People Dancing

The issue of quality was one that was raised as key throughout the Dancing Differently? conference in the sense of the best access to buildings, resources, information, teaching, learning opportunities and artistic engagement. Here, Sian Prime considers what perceptions we bring to the issue of quality when viewing and engaging with dance by people with disabilities

If you were to close your eyes and picture a dancer: who do you see? What do they look like? What is the first image? For some people it will always be Margot Fonteyn or Rudolph Nureyev. For me it is always Gene Kelly. One of my favourite pieces of dance for camera is 'Singing in the Rain', the choreography and interpretation shows a wonderful expression of joy and love. But looking at Gene Kelly physically he does not conform to the physique that vocational dance training might lead us to believe is the only one or the correct one for a 'dancer'.

I was asked to consider 'quality' in dance, and I talked to my mother (Patricia Prime - former ballet dancer, now teacher) about the fact that I was doing this. She was my first route in to dance, and she talked to me about her understanding of 'quality in dance', it centred on individual dancers who she felt had a unique performance style; she mentioned Gene, Fred Astaire, Sarah Wildor, Celeste Dandeker, Chris Pavia, Richard Holgate. Being her daughter, I dismissed her observation: No, 'quality' was something other than that.

If we accept the view of the Romantics that art has the potential for either beauty or the sublime - and that the sublime is the art that evokes a more powerful aesthetic as well as a darker more powerful emotional response. Can we also accept that it is when we challenge conventions, break rules and mess with accepted rules of beauty in any art form that the sublime is achieved? Are we therefore saying that contemporary dance, including that made by or performed by artists with disabilities has the power and potential to produce a sublime aesthetic and emotional experience. We should therefore be judging the quality of such work not against the conventional beauty rules of what a dancer or a piece of choreography is like, but against the sublime aesthetic.

That being said in considering the readership of Animated, it is daunting in some ways to attempt to define what is high quality dance. I know that all of the readers will know the basics of dance criticism:

• choreographic form - shape, content, pattern use of space etc
• communication with the audience - interpretation, performance skills
• security with material - technical ability and competence
• production values - costume, lighting design etc.

The judgements we make on the quality of work are of course influenced by all of these. Having decided that I did not need to write about those areas, I became more interested in how the context for the performance/showing, influences our judgement of the work, in other words looking at the purposes behind the performance.

These are some of the questions I think help us consider more appropriately, work, and in particular dance by artists with disabilities:

• is the venue appropriate to the work?
• what is the scale of budget?
• what is the experience of the performers?
• how much time did they have together to make the work?
• what is the entry point of the audience? - Who is it intended for? For a dance literate audience or first time attenders? Is it made for an audience of the dancers' peers? Was it made for an audience at all?
• is it work that is being performed or made by dancers or a choreographer in the early stages of their career? Is it dance made by a company that has to train their dancers through the process of performing?

In considering dance made by or performed by artists with disabilities I think the last two points might be particularly relevant; especially as there are still limited opportunities for dancers with disabilities to receive vocational training. And given that many of the dance companies with disabled performers have been responsible for those performers' training and dance experience.

I then returned to my mother's thoughts, of course! And in considering quality in dance I identified two different definitions and understandings of the word 'quality': a quality that a performer has - the individual interpretation and stage presence, and the aesthetics of the choreography - the strength of the aesthetic reaction or emotion the work evokes in the viewer.

So, given we all know this: why is it that there still seems to be a discussion of how to define what is good quality dance when it involves or has been produced by an artist with a disability? What are the barriers in judging the quality of dance when it is performed or choreographed by someone with a disability? My belief is that we need to look not only at the content of the work delivered or the context but more importantly at the audience - our - reactions to it. We need to be emotionally intelligent to ensure we know how we react to work and to the people performing.

In arriving at a performance it is natural for audience members to have expectations and previous experiences, which will colour the way they view what they are seeing. I believe that we need to be aware of the factors in ourselves that inform our responses when we are reviewing, or critically evaluating work - those areas beyond the elements that the work has control over. We must be aware of what can alter our judgement - it is this form of emotional intelligence that I believe is crucial to judging quality in dance.

For example: are there some audience members that have too low an expectation of work performed by artists with disabilities? Are some audience members likely to feel uncomfortable seeing some movements being performed by people with learning or physical disabilities? (There have been examples of audience members objecting to work performed by dancers with learning disabilities because they found it too sexual in content.) What is the motivation for attending, for patronising (in either sense) the performance? Are they supporting the work as a community cause? Alice Walker said: 'We create in order to make things very different; otherwise I really don't see the point.' For audiences new to dance performed by an artist with a disability it will almost inevitably be challenging stereotypes of what a dancer looks like, how they move, what they choose to dance about or why. At what point does that challenge stop and the aesthetic experience start? My suspicion is that it can only begin when the audience member recognises their own emotional response to the performance and the performers and any judgements they might bring with them.

This raises a number of questions: Is work performed by dancers with disabilities still somehow being seen as campaigning? Is it still challenging stereotypes? Certainly, as already recognised, the first time someone sees a performance by someone with a disability there seems to be an element of this, with audience members asking themselves how they do and should react, what is the 'correct' response they should have. Together with these questions or issues that the audience member may experience, there will also be an aesthetic response to the work.

As an audience member sees more work performed or made by people with disabilities, is the reaction different? How has their expectation of what a person with a disability can achieve informed their judgement of the work? It may do at a cerebral level, but surely the aesthetic reaction is not altered.

For me quality dance is when I can see an emotion communicated in a way that words could not, it produces an aesthetic as well as other emotional or intellectual responses in me. If one definition of 'good' dance is that it has developed a new and interesting movement vocabulary then it seems that artists with disabilities are indeed creating this.

I began dancing at two and a half years old, trained by my mother (!); I learnt to enjoy moving my body, to be part of a group. I was given (not by my mother) definitions of what a dancer should look like through films, visits to the theatre and Noel Streatfield's Ballet Shoes. These definitions were challenged by the work my mother pointed me to (I was lucky) and I began to value the personal movement styles of individuals. I have to acknowledge that I have had to work hard to move my mind from what a dancer looks like. But I have not had to move my heart.

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Animated: Summer 2002