What expectations do we carry when attending a dance performance featuring people with disabilities? Should we even still speak of disability, or rather of “people with specific needs”? After all, everyone carries their own vulnerabilities, their own needs. Perhaps inclusion begins precisely there: in the moment individuality becomes self-evident and differences dissolve into collective creation.
The four contemporary dance pieces gathered under the title “Correspondances”, presented by the Mierscher Theater as part of the festival “Inclusion in Culture”, bring together professional dancers and amateurs, with and without disabilities. It is already the theatre’s seventh inclusive dance production. Since 2007, the ensemble blanContact has enabled people with specific needs to take part in professional artistic creations.
Yet inclusion within the cultural sector is not confined to opening night. It begins long before the curtain rises — during rehearsals, and sometimes even before entering the theatre itself. How does an artist using a wheelchair access the building? Which infrastructural barriers still remain? Added to this are administrative and legal realities: the status afforded to people with disabilities often sits uneasily alongside the temporary contracts typical of the cultural world. The festival shines a light on precisely these difficulties while seeking practical ways to overcome them.
How much inclusion is possible?
Peggy Kind, executive assistant and coordinator of the theatre’s inclusive projects, argues for a honesty in the debate: how far can inclusion truly go? Inclusive productions come with their own demands. They require more time, greater resources and extensive awareness-raising among audiences. Economically, such projects are rarely profitable. “Management has to embrace this vision wholeheartedly,” she says. “With token statements and a few isolated initiatives, nothing moves forward.”
Ahead of this new production, the theatre organised an audition process. Of the thirty original applicants, nine performers are now preparing to take to the stage. Even the professional choreographers had to present their own artistic concepts in order to be selected.
Backstage, dancer Steve Urbing greets us with curious warmth. He moves forward in small, hesitant steps; his speech is laboured, and the long scar across his forehead recalls the road accident that changed his life forever at the age of eighteen.
Gradually, the auditorium fills. The atmosphere is relaxed, buoyant. Florent Devlesaver skilfully manoeuvres his wheelchair between the tables. Left paraplegic at seventeen following an accident, he only discovered dance at twenty-six. Art became his release. “On stage, my disability disappears. I am just a dancer.” Television audiences may recognise him from “La France a un incroyable talent”, where he reached the final with his dance partner. Since then, he has pursued an international career as both choreographer and performer.
Annelise Nigon has been part of blanContact for seven years. She walks with crutches, works as a lawyer and dances in her spare time. Collaborating with professional choreographers and dancers is, she says, an extraordinary opportunity. She also emphasises the atmosphere of respect and kindness that defines the group.
Not everyone, however, enjoys the same degree of independence. “Correspondances” could not exist without the five volunteer assistants who support the dancers with specific needs throughout the production.
Peggy Kind explains that it is important to the Mierscher Theatre that not only the choreography comes from professionals, but that trained dancers are also involved in every piece. The musicians are also fully professional and the stage design is by the renowned Luxembourg artist Trixi Weis. This is the only way inclusion works: everyone meets at eye level.
Within the troupe, student Liz Braquet occupies something of a unique position. Passionate about dance since childhood, it was above all this love of movement that drew her to the project. Yet she openly recalls the difficulties of the beginning: “I felt slightly illegitimate and struggled to find my place. I don’t have a disability, but I’m not a professional dancer either. At first, I felt uncomfortable; for instance, I didn’t know how to communicate with someone who could not speak. I had to understand that we were one single team, and that dance was becoming our shared language. From that moment on, I grew as well.”
This goes hand in hand with trust in the choreographers, but also in their own abilities. This takes more time than a production with trained dancers, explains choreographer Jill Crovisier. „First of all, we have to find the joy of movement together, create an atmosphere and a structure in which everyone can find themselves. The dancers can then develop within this framework.“ This is not about sparing people with special needs. „They have to get out of their comfort zone and face their stage fright. They have to learn to deal with stress and the responsibility that comes with being involved in theatre,“ says Jill Crovisier.
Professionalism yes, excessive pressure to perform no. „Everyone has a story within them that they can transform into art,“ continues Jill Crovisier. „What society may see as a flaw becomes a strength on stage.“
What we can all learn from this: In a world of self-promotion and beautiful appearances, to put aside our own vanity and be ourselves more often.
Text: Martine Hemmer, Photos: Mierscher Theatre / Bohumil Kostohryz
