As part of Unlimited Festival, Alistair Spalding and Jane Hackett from Sadler's Wells participated in a Q&A about their Equal Dance programme, chaired by Simon Evans from British Council Portugal. Eleanor Turney reports.
Unlimited – Equal
The Southbank Centre was buzzing yesterday as Unlimited Festival continued apace. Around 130 invited delegates from around the world took their seats to hear Alistair Spalding, Chief Executive and Artistic Director at Sadler's Wells, and Jane Hackett, Artistic Programmer and Producer, Creative Learning at Sadler's Wells, in conversation with Ben Evans from British Council Portugal.
"We want to challenge perceptions of who can make dance..."
As a world-renowned home for dance, Spalding declared that Sadler's has a responsibility to ensure that its programming is as inclusive as possible: "We have a pretty broad definition of what dance is," explained Spalding. "We include every single kind of dance." He described Sadler's Equal Dance programme, which celebrates and promotes the best of disabled and integrated dance companies. A query from the floor raiseed the issue of pigeon-hole-ing disabled dancers and companies into one programme, and asked if that risks turning "disability" into a genre akin to hip-hop or flamenco. Both Hackett and Spalding acknowledged this risk, but Hackett was keen to point out that Equal Dance was set up in response to requests from disabled dancers for a platform.
Furthermore, Spadling said that Equal Dance "is about focusing on a particular area of dance, not just presenting it but making a statement about it". By programming work by disabled artists and companies, they get the weight of Sadler's Wells behind them in terms of platform and press, as well as prestige. The reputation that Sadler's has is important, too, as Hackett explained: all of the work programmed "has to speak to our audiences and has to meet quality standards... we don't change our criteria based on what we're programming."
"Contemporary dance is a blank canvas; it's a good place to be questioning our attitudes to difference."
Hackett was also clear that these efforts are pointless in isolation: "We're thinking about long-term change," she said. "Every performance is supported by professional development and other opportunities. We want to challenge perceptions of who can make dance" – and that's a long-term goal. Spalding was in agreement here: "We feel a duty to present artists across the board... we want to reflect the people outside the theatre INSIDE the theatre." As a relatively new building, "Sadler's Wells is extremely accessible, physically, but that's not enough... Contemporary dance is a blank canvas; it's a good place to be questioning our attitudes to difference."
Praising the work Unlimited Festival is doing to foreground the work of brilliant disabled artists, Spalding said: "20 years after Candoco's first performance, is there still a need for this kind of festival? I think there is." Senior Producer Jo Verrent, writing on this blog, agreed, saying that since the 2012 Unlimited Festival as part of the Paralympic games, "less headway has been made than we might have hoped". However, based on the avid attention and lively debates at Southbank Centre yesterday, the work that forms Unlimited Festival speaks for itself.
Eleanor Turney is Web Editor, British Council Theatre and Dance. You can follow her on Twitter @eleanorturney, and follow @UKTheatreDance for all of the latest news, opportunities and blogs from the Theatre and Dance team.
