The Dance Laboratory – a presentation Inspiration on the way and getting started

From London, and that first workshop in Brighton, I moved to Stockholm in Sweden where I studied at Danshögskolan University College of Dance. In Stockholm, I got acquainted with Carl, who is a journalist and also a wheelchair-user. When I met him, he told me that he had always wanted to dance but never had had the possibility to do so. I asked if he wanted to give it a try, and invited him to come and improvise with me and some other students at Danshögskolan.

From those improvisations I developed an idea about making a piece, and in the end this piece with Carl and some non-disabled dance students became my choreography project for the dance teacher qualification programme. The piece focused on the investigation of wheels in different contexts, and when the piece was made and shown, I knew I wanted to dig deeper into this area in the future.

In 1999 I settled down as a dance artist in Trondheim in Norway. My interest in creating space for different dancers to investigate dance together was now firmly established. The idea of creating possibilities for disabled and non-disabled people to investigate dance together was quite unknown in Trondheim, and in Norway. Still today in 2009 I have not heard about any Norwegian projects other than the one under study that have invited disabled and non-disabled people to meet of their own accord to improvise, choreograph and perform together. Of course, there might be projects which I have not heard of. Still, it is accurate to say that this was, and still in 2009 is, a rather unexplored field of dance in Norway.

In 2000 the Inclusive Dance Company⁴³ was established in Trondheim by myself and another dancer. Anna, who has a fictive name, is part of the collected material for this study as she also participated in the Dance Laboratory. In April 2001 the first piece på Føtter, på Hjul⁴⁴ (on Feet, on Wheels) with the Inclusive Dance Company was ready. This piece was a continuation and deeper investigation of the theme from the choreography project at Danshögskolan. Carl, who participated in the first piece at Danshögskolan, came to Trondheim as a guest dancer and stayed for two months to produce a larger piece.

The project brought with it a very intense time of choreographing and performing. When the project was finished, I was left with the feeling that although it had been a great experience,

43 For up-to-date information about Inclusive Dance Company, see www.dance-company.no (accessed 15^th of June 2009)

44 på Føtter, på Hjul. Inclusive Dance Company (2001).

the finding out part had still been diminished in favour of choreographing and producing the full evening piece. Carl was tired and so was I, having gone straight to the professional stage with quite little time for improvisation and investigation. Reflecting on the project, I knew that I wanted to take a few steps backwards and create a meeting place for differently bodied dancers and wait for a while before another large production. I needed to learn more and listen thoroughly to the voices of different dancers.

In the autumn term of 2001 the Inclusive Dance Company eventually started a contact improvisation based class, led by me. The class was promoted as a mixed ability class – open to both disabled and non-disabled dancers. This first group was given the name Mixed Ability Group, and it was offered with the support from the municipality of Trondheim⁴⁵. The Mixed Ability Group was promoted in this way in 2001:

The Inclusive Dance Company is developing the project Mixed Ability Group in cooperation with the municipality of Trondheim, Culture & Leisure in Strinda district. Adult dancers with and without disabilities are welcome to attend the Mixed Ability Group. The work in the group is based on contact improvisation. This is a contemporary dance technique based on physical contact between the dancers. Individual expression is also emphasised. The project has the intention to create a performance each semester. The Mixed Ability Group is open for a maximum of 8 participants and the project seeks to establish itself as a stable group. ⁴⁶

The Mixed Ability Group had its first class in August 2001. Anna and another female non-disabled professional dancer from the Inclusive Dance Company were attending. In addition, three participants, all women, signed on to attend the Mixed Ability Group. They were one non-disabled amateur dancer and two disabled amateur dancers. Both of the disabled dancers were wheelchair users. The assistant of one of the disabled dancers also was interested in dance, and soon she also decided to participate in the group. She was a non-disabled amateur dancer.

So in the end, the Mixed Ability Group started up with six female dancers, disabled and non-disabled, professional and non-professional. It was a small group, but it seemed a good start for an improvisation space to develop. The group mainly worked with improvisation that autumn, but somewhere in the process some shaping of choreographic material started to take place. This was developed into a short piece with a work-in-progress character. The piece was performed at a school one evening that autumn – with only eight people in the audience! The interest for dance with differently bodied dancers was small.

45 Karin Amble at the culture unit in the municipality of Trondheim has been a keen supporter and important critic of my work with differently bodied dancers ever since we first met. It is thanks to her belief in the project that the Dance Laboratory came to be and develop as a stable group. She encouraged and financially supported the set up of the Mixed Ability group in 2001, and then the Dance Laboratory in 2003. From 2005, Terje Johnsen continued as the leader of the culture unit working for equal opportunities, and he has continued supporting the Dance Laboratory. From January 2006 a 50 % stable position as a dance development worker and dance teacher was established for me within the culture unit of the municipality in Trondheim, with the Dance Laboratory as one of my main areas of work.

46 Promotion text written on posters, autumn 2001, my translation from Norwegian to English.

During this first autumn of teaching the Mixed Ability Group my wondering about dance improvisation in a context of diversity grew. The summing of questions in the background of my awareness developed into clear and curious questions. What did the participants experience?

