We are delighted to be presenting this talk in collaboration with Dance Umbrella and Team London Bridge.
Join us for in person or online for a discussion about access and inclusion when making, performing or producing performance. Drawing on their own experiences as artists, the panellists Raquel Meseguer Zafe, Sho Shibata and Xan Dye, facilitated by Tarik Elmoutawakil, will examine what is given time in the creative process and how those decisions affect or limit what is made, seen and valued. Using the idea of rhythm as a lens, we will focus on how working practices in the arts can and should better reflect the sometimes-conflicting needs of society.
The panel discussion will be followed by a Q & A with audiences.
A recording of this event will be available to watch until 31 October to Dance Umbrella Digital Pass holders. It will also be made available on Independent Dance’s digital library after the event.
Accessibility information:
This event is BSL interpreted. The livestream will also feature live captioning.
For in person ticket holders:
Siobhan Davies Studios is a wheelchair-accessible building. There will be chairs and some soft-floor seating. The event will be relaxed and if you tick, shout or move about you are welcome. The event aims to be anxiety-friendly: you will not be directly asked to participate, and doors will be left open so you will be able to leave and come back as and when you wish.
This talk is part of dance it, dance it, a year-long Independent Dance programme conceived by Heni Hale and Nikki Tomlinson which aims to foreground disabled, neurodivergent and d/Deaf artists as leaders and widen the dissemination of anti-ableist dance practices. Partner organisations on different strands of the programme include Candoco Dance Company, Sadler’s Wells, The Work Room, Dance Umbrella and Team London Bridge. This programme is supported through public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and with subsidized space at Siobhan Davies Studios.
Raquel Mesgeuer Zafe’s work straddles theatre, dance, installation, performative conversations and photo-documentary. She identifies as dis-abled, and works with rest and horizontality as creative impulses. Raquel founded Unchartered Collective in 2016 to create theatrical encounters that explore the lived experience of an invisible disability like chronic pain. Her work is supported by MAYK, Unlimited and Pervasive Media Studios.
Sho Shibata is the Executive Producer of the inclusive dance company Stopgap. He works with the company’s Co-Artistic Directors Lucy Bennett and Laura Jones to enable Stopgap to nurture Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent artists and create inclusive productions that tours nationally and internationally. Sho is also a trustee of ISTD, Play to the Crowd, and a member of the South East Area Council for Arts Council England.
Xan Dye is developing ways of doing, sharing and facilitating dance through identifying and dismantling the access barriers they experience in dance spaces, systems and cultures. They explore movement that emerges from a felt sense of need, being guided by the senses and curious about what’s happening already. Through this, Xan explores creative ways to be in dialogue with ourselves, our environments and others.
At the centre of Xan’s practice is the performance research project STIMMING, which explores rhythmic, repetitive sensory seeking and self-regulating movement patterns known as stimming movements, exploring the creative potential of the space between stimming and dancing. This research has been awarded national lottery project grant funding by Arts Council England, and has been supported through residencies and commissions from at The Place, Wellcome Collection, SHAPE ARTS and Siobhan Davies Studios.
Tarik Elmoutawakil is an artist, programmer, and Founder/Co-Artistic Director at Marlborough Productions. Creator of ‘Brownton Abbey,’ an Afro-Futures Performance Party celebrating disabled QTIPOC, and Radical Rhizomes, a creative community intervention based in Brighton.
Tarik’s work involves themes of intersectional accessibility and radical inclusion and radical exclusion. He is connected to global disabled QTIPOC activists, and is invested in reshaping access and leadership. A dynamic public speaker, Tarik advocates for joyous existences for marginalized queers.
