Steps into the dark

Suzanne Cowan, has a strong personal and professional interest in the meanings our society gives to disability, as well as in dance.

In Dunedin as Caroline Plummer dance fellow at the University of Otago, the Auckland-based dancer and choreographer has devised and directed House of Memories, which will be performed this weekend. It is inspired by the world of visual impairment.

"Disability doesn't exist in itself. It's a label we've created. Actually, there are no two bodies the same. There's a spectrum of function and diversification among different bodies. It's just that we've said these bodies are disabled and these are not, but in a sense it's highly subjective," she says.

"My legs don't work like yours - that's just a fact, but the meaning we make of it is an add-on. For me, the most challenging aspect of living with a disability is not the disability itself, although the practical aspect of that can be challenging at times, but it's the societal response that's really challenging."

Cowan lost the use of her legs at the age of 22 in 1990, in a car accident while on a working holiday in Canada. On her return to New Zealand, she finished her degree in history at Canterbury University and worked for television as a reporter-director on a programme about people with disabilities.

But a new door opened with gusto when she saw a performance by Touch Compass Dance Company in 1999. The mixed-ability Auckland dance group includes dancers with disabilities as well as able-bodied dancers.

She had learnt ballet and modern dance as a child and although she had been more interested in going to the gym and skiing as a teenager, dance stays in the body, she says.

She did a show with Touch Compass, and a few months later got a job with Candoco, a British mixed-ability dance company.

She toured internationally with them for the next three and a-half years. Using a light, manoeuvrable wheelchair brings another dimension to dance, as it has its own specific momentum and its own performance life, she says.

More recently she has concentrated on dancing out of her chair in a style of dance known as contact improvisation. It was developed in the 1960s and '70s by American experimental dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton, and focuses on sharing weight with a dance partner and using gravity and the momentum of two bodies together to propel the movement, she says.

"In that sense, it's perfect for people with disabilities, because it's not specific to people with elitist bodies."