Articles

The Dance of Disability

Janice Florence

As a dancer who, suddenly in a five-minute accidental fall acquired a permanent and major disability, I had no choice but to expand my practice to make it inclusive of my new physical self. I was my first project. I began merely desiring to keep dancing, even if it turned out to be just a private practice. But my exploration was to broaden in ways I never imagined. I came eventually to work with people with a broad range of disabilities and although I could apply some of what I had learned about myself, I found it was necessary to expand my ideas and my practice to encompass their individuality.

I was fortunate in being already thoroughly steeped in improvisational dance forms which could be stretched and shaped to accommodate my own and then other people's diverse body states. More rigid techniques may not have been as adaptable.

The aesthetic of ballet, a French court style of the seventeenth century, has been dominant in forming the idea of what a dancer is and should be. Youth, attractiveness of a particular kind, prescribed size and shape ,ethereal, sylph-like ,still inform people's concept of the dancer. Even weight and age exclude people from this world. People with disability certainly don't fit the mould. In addition, they would often find it impossible to perform the steps basic to ballet and to much contemporary dance technique.

The idea that someone with a disability might dance is often greeted with incredulity and this for me underlines how narrow is the general concept of dance. On my way to perform at an Arts Festival, the airport attendant looked at me with incomprehension when I said I was going as a dancer. He kept maintaining that I must be a painter or a musician, despite my increasingly loud protestations to the contrary.

Not long after my accident a teacher told me that I must accept that I would repulse some people who saw me perform. It is hard to move unselfconciously with this thought in mind.

Under these circumstances I intensified my search for a new aesthetic. I use the word intensified because even before the accident, I had not measured up in conventional dance terms. I was far too tall and too well endowed with hips and thighs.

In the USA there are mixed ability dance companies, tutus and all, which pursue the ballet aesthetic. I am not comfortable with trying to force people into an image or a style that is not authentic to their physical state. I am not interested in putting them in a situation which depicts them as falling short of the desirable norm. This is a position too frequently imposed on people with disabilities in many aspects of their lives. Instead, I am interested in encouraging people to explore and extend untapped movement potential. People with a disability have not been encouraged to become aware of the physical and expressive range that might be available to them, or to have a positive relationship with their physical selves. This is partly through a reluctance to allow them to take risks and partly due to a perception of them as physically grotesque in relation to what is considered 'normal'.

After my accident, I returned to dance through Skinner Releasing classes. Joan Skinner was originally a dancer with Martha Graham. After sustaining a dance injury, she began to search for a new approach to dance which would not damage the body. Her technique works through developing awareness of body and movement through poetic natural images in the context of the body, as well as, movement tasks and 'graphics' where desired directions and sensations are gently traced on the body with a partner. Then one moves with this awareness. Unexpectedly wonderful things can result. One learns to move in ways that don't lead to injury and damage. Movement seems to come from a more deeply integrated source.

I also discovered Contact Improvisation ,a dance form which began in New York in the 1970s, developed by experimental young dancers looking for a way of dancing which was more organic and authentic to the human body, one that was an immediate and unexpected outcome of a dance partnership. This led me to the forming of a small dance company called State of Flux, which consists of myself, Martin Hughes and three other able-bodied dancers.

Aspects of Contact Improvisation, such as the exchange of weight, the use of counterbalance and resistance, give momentum and added versatility to a dancer with a disability. It also allows for an interchange between the partners, so that neither partner dominates, but each is influenced by the other.

It is a radical thought that an able-bodied dancer, representative of the dominant paradigm, might willingly take on the movement of a dancer with a disability. Once the blinkers of convention are removed, there is a whole new world of dance and choreographic possibility. In State of Flux, sometimes all dancers take to the floor and move as I do. At first I found this confronting. I think I am finally beginning to develop a taste for it.

In 1997, Martin Hughes and I were hired by Arts Access to teach a 12-week course to a group of people with various physical and sensory disabilities. This was an opportunity to apply what I had learned about myself. It was a mixed group, also containing people without official disabilities. There were varying amounts of dance experience, from highly trained to nothing at all.

Some needed much work to get 'in touch' with their bodies and their movement resources. Some were entirely new to the idea of improvisation. We made use of solo bodywork and improvisational structures, non-contact group tasks and light physical contact. Having someone so close and in physical contact is confronting and even threatening for many people. People with disabilities, particularly, often experience unwelcome invasion of their personal space, even when it is well meaning.

In addition, the physical condition of some participants meant that for them, too much weight bearing was out of the question. In all our classes we stress the need for people to guard their own safety and to be assertive when something is uncomfortable. As well as light contact, we tried to provide flexible structures where people could experiment with more weight giving and taking if they wished. People with disabilities are often over protected against risk.

Gradually a form began to emerge which seemed characteristic of the group. As there was a wealth of experience within the group in drama, verbal and vocal skills, we began to incorporate those ,again mainly in an improvisational framework. The group persisted and became Weave Movement Theatre. Finding low-cost, accessible studios with accessible toilets has always been a preoccupation.

As the group was taught from the beginning by someone with a disability, the ensemble has always been based on a highly integrated ethic. It is full of intelligent, experienced and strong-minded individuals both with and without a disability. Each have taken teaching roles and have devised and directed pieces. I am not advocating that this is the only way to operate. Sometimes people with disabilities seek a respite in separateness. They may crave an opportunity to make their own decisions and create their own aesthetic. I have sometimes felt out of place in a dance class full of able-bodied people, especially when they are uncomfortable with my presence.

However, the integrated ethic which has evolved in 'Flux' and 'Weave' gives opportunities for everyone to expand through their continuing dialogue and makes for a varied pool of movement resources. Segregation has often been a way of not taking artists with disabilities seriously, of placing their work in a separate category and treating their work patronisingly as 'therapy'. Indeed art can be therapy for many kinds of people and it can be a community art experience. However, having people with disabilities involved does not automatically put it in these categories.

Recently, I have also been involved in projects with people with intellectual disabilities. While there has been much in common with my other work in the dance and movement ideas employed, I found that I needed to change my style of communicating to some degree. I was used to working with fairly complex mental concepts; now I explored further the value of conveying ideas in concrete images and in increased use of demonstration. I also had to curb my tendency to cram too much into a session.

Veering between the categories of 'community' and 'professional' has been a constant tension for Weave. If people with disabilities are involved, there is an automatic urge to dub the project 'community', but some of our members with disabilities are highly trained and very experienced. Others are not. Thinking in some sections of the arts community is stuffy and restricted and would dismiss the idea that people with disabilities could aspire to the status of professional.

Perhaps we need to allow more fluid categories. Diverse people should be included, not deterred from dancing. They may also emerge as leaders, teachers and artists. In other words they should be allowed the range of potential more readily assumed to be the right of the rest of the community.

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