Arts Activated Transcript: Track 12 - 21st September 2016
Contemporary Questions for Contemporary Practice
COLM O'CALLAGHAN:
Hi, everyone, my name is Colm O'Callaghan and my number one fan is in the second row here…
(Laughter)
COLM O'CALLAGHAN:
I asked you not to steal my thunder, George. I am the Executive Producer with Force Majeure here at Carriageworks and I am delighted to be speaking behalf of the country. Our Executive Director is also here today. I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land beyond today, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and pay my respects to their Elders, past present and future and thank them for allowing to be here.
I will try to be brief, because time flies and often there isn't enough time for questions. I'm honoured to be here, and congratulations to Accessible Arts and Carriageworks for presenting lots of fabulous things. To Sarah and all the team, Sancha and the board.
I feel woefully under-qualified to be chairing this. Force Majeure had its first outing with making disability, to sell it to be led, an integrated work with our will premiere, which Alex Jones was a performer with.
It was our first foray into making integrated work, and has been life-changing for us and the company, and we have been reassured, watching some of the sessions today and yesterday, that we did an OK job, and we try to embed accessibility into the way to work was designed and made.
We have kind of joked since making the work, that we could kind of write the Idiots Guide to make the Disability Network accessible. I feel really honoured to be during this and bringing that perspective, and particularly great because we have three extraordinary panellists with us today.
I will leave more detailed introductions to before each of their presentations, but Alex, I have gotten to know very well from Off The Record as a performer, whose story was featured in the works, and it is a joy to see her again here today.
Jodee Mundy, she is joining us by Skype today. We might be able to get her upon the screen? Hi, Jodee.
JODEE MUNDY:
Hello, everyone!
COLM O'CALLAGHAN:
Then we will take off the screens during the presentations. I don't know her very well yet, that I was at a gathering yesterday in the performance markets in February and we were all blown away by how she makes integrated work.
Joshua Pether is new to me also, he is from WA originally, and I was in Perth myself, and I got to meet his dance company and got a sense of who he has been working with over the past few years.
Before I introduce the first speaker, we are here today to talk about Contemporary Questions for Contemporary Practice and I feel like we are going to get to the crux of some issues that have been coming up again and again across today's and yesterday sessions.
Dancer Joshua Pether, artistic director Jodee Mundy and Alex Jones will elaborate on their work.
I was thinking about what the three panellists had in common, and just a few things to reflect on, I noticed all of their practices across individual artforms, how these practices are or are not accessible to artists with disability. They all share the fact that they do come in the way they work, question whether the practice is out there in contemporary work are accessible at all, and they have great experience in that.
All three of them have been involved in bending or creating new art forms, in a way that can be disability lead in the work we do, and that is something they all share and are all very inquisitive about in the way they work.
I am also interested in because of the topic of intersectionality. Joshua is interested with how the Aboriginal identity interacts with disability, and do we need to create new art forms so that can be disability led, or is that the situation in both worlds? Working for artists - something I am interested in person. I will shut up now.
The place of the contemporary dancer in the contemporary dance worlds is Joshua Pether. Joshua is an independent choreographer and dance artist based in WA. He identifies as having a disability.
His identity of being Indigenous and disabled puts him between the two worlds, tangible through his own unique movement. He is a member of LINK, the company and taught the company both nationally and internationally. He has received grants which have enabled him to travel to Sweden and the UK, currently he divides his time betweenthe east coast of Australia and in New Zealand, where he is the current number of the integrated dance company, Touch Compass.
(Applause)
JOSHUA PETHER:
Thanks, Colm. You will have to excuse the - I caught some viral thing. I'm going to speak about a topic that I read back in 2012 when I was a student studying in Woppa. It came to me through probably the realisation that I may have actually had a disability although I wasn't sure what that was.
To begin with, I might start with a bit of ground about myself. I actually wasn't born WA, but in Queensland, Mount Isa. I was born in the Jo-Bjelke Peterson era and a lot of my values are shaped by that era.
I studied ballet at the age of six, and because it was a small country-town, ending the era that it was, it wasn't exactly the easiest thing to do. I gave it up, I think around the age of 13 or 14.
It was within about a year after is that my family noticed there was something wrong with my back. It turned out to be scoliosis, and at that time it was quite untreatable.
