Memorandum submitted by Touchdown Dance
ISSUE 1
Infrastructure for dance
The national Dance Agencies have funding to
develop dance in the regions. The receive combinations of Local
Authority and National statutory funding (Arts Council of England).
They respond to the director's personal affinity with the dance
style and forms they prefer rather than to the grass roots.
They are opportunistic in spending money on
visiting companies to be in the National circle and doing what
dance promoters should be doing but don't support grass root local
dance artists and companies that have developed models of practise
that remain seeded and are continually on offer to the community.
Continued Professional development seems more
responsive to the needs of professionals.
The wide base of participatory dance in the
community needs to be quantified to really see the value of dance
in the community.
Touchdown Dance alone has increased numbers
of participants in our workshop to over 2,000 in the last year.
The local dance Agency has got no where near this target and are
receiving all the Local Authority funding for dance in Manchester.
We are told to apply to them for project subsidy.
The numbers of Volunteers and artists and projects
is also most likely to be greater.
Touchdown Dance provides access to dance for
visually impaired people, the only company in the country doing
this on a permanent and professional basis, employing visually
impaired dancers and artists in the projects.
REGIONAL DISPARITIES
IN THE
ARTS COUNCIL
FUNDING SYSTEM
There are NO dance companies in the NW region
that have core subsidy over £10,000 a year.
There has only recently been a company subsidised
to £10,000.
Compare this to theatre, compare participatory
projects to Theatre projects? Across art forms there is a huge
lack of parity, dance is very poorly funded compared to other
art forms.
Compare annual report figures for the regional
arts boards.
DISPARITY IN
THE FUNDING
OF COMPANIES
THAT ARE
DISABILITY LED
OR WORKING
WITH THE
AIM OF
INCLUSION
In the Midlands Blue Eyed Soul have existed
for about five years, they have core funding. They are assumed
to be disability led. They have in fact one board member who is
disabled.
Touchdown Dance has been project funded for
nine years in the region, we have 50:50 membership of disabled
and non-disabled people, we are considered in the NW NOT to be
disability led and so we have been ineligible for funding allocations
put aside for disabled artists.
Touchdown Dance has been in receipt of two lottery
awards. We are also a core partner for Manchester and salford
Creative Partnerships. We have been without core funding and still
are, we have been managing without an administrator for one year
as we haven't had the funding to pay them. We depend on New Deal
and student placements and volunteers. This is unlikely to make
the business work.
Dance is art and a business. Business
in the arts NW have invested £1,000's in our training provision
and board membership and advisors. Yet the funding system is too
impoverished and mean towards dance for us to sustain the office
base.
The benefits of dance and the value of dance
are applauded and confirmed and everyone who participates in our
work and the work of other dance artists enjoys the challenge,
the confidence, the self esteem, the sense of self, the awareness
of physical intelligence, the awareness of body language, the
awareness of feeling good, feeling fit, feeling healthy, supple,
and positive. The social inclusion list is as long, similar but
the gaining of respect and sense of social/community presence,
the sense of belonging, of contributing and participating . .
. can't be denied.
But dance is still seen as the sexy thing we
do for fun . . . it needs to be taken far more seriously.
Business can learn from the arts, we need to be treated
like a business.
DANCE IN
EDUCATION
As a core partner with creative partnerships
we have seen the vast impact of dance in schools of all kinds
as well as the affirmation from staff and artists of all schools
of the way the arts contribute to the establishment of a good
trusting and empowering culture at the school. There are schools
that still have the culture of shouting to discipline but the
need for activity that is around physical expression is always
affirmed. In one school (a special school) the Ofsted inspectors
were present during the project and wrote a glowing report on
the work affirming the impression the artists (ourselves) were
making on the relationship between staff and pupils. The other
important thing is that our input enabled them to realise that
they had to change their assessment criteria to include physical
non-verbal expression as they had been so surprised by the response
of the pupils to the movement and touch based work.