What did they learn? What can dance be? Who is dance for? How should I teach? How could all this be brought into a broader aesthetic, societal and pedagogic context in order to generate knowledge?

I had the feeling that all the participants, including myself as the teacher, both professional and non-professional, disabled and non-disabled dancers were being challenged “in a special way”. A quite clumsy wording I had first was that the dance did not seem to be about “just dance”. Instead, layers of meaning seemed to open up, interfering with one another and the context of the dance project, spreading into different aspects of what it is to be human – and what it means to be dancing. A better way of saying it is maybe that a rich meaning potential of the concept dance seemed to be able to flourish in this dance project based on improvisation with differently bodied dancers.

I wanted to know more than I had picked up through the teaching and the discussions we had in class during the project, so I finished the autumn with an evaluation. I asked the participants to write about their experiences, thoughts and questions during the process we had gone through during the autumn. One of the women using a wheelchair wrote this:

I am in a very good mood after each class. I feel that I have been able to show who I am. I also feel that I have been accepted as I am. It feels very good to be able show who I am in a new way, in the dance. It is good that people get to know me through the dance. I have learnt to dance in a completely new way. I have attended mixed dance groups before, called wheelchair dance, so this was not new for me. The new thing was the way we have danced.

This was completely new to me. The performance also meant a lot to me. It was especially exciting because I knew it would be new for the audience.⁴⁷quote evaluation sheet

This woman is Vera, who later continued in the Dance Laboratory. Another, non-disabled amateur dancer wrote this:

I am often in a good mood after class. One reason is that I often have discovered new ways of moving. Another reason is that this is a very comfortable and exciting way of using my body. Also I discover more and more that dance can be so much! I think that meeting with different dancers has been very exciting and full of learning, especially because I have discovered so many opportunities that I have never thought of before. The most important aspect is maybe that I have developed a conscious relationship to the fact that you don’t need to be able-bodied to dance, not even to perform dance. I believe that the performance showed the audience that dance embraces a lot and that there are actually very few limits. In addition, I think that the performance expressed something about relationships between human beings. I think that most people in the audience were left with a “good feeling”.^48quote

evaluation sheet

The feedback which I received from the group was what finally prompted me to go on with

47 Quote from evaluation sheet by Vera.

48 Quote by young non-disabled amateur dancer who took part in the Mixed Ability Group. This woman moved away from Trondheim the next year and started a professional study in dance to become a dancer. She is now an independent dance artist in Oslo.

the work and find out more. In the answers, I read about meaning-making processes that embrace different dimensions (or different spaces in dance, which I will come back to later).

For example, I understood the quote “I feel that I have been able to show who I am” as a passage which describes an empowering experience. In my interpretation the quotes “I have developed a conscious relationship to the fact that you don’t need to be able bodied to dance, not even to perform dance” and “I believe that the performance showed the audience that dance embraces a lot and that there actually are very few limits” pointed towards an experience that had had influence on the dancer’s view on dance as an art form.

I turned to the Theatre Academy in Helsinki, Finland, to create a research plan. The result is this study. In the autumn of 2003, the group was re-created, now under the name the Dance Laboratory, with the function of being both an artistic project and the field work for this study.

The Dance Laboratory, both an artistic and a research project

When the project started up again in September 2003, now with the new name the Dance Laboratory⁴⁹, it was released altogether from the Inclusive Dance Company. The project was fully financed by the culture unit of the municipality in Trondheim. When the Dance Laboratory started up this autumn, only two participants attended the project. They were Vera and Anna, who both had taken place in the Mixed Ability Group. In October that autumn, the dancer and musician Paul moved from Argentina to Trondheim. He soon joined the project. So then there were three, very different, participants.

I want to stay with the fact that in the beginning, both in 2001 and 2003, it was difficult to gain interest in the project. It was not easy to find participants, and it was below the minimum number to start the Dance Laboratory in 2003 with only two participants. This tells something about the landscape where I tried to operate and create this project. The idea of inviting disabled and non-disabled dancers to improvise together seemed strange to most people. It was difficult both to recruit disabled and non-disabled dancers. I tried to promote the project to a lot of people, running around in cafes and other places to tell about the project.

Regarding people with disabilities or people new to dance who I tried to invite into the project, it seemed like the strange aspect was this kind of dance. Improvisation? Contact improvisation? What is that? I discovered that it is very difficult to explain what contact improvisation is to somebody who has never seen or been exposed to that dance form and actually not to dance at all. The whole idea of dance as expression and communication seemed new. As those I talked to had no embodied experience of dance and movement other than maybe copying movement patterns, or as a means to train and improve the body, it was difficult to explain what improvising through touch is. I many times felt how poor words about dance are, if they are not grounded in one´s own, lived experience of dance and movement. I tried to say to the people I talked to that if you come and try, you will understand more about what it is like. But I had little luck: it was difficult to gain interest in the project from people with

49 See Appendix.

disabilities and beginner dancers.

