ABSTRACT
When I first began teaching with Celeste Dandeker in 1990, ‘Disabled time’ was a phrase we used to explain why it took so long to get half a dozen people in wheelchairs, a couple of blind and other assorted dancers into a workshop, or out of a workshop for a coffee (and back), or to look round a theatre with no ramps, or for that matter, to make a costume change. We inhabited a world that went at a slower pace; no less valid, no less attuned, but a world in which the obstacles to contributing, let alone competing, in the mainstream of British dance seemed daunting. Celeste and I founded CandoCo Dance Company in 1991, and our subtext in many ways was to get up to speed with contemporary dance. We fought against marginalization, against the practice of placing companies associated with disability at the end of the programme, rather than alongside others performing in the same festival, against the notion that our work should be any less compelling, less demanding, less artistic than any other dance company. It would have been impossible at that time to imagine that the list of choreographers to have worked with disabled performers would come to include those such as Javier de Frutos, Emilyn Claid, Fin Walker, Nigel Charnock, Stephen Petronio Siobhan Davies, Filip Van Huffel and Hofesh Shechter (to name but a few). It is unlikely, before 1980, that any of these choreographers would have considered making this kind of work. The question of whether disabled people could earn a living through
dance (a question repeatedly posed during the early 1990s) has been effectively answered through the long-term presence and success of CandoCo and companies such as StopGap, Axis, Blue Eyed Soul, Remix, DIN A 13, Joint Forces, Dancing Wheels and l’Oiseau Mouche. The careers of Celeste Dandeker, David Toole, Chris Pavia, Laura Jones, Bill Channon, Marc Brew, Chisato Minamimura, Clare Cunningham and Caroline Bowditch
represent a generation of disabled dance artists who have made an impact on dance in the UK. This marks a radical departure from the 1980s when disabled dancers had virtually no profile in Europe, and when Emery Blackwell and Bruce Curtis were only just beginning to be noticed in the USA. At the time of writing there is evidence of a ‘next phase’ in which disabled artists, previously confined to these professional inclusive companies, have begun to migrate to projects and performances with other professional companies and dancers: David Toole and James Cunningham to DV8, Caroline Bowditch to The FATHoM Project and then with Dan Daws, Cornelia Kip Lee and Michael King to Scottish Dance Theatre, Welly O’Brien to work with Victoria Fox, and so on. The divide between professional dance and disability becomes ever more porous. This is significant in a number of ways: it reflects an acceptance of the professionalism and skills of disabled performers; a newfound mobility of disabled people within the arts and a departure from early disability dance projects of the 1970s, which were often located within or attached to institutions ‘for the disabled’. Lastly, it reflects a gradual shift in society at large; each time a disabled person engages in a new project within the mainstream there must be an examination of the accessibility of the physical environment in which that project takes place, and a change in attitudes amongst artists and organizations with whom they work. Arguably dance has never had such an immediate dialogue with public attitudes, architecture and social policy as when it embraced disability. The advent of the disabled dancer represented a two-pronged assault,
first on the construct of dance and the type of performer audiences might expect to see, and second on the construction of dance theatres themselves: the elevation and accessibility of the stage, access to auditoriums, access to changing rooms. Ramps were built, corridors widened, doors removed. As dance practitioners we were forced to reconsider our physical workplace and our aesthetic and ethical values. The result was a theatre more permeable, more flexible, more connected to humanity; more a place of exchange and learning. Today inclusive companies (the word ‘inclusive’ has replaced ‘integrated’) and disabled artists permeate the British dance scene, but perhaps we still struggle to recognize the journey, its significance or the lessons learned along the way.