Touch as a language of communication
rather than of abuse needs to be rethought, reconsidered and brought
back into the normal relationship between adult and child in the
learning environment.
The impact of Creative Partnership has been
amazing for all concerned and I hope the model is scrutinised
reviewed and taken further, so much depends on who is in the leadership
role in the organisation of each area as well as how the Cluster
groups are managed. Egos fight against more benign autocrats and
often the Egos are the larger organisations who aren't really
there for the educational impact but rather for their own publicity
. . . ie venues and promoters. They bring in the artists and pay
them to deliver but the artists don't get the kudos.
Touchdown Dance works very much with inclusion
as our core business objective and have 18 years experience of
doing so. We have gained respect from all the schools for the
way we have managed to include all the pupils in the projects
and sustained accessible working methods in order to do this.
We do not teach the ballet or tap or modern but natural movement,
gymnastics, martial arts, dance made from these in combination,
and we work with themes such as "sense of self", "energy"
and so on.
For dance to flourish there has to be more recognition
of the multitude of languages of dance as we do the multitude
of international languages we speak or hear . . . Otherwise we
are excluding the joy of experiencing the body in movement, to
music, to silence, to oneself.
PRODUCTION OF
NEW WORK
FOR TOURING
The previous RALP awards have enabled us to
nurture a performance company that developed a piece of work over
18 months and toured in the region and beyond to Germany and London.
Through this experience we have learned much about our audience
and much about ourselves as a company.
We have also had to confront incorrect perceptions,
assumptions and expectations.
As a group of visually impaired and sighted
dancers we are up against the assumption that we are not disability
led. (Arts Council Officer feedback following rejection of previous
application). This assumption is due in part to the fact that
Katy Dymoke is not registered as visually impaired and doesn't
claim it but in-fact does have a visual impairment. Katy Dymoke
has been employed by Full Circle Arts on disability led projects
as an artist, and has not been proclaimed as non-disabled, and
yet when it comes to directing Touchdown Dance the judgement is
made that Touchdown is not a disabled led company. Clearly some
double standards here? The decision making is done at board level
where all decisions are taken by vote after lengthy discussion.
Our board is represented by an even number of
visually impaired and sighted people. Their view is that to assume
we are not "disability led", denies and undermines the
input of the disabled artists in the company. It presumes that
they have no impact on our development, when it is thanks to them,
with the support and advice of the non-disabled members, that
we have an established reputation and track record.
Other regions support inclusive dance companies,
such as Blue Eyed Soul in the Midlands. They are accepted as being
disability led and yet no-one has actually set a standard that
defines what that means and applied it. It is assumed that disability
led means, "that disabled people are making the decisions
for the company" (Disability arts officer ACENW), and so,
we at Touchdown Dance are, (in terms of numbers of disabled people
in the decision making role on the board), more disability led
than they are. I refuse to be set up against Blue Eyed Soul in
this battle for clarity, I intend to simply point out the iniquities
and lack of policy within the ACE itself.
Blue Eyed Soul are a company with very similar
objectives to Touchdown. They may have one disabled person on
the board and yet they still operate with a policy of "inclusion".
I would like to state that it doesn't matter how many disabled
people are on the board if the company operates with the fundamental
policy models of integration and equal opportunities for all.
The provision of dance within companies such as Blue Eyed Soul
and Touchdown is that the artistic strategy provides inclusive
methods, practices and policies to enable disabled people to participate
on equal footing to non-disabled dancers. From this grass root
commitment the inclusion of disabled people at management level
is worked towards as more disabled people seek out these positions
and are nurtured into them. We have company members attending
meetings in order to experience this system, we also have continued
professional development training and potential for them to access
Business in the Arts North West training and others such as the
Third Sector Enterprise training.