But then, it seemed even more difficult to recruit non-disabled, more advanced dancers to the Dance Laboratory. The great barrier seemed to be the fact that the project was for both non-disabled and non-disabled dancers. When I presented the project to non-non-disabled, more advanced dancers, it seemed like in the very moment I mentioned the word “disabled dancer”, they lost interest in the project. Having uttered that word, it seemed near impossible to explain anything more about the group. Whatever I said, the people I talked to seemed to assume that this was some kind of special needs activity for the disabled, being of no interest to them personally. The thought that this was intended as an artistic project where disabled and non-disabled dancers can meet to create dance together, seemed out of reach.

Hoping that this situation would change, I then started the Dance Laboratory in September 2003 with only Vera and Anna as participants, soon joined by Paul. For aesthetic reasons it was quite difficult to work with two or three dancers only, and also for the purpose of the research material, I wished for more participants. I started to collect the research material during that autumn, but the main part of it was gathered during the spring of 2004, as there was a sudden increase in interest in the project. In January, before the Dance Laboratory was about to start again, there were phone calls from people who had heard about the project. Consequently, five new dancers joined the Dance Laboratory in spring term 2004. During this term, I collected the main part of the research material for this study, consisting of interviews and video material.

The interpretation of the video and interview material in Chapter 4 in this thesis relies on material gathered during that term.

From autumn term 2003 until autumn term 2004, the Dance Laboratory worked only with improvisation, not towards choreography. It was a one and a half year long process of exploring, investigating, questioning, looking for possibilities, simply just finding out about each other and how to move and create together. For me, this period was a time of finding out how to teach in this context. In the spring term of 2005, I reckoned that there had been enough of

“just” improvising and that the group now needed to create choreography and go out to show its work. We had created some sort of knowledge and it became important to communicate this to an audience in the public and receive feedback from the outside. That spring we created our first choreographic work, a short piece called The Photographer’s moment⁵⁰. Next year the longer piece Wanted:love⁵¹ was created. This performance toured in the municipality and surroundings. By now, the group was firmly established, consisting of a stable core of dancers.

In the year 2006–07, the performance Code name dance⁵² was created. In the season 2007–08 the Dance Laboratory was led by the choreographer Susanne Rasmussen, creating a piece called Body bending⁵³. In 2009, the Dance Laboratory created the dance film Café Burlesque⁵⁴ as part

50 The Photographer’s moment (2005), see www.danselaboratoriet.no (accessed 15^th of June 2009) 51 Wanted:love (2006), see www.danselaboratoriet.no (accessed 15^th of June 2009)

52 Code name dance (2007), see www.danselaboratoriet.no (accessed 15^th of June 2009). See Appendix.

53 Body Bending (2008), see www.danselaboratoriet.no (accessed 15^th of June 2009) 54 Café Burlesque (2009), see www.danselaboratoriet.no (accessed 15^th of June 2009)

of the performance Kropp a’long⁵⁵.

Another aspect connected to the work with the Dance Laboratory has been the establishment of MultiPlié Dance Festival⁵⁶. The intention with this festival has been to develop and enrich the position of contemporary dance in Trondheim and to create a performance setting which the Dance Laboratory can be part of. Further, the aim with the festival is to challenge aesthetic conventions about dance and create a debate about what dance can be and whom dance is for.

The festival was arranged in 2004⁵⁷ and in 2006⁵⁸, both years also with international guest performances. In 2004 the festival hosted the companies BewegGrund⁵⁹ from Switzerland and StopGAP⁶⁰ from the U.K., both companies with disabled and non-disabled dancers. The process leading to their visits in Trondheim led to quite a lot of exchange of experience and knowledge, which was important for me and the Dance Laboratory. In 2006, the festival hosted the Swedish choreographer Efva Lilja⁶¹ with a piece created for two senior citizen dancers. In 2008⁶² the festival was arranged for the third time. The Dance Laboratory was among the performing groups.

To conclude, the work with setting up the Dance Laboratory has included a mix of artistic, educational, choreographic and research engagement. The work has had the character of dance development work. An important part of this development work has been to encourage a debate about what dance is, who the stage is for and to direct attention to cultural narratives about the body (and disability as part of the body). The creation of MultiPlie festival has been one way of allowing the Dance Laboratory into a broader performance context, where its work can be seen, debated and written about. In this way, the work of differently bodied dancers little by little makes itself heard in Trondheim, thereby creating more knowledge and interest.

The dancers, video artist and teacher during spring term 2004

The eight dancers during spring term 2004 are all given fictive names and the video artist is just called “the video artist”. Still, it is not really a secret who they are and it is also easy to find out their real names. This is due to the fact that the Dance Laboratory is not only a research project, but also a performing group. The Dance Laboratory has been written about several times in different newspapers and magazines; there is public information on its web pages and a couple of documentary films have been made about the project. The reason why I still chose

The eight dancers during spring term 2004 are all given fictive names and the video artist is just called “the video artist”. Still, it is not really a secret who they are and it is also easy to find out their real names. This is due to the fact that the Dance Laboratory is not only a research project, but also a performing group. The Dance Laboratory has been written about several times in different newspapers and magazines; there is public information on its web pages and a couple of documentary films have been made about the project. The reason why I still chose