Caroline Bowditch has been Scottish Dance Theatre’s Dance Agent for Change for the past three years. Here she talks about playing ‘Devil’s Advocate’ – asking if it’s the dance industry or disabled dancers themselves that need to take the next great leap of faith.
My work at Scottish Dance Theatre has taught me many things. Most importantly, I’ve realised that to achieve real change as a disabled artist I need to connect and align myself with mainstream arts organisations and really see myself belonging in the mainstream. This is what is needed to begin to bring about the change I want to see from the inside out.
The Devil’s Advocate sessions are a series of seminars, established as part of my role as Dance Agent for Change, aimed at firing up, challenging and shifting our thinking around deaf and disabled people in dance in the UK and internationally. The aim is to give space to real discussion about integrated and inclusive dance, addressing some of the myths and the facts.
Earlier this year we opened a debate in London, held at Sadler’s Wells as part of their Connect Festival, which posed the question: ‘is the dance industry ready for Deaf and disabled dancers?’ I outlined who I considered to be ‘the industry’, i.e. all those opening the pathways to young disabled people in the arts: programmers, choreographers and training providers, through to disabled artists themselves. We also discussed what was needed in order to assess the readiness of artists for the dance industry. The main criteria we agreed on were:
assessing baselines and starting points;
having aims;
developing a plan to achieve these aims;
acquiring the necessary skills;
monitoring and reviewing progress.
Among the panel of speakers invited to put forward their ideas and share their passion for dance were dance writer Donald Hutera, London Contemporary Dance School director Veronica Lewis, independent dance maker and performer Claire Cunningham and Luke Pell, Head of Learning and Development at dance company Candoco.
Luke Pell pointed out that “to be ready suggests preparedness”. In my four years with Scottish Dance Theatre, I have had many conversations with people about the cyclic nature of inclusive or integrated dance; the repetitive patterns of similar projects or events taking place. This made me question why, after twenty years of development, do we still feel like we’re treading water rather than making real progress? I believe two of the key factors are that we’re not quite sure where we, as an industry, want to get to and without this clear aim we have no strategy to achieve the change we want to see.
Veronica Lewis, with over thirty years’ experience in the industry, pointed out that “we’ve come from one aesthetic but now it’s becoming much more diverse”. She went on to suggest that “Deaf and disabled dancers will become part of the ‘norm’ in dance”. Claire Cunningham suggested the industry “is as ready as it’s going to be”.
Veronica’s point may be the closest to the answer. We look out as Deaf and disabled artists at the industry to see if it’s ready for us, but I also think we need to look at ourselves as artists and realise we’re already in ‘the industry’. We must be ready to accept that and be able to articulate where we want to get to. We must be clear about our own artistic visions – what we are doing to achieve them and to whom we are communicating them.
I could never have achieved all that I have in four years without the backing of a highly respected, innovative, well-recognised dance company. Scottish Dance Theatre and I have learnt many things from one another: in the end we both share similar passions for dance and art. We want to involve as many people as possible in our passion and as Donald Hutera said, in the end we all just ‘want something true’.
