Eyed Soul, I and members of Gravity were invited to Paris, France by the Isle de Danse Festival and Theatre de Cachan to teach both Aerial Dance and Contact Improvisation to disabled students and professionals. Through these experiences we have had the opportunity to develop physical and pedagogical models that are both inclusive for those with mobility impairments and expressive of the unique movement potential of each individual. I also found that the use of performance based techniques such as contact improvisation and aerial equipment and techniques (harnesses, fabric loops, ropes, trapeze etc.) allowed for persons with a wide variety of physicalities to alter and extend their range of mobility.

I certainly don’t mean to give the impression that we discovered this work. The use of Contact Improvisation and dance-based practices in physically inclusive settings has been pioneered by a wide range of artists and teachers, notably Alito Alessi, Emery Blackwell and Karen Nelson of Joint Forces Dance in Eugene Oregon, and their Dance-ability work, AXIS Dance Company in Oakland, Blue Eyed Soul, and CanDoCo in Britain to name just a few. Our work has been very much reliant on the previous work of these people and others.

While doing this teaching I met Kaz Langley, a professional performer from London who happens to have Cerebral Palsy. I was immediately taken by Kaz’s performance presence and the unique qualities of motion that occur as she moves. I also found that working with bodies that are visibly other than our standard idea of normal started to reframe my entire sense of what is beautiful. Peeling back my expectations of normalcy I was able to appreciate an even broader diversity of possible expression of the human body.

It occurred to me that the outcomes of these teaching experiences were extremely interesting elements for the making of theatrical work; that the expansion of physical possibilities through contact and aerial equipment was in fact the essence of spectacle or circus and that the uniqueness of the physicalities and special skills of many of the people I was meeting was actually one of the theoretical elements defining virtuosity (albeit not in the traditional way.) I wondered what might happen if we underlined this commonality and paired talented artists with disabilities with other artists who had more traditionally recognized virtuosic abilities and examined the issue of ability, dis-ability beauty and virtuosity in general.

In choosing collaborators I assembled a varied group of individuals with a wide variety of talents, skills and tendencies. Of particular interest to me was this re-framing of the concept of virtuosity. I am interested to find the virtuosic edge, if you will, of each performer’s capabilities. For one performer this may entail standing on her hands for two minutes in a variety of physical shapes, for another it may be the carefully calibrated unison timing with a partner who is falling, for another it is the finely tuned movement of her weight through a graceful arc in the air over her crutches, all informed by years of daily training. In each situation we observe the performer working with an incredible focus to integrate the physical forces at play into a distinct act of beauty or strength. For another performer this act may be that of simply standing by herself and walking a circle on the stage without assistance. For her this action requires as much or more “talent” or “skill” as another performer’s back flip. And it entails at least as much risk. The skill with which Kaz Langley is able to integrate the intense variety of random physical impulses provided by her body is a virtuosic act of improvisational presence and physical talent. Claire Cunningham, another of my collaborators from Glasgow, Scotland, walks (and dances) on crutches (and up walls), and has created a very expressive movement vocabulary with them.

Kaz’s and Claire’s skill and clarity as performers help to deconstruct this concept of virtuosity for the viewer, allowing them to see beyond the first layer of tricks and gimmicks and into the true virtuosity of presence, focus, and discipline that underlie the true art of living in a body.

Beginning to teach in a physically inclusive setting has taught me many things. Very quickly one comes up against the inherent prejudice and assumption in much of our language around disability. The attempt to change how we use language is often ridiculed as “political correctness” but words are inherently wrapped up in how we conceive of things. Changing our language is one of the most tangible and simple step we can take toward changing our minds. For instance, the distinction between referring to someone as having a disability versus being a disabled person is a big one. Disability is usually not the central element of a person’s identity and most people with disabilities would rather not have themselves branded indelibly with that big letter D. In fact more recent language in the new-ish field of Disability Studies makes the distinction between one’s physical impairment, (i.e. the physical or medical condition itself) and the contextual nature of disability. As my colleague Kaz explained to me, “my CP (Cerebral Palsy) is my impairment, and perhaps by extension my difficulty in walking. My disability is created by a society which builds houses with stairs in them. I would never build a house with stairs for myself. I am dis-abled by the stairs and the cultural practice of building a structure which does not account for my physicality.”

In Under the Radar we play with reversing this relationship. Because of Kaz’s unique physicality there are a variety of things that she can do with her body, which many of us cannot do (for example she has amazing quickness due to the tonus of her muscles and extreme flexibility in her legs in several directions.) In one section of the new work, Kaz leads us through a dance based in her body’s abilities. As she becomes the standard by which we measure our ability, the rest of us are dis-abled to varying degrees.

