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This Is (choreography for Croi Glan Integrated Dance Company)

This dance performance, choreographed by Benjamin for Croi Glan Integrated Dance Company, explored the negotiation of inclusivity in integrated practices intended to tour on a professional circuit for mainstream audiences. This Is, created for three able-bodied and two disabled performers, was first presented as work-in-progress at Absolute Fringe, Dublin (September 2010) and Abhainn Ri Festival, Callan (2011) before touring to Sant Andreu Teatre, Barcelona and Ballina Arts Centre, Ireland (both 2011) and Dampfzentrale Arts Festival, Switzerland (2013). Benjamin’s research process, however, began prior to these iterations when he was invited by the company in 2009 to develop a strategy to help them make the transition from a ‘community’ to ‘professional’ dance company. In 2008, in a chapter for An Introduction to Community Dance Practice, he wrote that ‘The moment we enter the professional arena there is a realistic demand that performers will demonstrate exceptional skills and qualities, and (particularly in the case of disabled performers) transcend or take us beyond physical difference.’ Benjamin’s research with Croi Glan therefore attempted to navigate a trend he identified in integrated performance practice that runs the risk of excluding in the same moment it embraces difference. This Is sought to re-route expectations of inclusive professional performance practice by resisting dominant discourses that venerate bodies which, although disabled, tend towards the augmented and virtuosic. While the latter may be evident in Croi Glan dancer, James O’Shea, this is complemented by the performing presence of Mary Nugent, whose movements are very erratic and spontaneous. This Is attempted to develop choreographic structures, both formal and poetic, that enable dancers of very differing physicality to co-exist as equal contributors upon the stage. Within these structures, it is of fundamental importance that no dancers are made to appear redundant, under used or out of their depth on stage.