Postcards from the Studio, Week 3
“Principles of Over and Over (and over again)
As this research and development period draws to a close, I wanted to share the principles that are emerging as the underlying landscape of the piece. The underlying ground and earth the piece will grow out of. I feel really proud and tender about these. Proud because I feel they enable the communities, the spaces, the worlds I want to exist in. And tender because so many spaces don’t feel like this – yet.
There are seven principles in all:
- Dance as a freedom practice
It strikes me that if we are to dance, as disabled and non-disabled artists, it must be for life. To insist on being in the world, with joy.
- Getting what we need
Practising getting what we need from the spaces and processes we inhabit, and practising a culture of asking for what we need. Collectively we may or may not be able to meet all needs – but asking the question is an important step in widening our understanding of what is truly needed for liberatory spaces.
- Following joy and pleasure
How do we follow joy and pleasure (authentically)? What buffers can we create between the practice of pleasure activism and the demands of normative time and a normative sector?
- Witnessing
Witnessing as a practice in our dancing, and in the way we hold space for one another’s experiences and feelings. The care needed to be able to share honestly about our dance histories and the exclusion, the sidelines as well as the moments when we’ve held the centre.
- Rest-friendly (maybe even rest-celebratory)?
In ‘Postcards From the Studio – Week 2’, I talked about the rest-friendly studio space and paid rest days for the Candoco Dance Company members. But since week two I’ve been thinking what we’re doing isn’t just rest-friendly. It’s rest-celebratory!
- Care as an ongoing and important question.
I like the way Krista Tippet talks about ‘living the question’. As someone who often wants to know the answer, the right thing to do, it helps me to stay open to care as a living question, always in flux and changing, and needing to attend to it anew often.
- Consent as an ongoing and important question.
This is the first time I’ve worked so intentionally with consent. In part influenced and affected (in the best possible way!) by Dan Daw Creative Projects and in part due to the responsibility I feel to the dancers that they’d be represented to the world on their terms, in their language. This means we ask the company to sign off the images we use and we check in about the words in these blogs. Consent feels like a heavy word in some ways, but in practice the courtesy of asking ‘Are you okay with this’? Doesn’t have to feel heavy. It can feel liberating.
We are also working with communicating as we dance what works and what doesn’t, where we are okay with touch or weight on a given day and where we’re not.
- Showing up
Lastly, showing up as you are, however you are, is more than fine. It’s wonderful and welcomed.
References:
Krista Tippet On Being “
Postcards from the Studio
– Raquel & Dominic