Our commitment towards inclusion needs to be
considered in the light of the predominance of non-disabled and
exclusive dance companies in the country and dance ecology. But
it has to be asked, can we enforce inclusion upon every organisation
or dance group, or independent dancer? Can we demand that everyone
offers up audio description and Braille programmes etc? It seems
not. This reinforces the exclusive prejudicial preciousness, the
conservatism and blind obstinacy of a blinkered culture. More
seriously it negates the importance of the Disability Discrimination
Act. There is some irony here emerging in the light of this, as
companies such as Touchdown Dance and Blue Eyed Soul and the many
more seeking to define their mission on the edge of the mainstream,
appear to be revolutionary, and anarchistic, a nuisance, a very
itch the side of the Dance.
Shouldn't we rather be appreciated as the avant-garde,
creating the very models for change that will fulfil the national
aims for an inclusive society, and an inclusive culture? Shouldn't
we rather be the signposts for the others to learn from? Should
there not be a return investment from the established mainstream
organisations and companies in our work, shouldn't they be buying
into it, to learn from it and adapt to becoming inclusive themselves?
Instead of this we are locked into a holier-than-thou hierarchy
where inclusion is not taken seriously into the qualifying of
quality status. Quality is about splendour of production, the
venue, the critical mass of excellence, the economics of corporate
sponsorship, to repeat myself, quality is defined by the glorification
of non-inclusive dance. So what are our chances of changing this?
All levels of the dance ecology need to reflect
upon this situation and state what needs to happen, what needs
can be met with honesty, justice and commitment, and what needs
can be more in the longer term planning.
Within Touchdown Dance Company there are 50:50
sighted to visually impaired dancers and again the decisions are
made as an ensemble, ie by the artists. The artistic direction
is established by the whole company's involvement in the process
and the work gives credit to all of them. In contact improvisation
there is no "leader" and no "follower" as
both dancers do both all the time. Just so in the ethos of the
company there is a democratic principle that surpasses any autocracy.
The artistic director follows the example of Steve Paxton as the
benign autocrat, the teacher, the mentor, the shaper and the arbiter
but not the dictator or decision maker. If the work feels right
for the dancers improvising in the devising process then we go
with that till it evolves into something else, into the next phase,
so that each dancer is in ownership of their "art" in
the moment of making it. The score is defined around the dance
to contain it with a sense of time, flow, quality and style, tempo
and the musicians, lighting and movement all work together.
The findings of the Day of consultation and
debate at Sadler's Wells in November 2003 (as part of the Xposure
Festival) concluded that visually impaired people are the most
excluded community, from Dance. Dance, it was confirmed, is a
visual form in the learning and performance fields and there is
a real lack of understanding of how to enable access to visually
impaired people in dance. Contact improvisation is a form that
fundamentally provides the freedom for a visually impaired person
to move, to dance and to explore their physicality with a partner
as their "mirror". At times the benefit of a sighted
partner enables some greater security and freedom but is not essential.
In performance the sighted partner enables the interplay of spatial
relationships and interaction with greater freedom, as well as
a model that displays the potential interaction of sighted and
visually impaired people in extraordinary ways. This then provides
insight into the ability of hitherto excluded communities to enter
and be part of the dance culture and so of others. If it can be
done in dance then it can be done surely in other physical activities.
It remains clear from the lack of other companies
like us, that in order to enter the world of dance and dance theatre,
that visually impaired people need the freedom to learn, develop
and build their style and status alongside sighted dancers who
may be disabled or not. Just as the dancers in Candoco, Graeae
and other companies have done and still do work with non-disabled
choreographers and directors. When will it be PC to be free to
chose with whom you work and how to achieve the desired outcomes
and wish list? How can people assume and judge with no inside
knowledge or inquiry as to what does go on in the studio, do they
presume that Katy Dymoke is dictating the dance, telling them
all what to do?
In Blue Eyed Soul the policy is that they chose
the "best person for the job and if the person is not disabled
then so be it". (Ray Jacobs, dancer).