Another important piece for me was just the act of differentiation, taking the time to see people as individuals and acknowledge the inherent uniqueness of each person’s situation and by extension respond to them as individuals. I’ve found that the more specific I am in dealing with anyone’s disability the more effective and useful my responses become (surprise, surprise, this is a pretty effective strategy in life in general.) For example a big one in this work is distinguishing between people with physical impairments and cognitive impairments. While there are some issues that cross over, people with physical impairments don’t appreciate being treated as though they have difficulty understanding you. Further than this pretty-obvious distinction, distinguishing between mobility impairment, visual impairment and hearing impairment has very functional ramifications. And further still, the differences between kinds of mobility impairments are extremely relevant in teaching about movement, people with spinal cord injuries have very different realities than people with CP, or people who are missing limbs.

In spite of its somewhat intellectual beginnings, our new piece, Under the Radar, is turning out not to feel so much like an intellectual analysis of physical diversity and virtuosity, but more like a little underground cabaret. It’s quite entertaining. There is a lot of humor and play and the individual personalities of each performer come through to expose a kind of rogues’ gallery of diverse characters. I was happy however, when a colleague who has a PhD in Dance Theory, after seeing our recent presentation of the work in Berlin, asked if we were consciously playing on the fact that the cabaret, or Variété as the French, and sometimes the Germans, call it has historically been the performing art form within which persons with disabilities, or people whose bodies varied widely from the norm, were able to find work as performing artists. I replied that we hadn’t really intended that, but I was happy that she had pointed it out. I guess that is the point of the work we have been doing after all. Vive la Variété.

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This article appeared in the March 2007 issue of In Dance.

Some years back, I reviewed a wonderful piece of devised movement that took themes from Puccini’s Madam Butterfly and–instead of dutifully representing the narrative–conjured up a sense of Butterfly’s world and its rigidly formal culture while poignantly expressing the fragile, vulnerable beauty she shared with her namesake. In the weeks that followed I was buttonholed in various foyers by people who’d read the review: some were indignant–I hadn’t said it was an integrated company who were performing–while others were simply delighted by the very same omission.

Actually, I’d been so caught up in the joy and invention of the piece that doing a tally of those with learning difficulties, those with physical disabilities and those who seemed to have neither–but who could have been hearing or sight impaired – was never going to be a critical priority. But that polarised feedback still shadows my thoughts when–as increasingly happens nowadays–I see performances where wheelchair users are key driving forces in the action, or the dancers have special needs. Because I know that for some–off-stage and on–these performances represent crucial building blocks in their campaign for more equal opportunities across the board, but yet I wonder if the art should–can–be separated from the very real social and political issues that still attend how we respond to disabled people. I have no ready reckoner on this one: but the bottom-line of ‘is it good work?’ always seems to surface… and that’s the standpoint that informs the review.

As I write this, I’m remembering an interview I once did with David Toole when he was dancing with CandoCo, a forerunner in the field of UK integrated companies. He remarked, with a mix of amusement and exasperation, that some audiences were fine with integration until, as happened in an Emilyn Claid piece, the guy in the wheelchair (him) started to show anger, aggression or worse still, sexual arousal. Getting ‘hands on’ with a gorgeous, blonde able-bodied girl produced what he felt was a distinctly hostile, ‘distancing’ reaction from the audience. He joked that he could hear spines snapping bolt upright, in innate disapproval.

I still find this a disquieting, fascinating issue: it implies ‘degrees of permission’ that are different for artists with disability–and questions of what gives audiences a ‘feel-good’ factor when watching these artists perform. Toole reckoned, back then, that there was a kind of patronising, allowance-making in the part of audiences that stopped well short of recognising him (with his lack of lower limbs) as a functioning male with hormones, desires and imagination. In turn, of course, this meant that work which entailed every bit as much professional rigour, skill and performative ability as, say, a ballet dancer doing pointe-work, wasn’t rated or understood as being of a similar calibre.

Now anyone who has met Claire Cunningham–currently working with Jess Curtis in Under the Radar–will soon realise two things. One: Claire, who has used crutches since her mid-teens because of osteoporosis, has a training regime that is as demanding and strenuous as any dancer, athlete or aerial artist. Two: Claire’s way of moving–her intention of, as she says, “making disability an ability”–has a distinctive aesthetic that is truly ground-breaking, not least because it takes her, and us, out of dance-theatre’s comfort zone.

