Postcards from the Studio, Week 2

“Rest Friendly Studios and Inclusive Schedules

On Over and Over (and Over again), our new commission by Dan Daw Creative Projects and Stef O’Driscoll, we’re piloting a new schedule that gives our company dancers Wednesdays off as a paid rest day. This is part of our attempt to make a new full-length work in a creative process that doesn’t break us. 

There’s a lot of talk in the arts, and in the well-being industry about ‘resilience’. Mostly I feel the labour to be resilient falls on the individual to somehow hack the system, rather than the system changing to be more humane. In more inclusive structures – what Healing Justice London calls ‘life-affirming structures’ – we wouldn’t need to be as resilient because the system would be asked to bend, not the individual. This is one small way we can bend the system rather than the body-mind. 

It also gives the creative team time on a Wednesday to check in, think and plan together. And it means production meetings have dedicated time and are not being crammed in at the end of the day or over lunch (which is heavenly, there is nothing worse than a rushed production meeting, when invariably something complex comes up). Win-Win. 

We are also committed to creating and facilitating Rest Friendly Studio spaces, in which it’s always okay to rest within the task, within the day, and within the dance. We’re finding that we all have internalised ableism around activity and rest, and the habit of pushing through pain and fatigue is so strong in a professional dance context. We may need to give ourselves, and one another, permission to rest every single day of this process, as old habits die hard. Bringing bean bags into the dance studio is an important step and it does feel subversive to sink into the comfort of a bean bag after dancing, or before dancing, or while you’re dancing. So expect a lot of bean bag photos in the weeks to come!

References: 

Healing Justice London Life Affirming Structures

Margaret Price The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain

Alison Kafer in Queer, Feminist, Crip writes about crip time bending the clock to meet the disabled person, rather than the disabled person bending to meet the clock.”

Postcards from the Studio
– Raquel & Dominic