My final day at Babaró, its been an intense whirlwind and I've thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this experience but its not over yet....
Today I had booked in to a few different events starting with a lecture billed as Towards Sensory Ecologies (or sensorious ecologies) by Dalija Acin Thelander, introducing her academic practice-as-research on creating immersive performances for children with additional needs. Dalija is a maker, a choreographer, director, set designer and everything else, making immersive dance performance (not sensory theatre) for babies and more recently for children with additional needs. The crux of her work is about rethinking ableism in her choregraphic and movement practices, which are rooted in a somatic approach.
The lecture took off at a furious pace and didn't let up, with a lot of intense academic language, I found it difficult to digest but made notes which I am now trying to digest and make sense of.
My takeaways as food for thought around creating work for children are;
Traditionally the theatre space is a coded space, the audience are expected to sit and behave in a certain way, this goes against what children (particularly neurodiverse) and babies need as they need to move to make sense of the world and therefore behave differently.
Dalija's work is concerned with performances of all the bodies in the space, performers and audience co-creating, is this true co-creation?
Babies perceive the world differently taking in everything at the same time, unlike adults who are able to concentrate on one thing at a time, this is fundamental to understand when making work for babies
Babies lack inhibition so will follow the desire to engage on their own terms, this is similar to a neurodiverse audience, there is no room for 'ego' in this work
Creating an immersive environment is fundamental to the kinaesthetic experience
Dalija's work challenges the ethical conventions of hiararchy and control and theatre is all about control
Dancers (performers) need to have a high level of agency and responsiveness, working with kineaesthetic awareness, experiencing the world in the present and moving through the environment
How can the work be meaningful and empowering for both performers and audience?
Dalija has been experimenting with durational formats and has discovered that setting up a longer performance period, rather than the traditional 30 minute show for babies, works really well as the children/babies can choose how long they want to stay and can deal with the environment in their own terrms (she runs 2 x 3 hour performances with a break over a day). She also feels that this age group do not need a narrative or a story. Although I am interested in working thematically as well as narratively I am unsure if I agree with this statement but it is definitely a defining artisitic choice that she brings to her work. She also believes that you should not force interaction with a child, rather leave them to choose to interact with a performer or a prop, giving an offer/proposal is preferred. This is something I do agree with and is very much part of my own practice. Something else I agree with, adults can really mess up or motivate a childs experience, as artists how we work with the grown-ups is key to facilitating the childs theatrical experience.
After an intense morning, coffee and chat I headed into Babel, a sharing of a weeks residency workshop explorations for a team of 12 international artists making work for early years. Artists came from a range of disciplines, musicians, dancers, actors with multiple languages in the room, it is an ambitious project, as audience we witnessed a few of their (very familiar) improv games.
My final session of the day was Connecting Producers, Artists and Programmer, led by Rose Producing with some tops tips for networking and getting noticed from a panel consisting of a producer, a festival programmer and an artist. It was an interesting session with some honest advice about what to do and what not to do if you want to get booked. No surprises that most programmers book what they know so the question is really about how you find a way in.
I feel extremely privileged that I have been able to get support (a WMCA Activate Skills Development grant) to attend a festival like Babaró giving me at the very least an option to have a seat at the table but the good old phrase 'its not what you know, it's who you know' is alive and kicking. That said, I've had some wonderful conversations this week with artists, programmers and producers from all over the world, I've seen some wonderful shows, been party to many discussions about creating work for children, walked literally millions of steps, eaten soooo many cooked breakfasts, practiced yoga and drunk proper Irish Guinness for the first time. Its been a rich week in a beautiful place with many like minded people, the Irish are fabulous hosts and I do hope I get to come back.
Thanks for having me Galway!
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