Claire, already possessed of a thrilling singing voice which– had training colleges been more accommodating–might well have taken her into opera or concert recitals, could have continued working with Sounds of Progress, a Glasgow-based integrated music-theatre company. Instead, she pushed her body and her thinking in new directions. Decided to find ways of using the upper body strength she had developed through using crutches–and fixed on aerial work because she “felt more confident relying on my arms than my legs.” She also joked that she could just as easily fall and fracture something outside her own front door as she could falling from a trapeze – then, to her own surprise, discovered that the floor work she was doing in dance classes was building muscular strength in her back and her legs. I still have the e-mail where she said “The most obvious and exciting part is that I have found I have grown 3cm–a girl with osteoporosis grows 3 cms at 29 years of age!” Thanks to a Creative Scotland Award–a financing initiative for outstanding projects–she was en route to Pittsburgh, at the time, to spend six weeks in one-to-one workshops with Bill Shannon, aka The Crutchmaster.

It’s the kind of learning curve that many a professional dancer, with no disability to contend with, would find challenging. For Claire, however, it is only one aspect of what she is working towards: a movement vocabulary that is indeed integrated, with her crutches and her physicality an intrinsic part of its line, dynamic and expressiveness. Personally, I can’t wait to review her first shows in Scotland.

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This article appeared in the March 2007 issue of In Dance.

“You should be a dancer.” For years my best friend Linda (who is a dancer), had been saying this to me. I can’t say what my reply to her was; I don’t think they would allow me to print it, but it was always accompanied by derisory laughter on my part. This attitude towards dancers was not some sort of discrimination–let’s get that straight before you all lynch or sue me. It’s just that I had very stereotypical ideas of what dance was and the kind (physically) of person who did it. And that person wasn’t on crutches and it wasn’t me. So how is it now, here I am…emm, oh god, it’s hard to say it… (grits teeth), a dancer, performing in Jess Curtis/Gravity’s new show – Under the Radar? (Sorry Linda. You were right).

I’ll try to explain. I have a physical impairment as a result of osteoporosis–my bones are weaker than average and my shinbones in particular are very susceptible to fracture. As a result I have used crutches since I was 15, mainly as a preventative medicine, to minimise weight on my legs and back. I studied as a classical singer. That was always what I wanted to do. I just wanted to sing – I didn’t want audiences to see me or look at the way I walked. It was the song that mattered and nothing else. So I minimised any movement on stage–walk on, sing, walk off. For six years I worked mainly in musical theatre in Scotland, with an inclusive music company called Sounds of Progress. I had a lot of success with them but despite critical acclaim, work was sporadic and the only people offering it to me were disability arts companies. I was consistently working with the same people and largely playing to the same audiences. It felt like preaching to the converted. In order to get out of the loop I had to make myself more employable. Singing was not sufficient–I needed to have additional performance skills.

In 2004 I began to wonder about the upper body strength that I had developed as a result of using the crutches. I had always disliked it as being very “unfeminine,” but eventually thought “Well, I’m stuck with it, how can I use it to my advantage?” I started learning aerial dance skills. My aerial training prompted me to apply for a job with Blue Eyed Soul Dance Company, an inclusive dance company based in England that was looking to create an integrated aerial duet. I got the job and poor Jess Curtis arrived to make the piece only to be greeted by me; “Hi. I’m not a dancer. I don’t dance.” Luckily he didn’t fire me. Instead he rather carefully introduced me to contact improvisation. I was completely unaccustomed to physical contact. I suppose it must have been a bit like breaking in a horse! Dancers are very tactile. Scottish and British people are not terribly tactile in general.

Contact was therefore quite an overload, mentally and physically. Rolling about on the floor with someone was the kind of thing that, as an adult, I would only consider doing in private, with someone who had at least bought me dinner. It’s a strange world to come into –and I do not mean to offend Contactors anywhere–I am now converted and love it but it’s an adjustment. I am gradually getting accustomed to the contradictions–lots of hugging and kissing on meeting each other but rolling about on each other means nothing. OK.

In that first project with Jess when doing contact, I left my crutches at the edge of the dance floor as I had no concept of how they could work in terms of movement and thought they would get in the way, I also worried I might hurt the other dancer. In break times however I had a habit of doing little balancing tricks on my crutches (lifting my weight completely into my hands and my feet off the ground). The sort of thing I do to amuse myself when I’m waiting around and I think no-ones watching. It also has a practical purpose–it alleviates the weight in my legs and back if I’m standing. Jess and Jami (the other dancer) became really intrigued by this. I thought everyone that used crutches long–term probably did this. Apparently not.