Within about a few months after the diagnosis, I had to have an operation. At the time, it didn't really occur to me the impact of such a major operation in my own personal life and career. So I went along with everything that was told to me - "You need this operation to function properly."
So I stopped going through that other career path, and I am now a pharmacist. I studied at university for four years for that degree. I left the dance world and didn't really think much of it, and it was only seven years after I graduated that I decided to go back to dance.
Before being in pharmacy, there was really no perception that there was anything wrong. I remember quite clearly I was at unequal with everyone in my profession, there was really no question about my knowledge and my ability basically. But when I went into dance it was quite an interesting dilemma that I faced, I knew that there was, I found this very, I suppose, feeling of animosity, if you can put it that way, towards my body. There was always something wrong with my body.
And over that period of time that I went back to dance training, I found that I was always trying to hide some thing, I was always very conscious of my back.
I was very particular about my need to be like everybody else. And it became such that I actually fooled everybody, when people saw me on stage and realised I had had an operation on my back they said, "oh my god you can dance!" Like it was some kind of miracle. So it was really interesting how that perspective of what was wrong with me sort of filtered into the way I then acted in front of everybody.
And this continued on until I reached, when I got accepted into LINK dance company in 2012, and it was there that I was given the opportunity to write some sort of thesis about a topic. I really can't remember why I chose it, was about disability. There was a meeting we had with everyone else was part of the course and we all had to decide on our topics, and this was the topic I chose. And through this particular topic I formulated some research topic that I could then research.
I'll just read a bit of what I read today. "Some of my initial exploration of the literature, it seemed to me that the acceptability of institutional dance institutions be the done thing. Because then you can have an even playing field between nondisabled and able-bodied dancers."
But then I have to go back to my own experience about that and what people are going to traditional institutions… How I question everything about me and if I was actually right, and to me I don't think that would be very conducive atmosphere for someone with a disability, especially when someone with a disability has a question in their mind if they're actually OK.
So, the conclusion at the time due to my own desires to appease the powers that be in my own training as well as research, indicating a lack of opportunities for dancers with disabilities, four years on I ask why should there be this opportunity of inclusion in dance companies as a disabled person when there isn't the opportunity in other things?
I think from a human rights perspective this idea of inclusion is paramount… Where society must change in order to accommodate people with disabilities but in terms of an artistic voice and autonomy, (Unknown terms)? Is it perhaps the same system of acceptance that limits are created voice in the first place and if dance is an art form, does like technical dance knowledge negate one's existence as an artist… Due to my struggles in this vein… I existed in the community to be a point of difference but not enough in which I'm able to claim ownership for my own body. Therefore, this presentation is essentially a conversation between my two bodies.
One that has gained acceptance in the community and one that is waiting to be discovered. It is a way in which, others perhaps like me can make sense of this conundrum in my existence and perhaps offer alternatives ways in which we can free ourselves from these conventions and one of the driving forces I found through my research was the aesthetic seem to be a big barrier between allowance of people with disabilities to participate in dance or anything with a body is visible.
There was a real (unknown term) when I presented this amongst the, other students, there was a sort of sense of "There is certain dance for this particular group but we have our own sort of dance as well." There was never a sense that we can all come together and start to be as one.
So even, this was about four years ago, in such a short period time there are still these attitudes amongst quite young people, because I was older some of these people were in their 20s. The attitudes of younger people are not that far from what people may have thought 20 or 40 years ago.
So for me I looked at, what other ways that we can try to integrate or allow this to happen, and the way that I looked at it was we can possibly enter into traditional dance institutions. And for me that was, it was good for me because I was able to, I don't really consider myself to have a visible disability as such. So I am actually able to join a group of people. But, at the same time, I am also… Sorry.
So at the same time I am also able to join the other part of my spectrum which is being a disabled artist. So one of the things I found when I was training, was that I would often try to do things that would extend my limitations. So I would, I remember doing this, I was trying to take it gymnastics course.
If anyone knows what it's like when you have an operation on your back, that's not the best thing and I made sure that I did this course and I did things, because I've a medical background as well, I knew completely that is not the way to go about things but in the back of my mind I thought "I need to do this to increase my dance technique and my ability because this is what I've been told." And I been told by people this is good for you.
