Author: Tabitha James

We sat down with Lucy Glover who is Executive Producer and Lucy Bennett who is Co-Artistic Director of StopGap Dance Company. Lived Fiction from Stopgap Dance Company will be playing at The Brighton Festival on 14th May, Southbank Centre as part of the Unlimited festival on 4th September, The Lowry Salford on 17th October and DanceEast Ipswich on 15th November. For more info go to www.stopgapdance.com.

How did Lived Fiction come about?

Stopgap Dance Company is a group of Deaf, Disabled, non disabled and Neurodivergent artists who like to break with tradition when it comes to making choreography. 

We realised that although our company thought a lot about access for Disabled performers working with us or experiencing our practical workshops we had not always put enough money aside to incorporate access for our audiences. Access such as captions and audio description are often tagged at the last minute to productions. We wanted to create a dance production that embedded access creatively into the choreography and artistic elements, such as music, script, lights and projections. 

We hope that we will create a shared experience for everyone because experiencing emotions together is what connects us as human beings. 

Tell us about the research that Lived Fiction has been part of?

We were part of a larger project that was researching EU law and Disabled people’s right to cultural activities. The funding enabled us to set up focus groups to feedback on their experiences of our embedded creative access. We have done this in previous projects but it was particularly useful to have someone outside of Stopgap and not involved in dance leading on collecting the responses. The research team gave us the space to create the show we wanted to which organically came out of the process. The research is still ongoing as the final paper is yet to be released and features much of the dancers and access consultants interviews during the process of Lived Fiction. 

The cast is a combination of disabled and non disabled performers, how do you go about casting your shows?

Many different ways. We hold an audition or sometimes we will meet someone through a workshop we deliver. Sometimes people contact us to intern or observe us. Either way we like to get to know people first, so will often offer them a smaller part initially before inviting them to become a full time member with the company. 

The show has live on stage audio captions as well as projections, why is that and how do you make sure all the technical elements balance with the choreography?

The show has live audio description and prepared creative captions. All the collaborators were a part of a long process with myself, our access artist and the dancers. We purposefully work with collaborators who are sensitive to the work’s progression and who try hard not to overwhelm the choreography. We have kept the stage quite bare, and we have created choreography that has space (most of the time) for the other elements to be experienced. The whole process has been all about finding a balance between the many components that make up Lived Fiction. 

Stopgap is around 30 years old now, how has dance changed over the years in terms of inclusivity from when the company began?

In the last two years it feels as if we have made a huge leap forward or that the industry has woken up and have decided they do want to find out more about what Stopgap and Inclusive culture has to offer.  Organisations and their leaders are trying to dismantle barriers and I hope are listening to people with lived experience of those barriers. However with cuts to arts funding and the cost of living crisis it also feels like people can still use this as an excuse not to dismantle barriers. As the dance industry in the UK becomes more supportive, everyday living such as transport, accommodation when touring, equipment availability is just getting worse. 

Twenty Five years on and we are still struggling with regular accessible space and getting to work but we have had an uplift from the Arts Council our central  funder which means we can find the time and resources to solve these challenges. 

Artistically it is clear we have changed.  We finally realised we don’t need to imitate our non disabled peers and we have been making our own devised work for the last ten years. By creating with Disabled, Deaf, non disabled and Neuro divergent artists our work is multifaceted, unique and powerful. We are no longer an inclusive company trying to fit into an non inclusive industry. 

What are your main hopes for the future of dance?

That we learn to respect differences and actively pursue diversity. That we prepare for change and don’t assume because we have had the privilege of making work or performing that we will always have that. That we can remind ourselves that the dance industry is an ecology that will continue to grow after we are gone, so we can feed that ecology, learn from others and support the next generation of dance graduates.