At the beginning of September I spent three days with Stopgap Dance Company along with my colleagues Hannah and Ames, from Entelechy Arts. During this three day intensive, Stop Gap dancers shared their current inclusive dance practice and learning with other dancers who work with inclusive dance.
I learnt lots from everyone there and am so glad I was part of it. I spent time drawing before, after and during the sessions, as a way to process/express my anxiety, wonder and other thoughts/feelings. I loved doing this creative practice again as it’s one of my favourite ways to be in a group. I drew all of these during the workshops, or on the train to/from London-Brighton each day.
I really appreciated how Stopgap ran the three days, especially the encouragement to rest when we needed to, without a need to explain why, particularly as I’ve been going through a particularly exhausted period over the past couple of weeks. I’m going to make that more explicit in the work I do with groups and 1:1. I really liked being in a room of people where sharing and listening to our own and each other’s disabilities and neurospicy needs in direct/clear ways was normalised.
I liked learning ways we can be really specific with movement/dance and also inclusive, through using methods like translation. It doesn’t matter if our bodies do different things, we can find ways to share a quality of movement and explore that in many different ways. I also loved thinking about the aesthetics of accessibility, and how it can be part of the creative process, rather than something stuck on at the end to tick accessibility boxes.
You can also find these illustrations, on my instagram, where I have added visual descriptions of each image.