So there are all sorts of different opinions I think from the dance-world, where if you do have a visible disability that you're then able to do these things that other people can do. So, I found the ability to transcend one's limitations is something that has become prevalent for people with disabilities to become accepted into the dance community.
When individuals transcend these limitations they transcend to an almost superhuman status. Some sort of miracle has occurred in the eyes of the audience. The aesthetic of dance has been… Unique individual and interesting of the dancer and replacing with a sanitised version which the public is led to believe is more palatable.
My knowledge of my own body is involved and its place… Allows me to participate in the pretense that I dissipate in my own sense of conventionalised norms. The able-bodied (inaudible) the dancer with disabilities has led to an erosion of the individual self. Instead the individual has been successfully integrated into the culture of able-bodiedness, and everybody is led to believe that yes we can achieve the same as every body else.
While I can appreciate the reasoning behind such ideas, I asked why is there not such a manual for indigenous people, LGBT-IQ? This must first be homogenised to fit our morals as dancers. Is a this point that I call upon the artist to check their conservative values of the door. Instead I must invest my own exploration of what my body does and what it is capable of in the realm of my own culture not the dominant hierarchy.
This I find empowering for me as it places my body at the forefront of innovation and creation in my own artform and negates any previously held assumptions towards right and wrong.
I just needed a way in which to find Under this information, I can empower others to do the same. Who cares if you get your lines when you walk on stage you can't hear music? Who cares if you dribble or draw, or you shake uncontrollable? Are these aspects that makes you valuable as an artist?
We have been herded onto stage and made to pay ourselves like cardboard cutouts of others are allowed to explore (inaudible) of their bodies.
If we are to discover the hidden talents of our own bodies, we need to reject the idea that any artform is permitted by the able-bodied aesthetics, and instead retain the balance of power to us as artist. The new forms we create can be found within our own ascetic, it is time to shake things up.
When I wrote about this research topic four years ago, I didn't imagine the impact it would have on my life. My discovery of the knowledge, all over the world, meeting dancers and engaging with community, and it amicably that somehow within the constructed system of the contemporary dance world that could be a place for a dancer with a disability.
But four years on I questioned the validity of the state. Like the rest of the world, I try myself to find a solution to something that didn't need one. The cost of this would be high, an erosion of the self and the individual, and finally, complete annihilation of the culture that inhibit your body.
We would become culturally barren, with a representative of ourselves as governed by the premise that we showed a good side and not the bad side of ourselves. In the last few years, there has been a shift in the cultural landscape in our community - more discussion happening than ever before, and we are starting to reap the benefits. The tide is changing, and we are starting to see a difference.
The challenge we face, and we want to continue with the same path travelled, it has become the yardstick measurement of how to successfully achieve in our art form? Or do we forge ahead, and make any pathway? The answer is up to us.
Those were I have come from, from when I wrote my thesis in 2012, with the condition being that we should all into into traditional institutions. Now I actually realise that probably not be a suitable for everybody and in many ways is not a valid reason.
So I think that if you want to look at new art forms, new ways, new perceptions, we need to look at what we have to offer. One of the things I am interested in is the physicality and the virtuosity of the disabled body.
For the last two years, I have been trying to uncover that through my own work. I believe that's my time. Thank you.
(Applause)
COLM O'CALLAGHAN:
Sorry to cut across you, but I'm trying to keep time… Jodee? Can we welcome Jodee back, via Skype? She is an independent interdisciplinary artist. A native of Auslan, every one of her in her family is that except for her. A core artist of the Polyglot Theatre, she has toured worldwide has facilitated for back-to-back Theatre, and swung on the strange fruit fools with deaf artist.
Living abroad for seven years she worked with (Unknown term) Theatre, Grey Theatre, and in 2001 she co-founded deaf (inaudible). She works as a consultant in creative inclusion with various organisations and councils, and continuous her artistic practice full-time. Over to you, Jodee.
JODEE MUNDY:
Hello, everyone? Can you see me here here in Hawaii? No, it's a backdrop of my office.
Thankyou for having me. I am very excited to speak here. I won't keep you too long, but I am here to talk to you about Imagined Touch - has anyone heard of this show? Great. Imagined Touch we disclosed it last week at Arthouse. We had our world premiere, and it was a sell-out - a really great success.