Dancing on stage may seem an impossible dream to most people, but there's a growing movement towards integrated dance, which includes both trained dancers and others who are not, including those with disabilities.
Hahna Briggs, this year's Caroline Plummer Fellow in Community Dance at the University of Otago, is passionate about integrated and mixed-ability dance.
The outcome of her fellowship is Inter-play: Dances about support on August 25 in the South Dunedin Community Hall.
It includes a community dance workshop for interested members of the public, followed by performances by three groups of people she has been working with over the past few months.
A small group of carers and support workers has been meeting weekly. Some of them have done some dance before and some have not.
They are exploring in movement transcripts of interviews Briggs did with other support workers and carers in various fields: working with young people with behavioural issues, with people with intellectual disabilities and with people in rest-homes, and supporting queer students at university.
''We've been playing with ways of responding to the interviews, so rather than telling a linear story from the beginning to the end, we played with our own movement responses.
"You won't see a traditional story but our reactions to part of the interviews,'' Briggs says.
Another two groups do creative movement. They are mixed, with members of the public, people with intellectual disabilities, and their support people who enable them to get to the class.
''The support workers are also part of the class. They never sit back and watch, which is really great,'' Briggs says.
Briggs enjoys enabling a diverse group of people to come together and find common ground through movement and dance.
''When people first come to the class, they are nervous, shy and scared to interact with each other. Then, after a few weeks, everyone's running round and leaning on each other and it becomes a very supportive and engaging and fun environment.
''People with disabilities who come along, if they enjoy the class and keep coming, what they get out of it is this chance to have real, true experiences of being a valued member of the community.
"They have the opportunity to make decisions and to lead things and take different roles.
"For people who don't have disabilities - they may not have spent much time around people with disabilities and it can be quite scary at first, but people who do stay become more and more comfortable and realise we are all humans and learn different ways of communicating with each other,'' she says.
''I think what I get out of it as well is the opportunity to learn from different people and learn different ways I need to teach so everyone is included.''
One man with intellectual disabilities who came to class did not really follow instructions, but just danced around, smiling and enjoying it.
She explored ways of incorporating him in some of the exercises, and at the end of the warm-up, he and she stood in the middle of the circle and when he clapped, everyone made a shape. He liked to clap and could lead the exercise.
''He knows that's his role now and as soon as we start the warm-up, he stands in front of me going 'is it time? is it time?'.''
She loves seeing people who have not had much experience with dance before, whether with or without disabilities, becoming involved.
''It takes a leap of faith. It's quite scary, especially if you are having a performance - that first performance can be quite terrifying for people who have never performed before, so it takes a bit of confidence.''
There are many different forms and levels of dance and it interweaves with community, culture and society. Everyone dances, even if just at nightclubs and parties, but they will still say they don't dance, Briggs says.
Even professional companies, such as the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Okareka and Footnote, that visit Dunedin have an education component and offer public workshops.
''It's another stream of income for the companies and it's also a way of engaging audiences and trying to reach new audiences and spreading the word about dance and trying to get more people involved and actually participating.
"There's definitely a crossover between professional and community,'' she says.
Briggs grew up in Oamaru, learning modern ballet throughout her childhood, then did a degree at the School of Physical Education at the University of Otago.
Although she'd studied dance there, she moved into rehabilitation, working for the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind for four and a-half years.
''I really missed dancing and needed a change, so I came back and did my master's in dance studies, and because I was interested in working with people with disabilities, my master's focused on integrated performance in New Zealand, especially Touch Compass Dance Company, the main professional company [in Auckland].''
Since then she has worked in dance, as a teaching fellow at university, tutoring, choreographing and running her own performances, some with mixed-ability dancers.
In Melbourne for six months, she worked with another integrated company, Weave Movement Theatre, then returned to Dunedin because her partner had a new job here. As a result, she applied for the fellowship, she says.
Unlike many of the previous fellows, who leave Dunedin at the end of the fellowship, she plans to continue the work she has been doing with integrated dance, as well as teaching dance and developing performances - she has her eyes set on producing events for the Dunedin Fringe Festival and the Body Festival in Christchurch next year.
However, that will be dependent on funding and the festivals accepting her proposals, she says.
Join in
Inter-Play: Dances about support, a project by Hahna Briggs, 2013 Caroline Plummer Fellow, is on this Sunday. From 1.30pm to 2.30pm, she will run an open community dance workshop and from 3pm to 4pm, there will be three short performances by people who have attended her classes, one by support workers and carers and the other two by participants in her creative movement classes. They take place at South Dunedin Community Hall, 216 King Edward St, South Dunedin and are free, but koha is welcome.
