Introduction

BACKGROUND

Together with Fashion designer Sinead O’Dwyer and collaborating dance artists Alethia Antonia, Dorna Ashory, Iro Costello, Florence Pearl and Natifah White we have been working on a project to tackle themes of bodily autonomy in the context of dance, fashion & public spaces (such as galleries and museums).

The project, Slip Mould Slippery, explored practices for working together ‘in the studio’ and what it now means to make performance for public venues. Through R&D studio time, we have been questioning the autonomy of the performer, the power dynamics of inviting people to be seen and where power and responsibility lie within these exchanges. By putting these ideas into practice, we formed the basis of where our conversations, around what dance artists might need from venues, have come from. We are offering up our research, which is still in practice and evolving, as an invitation to other artists and museum and gallery venues. As a consequence, this pack does not offer a one size fits all solution but is intended to encourage dialogue between venues and artists as they attempt to navigate new ways of working, especially in the current environment. We have been working specifically in contexts of galleries and museums, but a lot of these provocations can also be applied to any working relationship for dance. This work is a collective effort that is intended to go beyond institutional critique to ask how we might all care for each other when negotiating a shared environment. Here is an outline of the format of the pack:

• It begins with the considerations that we might have to make when working in the contexts of dance in galleries and museums. These are not exhaustive and may include factors that you have already considered. They have been included to invite discussion and encourage reflection by all stakeholders.

• Some of the considerations are then unpacked with reference to my practice and where these ideas have come from.

• After the considerations, the pack explores invitations and suggestions of possible ways in which facilitators and dance artists might address these points.

• Finally, there are links to ‘Information Sheets’ for artists and venues and an additional suggested ‘check list’ for venues. These can be downloaded and edited to suit your work. They are an attempt to find a practical and clear way to disseminate the thinking around this work.

This pack can be dipped into or read in full depending on your previous experience with this work. We hope it is helpful!

LAYOUT

WHY CREATE THIS PACK?

This research began before the pandemic, drawing on my experiences working as a choreographer and as a curator to explore the needs of dance artists. Before Covid, we were already dealing with the overworked and underpaid nature of our industry. We were all then hit by the closure of venues and the movement of funding for freelance artists into venues in the hope that already struggling arts venues would support freelancers. We then had to contend with how we might move forward together. Venues needed to be flexible, to honour agreements with artists set up prepandemic and to avoid being stuck in the systems that worked (or did not work) pre-covid. Our industry has shown that not everything that has come about as a result of Covid has been problematic. We have the opportunity now to rebuild our ways of working and relationships in an increasingly beneficial and sustainable way. The ideas presented here have been developed through two key considerations:

The pandemic has forced us to contend with the idea that we are all vulnerable (Butler 2006). Instead of seeing the exposure of our vulnerabilities as weakness or lack of independence, the pandemic has solidified the idea of vulnerability as a human condition. We are all vulnerable and we need each other. I believe that this exposure of our vulnerabilities can be used as a model and basis for ideas centred around rebuilding our working relationships in the wake of the pandemic. In short, the suggestion in this document is to invite artists, independent companies and venues to share vulnerabilities with each other in order to have more realistic and transparent relationships.

Due to the pandemic and global movements such as BLM, the need for additional care when working within art-forms that deal with the live body has been thrown into sharp relief. In this new context, we not only understand an additional need for care but are practiced in how to care for each other. This pack has been compiled with the intention to offer questions for consideration as to how we might use this new understanding to take care of bodies in a wide range of performance settings. This need for care extends beyond risk assessments merely for physical injury prevention to any kind of injury prevention. This can be seen as a transferrable approach to wellbeing in any artistic project.