Jess encouraged me to just play around with this and gradually I myself got interested in what I could do. We worked on moving with the crutches and that was the start of my beginning to learn that I could dance. I applied for, and received, a Creative Scotland Award from the Scottish Arts Council to research the potential for creating my own movement style and in collaboration with my friend and colleague Kally Lloyd-Jones (a former ballet dancer turned contemporary dancer and choreographer) I spent the summer of 2006 creating a training program–tailored specifically to my own body.

It was an incredible experience, both physically and (unexpectedly) emotionally. The aim was to build my strength and stamina and to learn how and why to stretch/warm up/down. A lot of the program was a variation of floor barre- -no weight bearing, as standing and keeping balanced we discovered created a huge amount of tension through my body. We found out so many fascinating things about the way my body had been working. Within six weeks I had muscles that had never been there before. It was particularly obvious to me in my legs which had been very underdeveloped; they looked dramatically different to me–not like my own legs at all. One day in particular I remember I was training and I did a leg exercise and thought, “Okay how do my legs feel?” The first word that came to mind was “strong.” In my life I had never associated, or expected to associate this word with my legs. It was quite upsetting (but in a good way), as like so many things over the last two years another of my beliefs and preconceptions about myself was being turned on its head. On a lighter note though I grew an ass! (Not many women would be pleased about that but I am!)

I think an important aspect of the training and of the time I have spent with dancers in projects such as Under the Radar is learning what is common to all bodies. To find that even the “non-disabled” dancers (that appear to me to have a similar high level of fitness) are in fact reconciling their movement to the (perhaps more subtle) limitations of their bodies was vital for me. Likewise learning to distinguish when something is uncomfortable or difficult for everyone and not just me (i.e. a stretch) made a big difference. It was essential in terms of developing my body awareness; learning to distinguish the ‘right’ kind of pain, i.e. when something was sore simply because it was difficult as opposed to pain because it was the wrong thing for my body. I think in terms of working with people with physical impairments in dance this is a crucial factor. I began to attend a chiropractor–quite a leap of faith when your bones are a bit fragile. He now works regularly on my upper back and neck and this, in combination with having developed muscles to support my spine means I have gained 1.2 inches in height. At my height (now 4 feet 9.9 inches) that makes a big difference!

One of the most striking things for me about working with dancers is that there is a strange similarity to the way I was treated by doctors, but the mentality and the touch is so different. Doctors would point out what was wrong, how things didn’t work, whereas dancers are looking at my body and saying “Wow! That’s interesting…your leg does this!” Not, “Her leg doesn’t do this.” Emotionally it has a huge impact. Dancers, I feel, are looking at ways to take how my body already works and develop that, while as a child I felt physiotherapists were trying to correct how I moved.

As part of my grant I spent six weeks in Pittsburgh studying with Bill Shannon, a performance artist who has crafted his own completely innovative dance style using crutches. Undoubtedly he sees possibilities with the crutches that other choreographers wouldn’t. He taught me to create my own vocabulary–to name the movements that I had and expand on them. He made me aware of some of the choices and tools that dancers are working with–things that would seem very obvious to professional dancers but to me were completely new concepts–levels, speed, rhythm, focus, tension, etc. Bill taught me elements of his own technique that he felt were transferable, and although working one-to-one was incredibly intense and slightly intimidating it boosted my self-confidence tremendously and I left with a distinct feeling of self ownership of my own movement style and the potential I had.

In terms of my current self perception, I know it is dramatically different from two years ago. I am pretty confused these days about who I am as I have found myself doing so many things that I had spent my life saying I couldn’t or wouldn’t do. I feel I am re-inventing myself though and that’s fun. As regards my perception of myself in terms of my physicality, this is gradually changing. I cannot say that I find beauty or grace in the way my body looks or the way I move. I don’t; I find myself clumsy, awkward and wrong. I am a disabled person who has grown up wanting to be “normal,” idolising the aesthetic of perfection and beauty that Hollywood, etc churns out–which makes me feel at times like a traitor in the ranks with friends and colleagues who are very comfortable and proud of their identities as disabled people. However I am now creating a way of working that undeniably relates to being disabled and this is forcing me to examine how I relate to that part of my identity. I also have to accept that other people are seeing beauty and grace in the way I look and move. My work with Jess and in particular Under the Radar, in the discussions it has provoked and in the physical work I have been part of, has forced me to acknowledge this. This may be another thing I have to let go of. In the same way that I believed I would never use the word “strong” in relation to my legs, I may have to accept that soon I may actually become graceful.

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This article appeared in the March 2007 issue of In Dance.