Touchdown Dance exists because of, and for the
benefit of, the visually impaired dancers and for the work that
evolves in the dialogue that is created in the collaboration with
sighted. Touchdown Dance would not be the company it is if not
for the leadership and commitment that the visually impaired dancers
have given us over the majority of the key issues that we have
addressed over the past six years as a company. In the workshop
provision the situation is the same, but now the one time visually
impaired participants are delivering the work around the country
for people such as the education sections of Northern Ballet,
Saddler's Wells, The Place, and many others. These are invisible
outcomes. Just as Stuart Jackson and Holly Thomas were initiated
into dance with Touchdown prior to joining Saburo Teshigawara.
Thanks to the Place and ourselves, Stuart Jackson is touring internationally
with that prestigious company and getting standing ovations.
Touchdown Dance has successfully trained, nurtured
and established a professional group of artists who would not
be working today without the training, insights, generosity and
unfailing commitment that each person has invested in it. This
has been achieved with NWARTS project funding and the two large
RALP awards. Everything we do now is developing upon the achievements
and strengths, insights and unexpected outcomes of previous projects.
We deliver consistently and constantly in the
region and beyond in schools, health and community as well as
professional settings. We are more active than the local Dance
agency and yet do not have a permanent administrator. It is time
for the ACE NW to decide how it intends to fund us, keep us or
bin us. So that we can either forge a future from all the strengths
we have or fold and forget it. We cannot continue to be facing
the traffic light situation, sometimes green, sometimes red to
such an extent. Should we be a theatre company with this track
record it would surely be different? Just consider New Breed Theatre
Company and the level of funding it had as an RFO. Damien O'Connor
(ex-director of New Breed) joined our board because he says. "Touchdown
Dance does what it says it will do, the other company I worked
for didn't."
Touchdown Dance company is an ensemble. Each
member is actively producing the work but the over-all production
needs a director and till now that has been requested by the members
to be Katy Dymoke. The opportunity exists now, following the success
and reassurances we have received about the value of the work,
for the visually impaired dancers to take this role in the production
process. They are now volunteering to do so, where as in the past
they declined the opportunity, as they didn't want to do so.
A COMPANY WITH
INTERNAL STRENGTH
AND COMMITMENT
The company had a development week in August
2003 funded by the ACENW in which each person contributed to the
vision of the company and we created a wish list. This list represents
a consensus of all of us as an evaluation, review and vision for
the future.
To employ an external teacher to offer a challenge
to the company, to develop the dance skills and reinforce current
core skills characteristic of our working processes.
To continue to explore Contact Improvisation
as a dance form in performance and to advocate its relevance to
the artistic/creative ethos of the company, within the professional
dance world.
To exercise ingenuity and experimentation with
audio description and other methods to make the work accessible
to visually impaired audiences. This involves specific performance
settings and interactive relationships with the audience in the
performance space. This could establish a new model for audience
development for visually impaired audiences.
To devise workshop and performance packages
for audiences to participate and explore the dance before experiencing
it in performance.
To create a new performance piece for touring
with the dancers directing in collaboration with a guest choreographer.
To continue to use projection and enhancement
of the dance with a digital artist/film maker.
Access. We are committed to continue
to promote dance to visually impaired audiences at all the venues
we perform at, by writing it into the piece itself and by requiring
audio-description.
NATIONAL MODEL
OF PRACTISE
AND SIGNIFICANCE
Saddler's Wells Xposure festival. In 2002 they
held a day on the access to dance for visually impaired people
and ascertained that they are the most excluded from dance. This
was because of lack of audio description provision, lack of information
for the home to venue journey, lack of companies with visually
impaired dancers and so on.
In November 2003 we performed at the Lillian
Baylis studio. We provided; a company of three visually impaired
and three sighted artists. We organised audio description for
the event and brought the describer from Manchester. We also gave
description from the stage, as spoken text, and inter-actions.
Saddler's Wells organised other access requirements such as instructions
to the venue, Braille and large print programs etc. Both sighted
and visually impaired audiences loved the piece.
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