High Beam Festival - arts and disability
by Janice Florence

High Beam Festival ran for 10 days in Adelaide in May. It was a national festival of disability arts incorporating a wide range of arts: dance, theatre, painting, sculpture, craft, written and spoken word.

Artists from Australia and overseas appeared. Among them were the Catherine Chappell Dancers from New Zealand, a mixed ability dance group which incorporated an aerial piece with dancers in wheelchairs hanging from ropes. The approach was choreographic, though Catherine has a strong interest in improvisation. There was a flavour of Contact techniques in some of the pieces. From Sweden came 'Mooms' a theatre company of people with intellectual disabilities who earn a living from being professional performers. State of Flux from Melbourne performed at the opening cabaret and also at a lunchtime conference performance. For us these were explorations of new performing situations which seemed to work well and to which there was an enthusiastic response. Many audience members had never witnessed improvisational dance before. The aim of the festival was to celebrate and display the art of people with disabilities and to begin to make apparent that disability arts is more than therapeutic basket weaving.
Society likes to patronise people with disabilities in many aspects of their lives, as much in the arts as anywhere else. People imagine the lives of those with disabilities to be colourless, dull and circumscribed and certainly not fertile ground for nourishing artistic growth. They imagine that any efforts would be faltering and amateurish. The words disability and arts together conjure up for many an image of homogeneous groups of people with disabilities being lead by the hand into a therapeutic creative experience by the non-disabled pied piper/teacher/guide/artist/benefactor. And while this may be the picture for some, it's a limited and narrow vision of the reality.

Accomplished and professional artists with a disability have been around for centuries. O'Carolan the 18th century blind Irish harpist and composer is a famous example. Ellen Terry, the great 19th century actor continued to perform after having her leg amputated. David Helfgott of 'Shine' fame plays piano with an ever present psychiatric disability. Beethoven wrote his final symphony while deaf. Society's prejudices are blind and forgetful.

In the present day there are many professional musicians with visual impairment, here and overseas. George Shearing and Ray Charles are among the most well known. Music has been a traditionally acceptable profession for blind people which proves that if the prevailing social belief is supporting you, you can go a long way. Some people find their way into their art form much the same way as anyone else, carrying with them a disability from birth or where the barriers of prejudice are up, by their own instigation and ingenuity. Other people acquire their disability later and therefore escape the prejudices of the training institutions towards people with disabilities. Access to training is a huge issue for artists with disabilities.
Perhaps music is a little more accepting than theatre in general and dance specifically. Visual aesthetics in dance and its attendant preferred body images are still generally bound by the mores of ballet and its modern off-shoots. Even people who are considered too fat or too tall are excluded. It doesn't take too much to place you beyond the pale of this dominating form of dance.

On the other hand there has been an explosion of dance exploration this century in the USA and Europe going right back to Isadora Duncan. Many dance artists with disabilities have been attracted to these more tolerant, unorthodox styles and a broader definition of dance and physical theatre. The physicality of a dancer with an 'imperfect' body can be fertile choreographic material once the blinkers of convention are off.

Dance performers with disabilities began to emerge in the USA and the UK about 15 years ago. There are several mixed ability performing groups in the USA and a large 'danceability' movement (mixed ability groups which work in dance through the medium of Contact Improvisation.) Charlene Curtis is a professional dancer with a disability who has been performing widely for some time and who has visited Australia. CanDoCo in the UK is an integrated dance company which teaches and performs widely in the UK and Europe. It is a contemporary dance company widely travelled and respected. These groups have provided inspiration and a sense of community to those who came later.

In Adelaide, Restless Dance Theatre, incorporating people with intellectual disabilities has been touring and performing for some years. James Cunningham in Sydney is an independent dance artist whose arm became paralysed in an accident. He says that in a strange way this set him free to explore dance and physical theatre in an entirely new way. In my case I had trained here and in the USA in a number of dance forms, many of the freer improvisational kind. These proved adaptable after I had an accident which left me paraplegic.

I also received much open hearted and open minded support from the improvisational dance community in Melbourne who welcomed me back to classes and were willing to explore possibilities with me. Of course, sometimes people were phased by finding someone in a wheelchair with them in a dance class and sometimes I found their and my reactions difficult, but many people manage to get used to it.

I have now been part of State of Flux for almost three years and the exploration continues both in teaching and performing. Artists with disabilities need to be treated seriously by critics and audiences alike. There is a tendency to regard our efforts as a beneficial therapeutic exercise or a wonderful effort by a poor creature. This perpetuates the childlike stereotypes around disability and does not take artists with disabilities seriously or contribute to their development.

Hopefully this will change with continued exposure of audiences. Only continued progress to acceptance of a diverse range of people into the artistic sphere will create a favourable climate and contribute to the demolishing of the barricades of prejudice.