Current Projects (2024-25)

‘Dancing with Excess’ – presentations of mixed-ability dance duet ‘SKIN’ and workshops for people of different ages and abilities

Extending the successful touring of the mixed-ability dance duet ‘SKIN’ (Aerowaves 2021, Dance Platform Germany 2022), this impactful project is centred on disability activism, identity, and innovative choreography. The work will be presented in a Relaxed Performance format, alongside public workshops and meetings with local inclusion organisations at each of the four partner institutions in Italy, Germany, Slovakia, and North Macedonia.

‘SKIN’ is by choreographers/performers Renae Shadler and Roland Walter (Australia/Germany) and radically focuses on ‘excess’ where multiple lived experiences co-exist, rather than ‘access’ for people with disabilities. The two apparently disparate performers find common movement languages that question the usual ideas of ‘mixed-abled’ choreography.

Alongside ‘SKIN’, Shadler and Walter will present the workshop ‘Dancing With Excess’. Participants will engage in guided movements and improvisations that advocate for transformation and embrace ‘excessiveness’ both on and off the dance floor. The workshops will utilise technology to connect participants across borders.

Perform Europe Grant

EUR 32,000

Partners

Renae Shadler & Collaborators

Germany

Kilowatt Festival - Sansepolcro

Italy

Divadlo Štúdio tanca - Banská Bystrica

Slovakia

fabrik Potsdam - Potsdam

Germany

Equality NGO

North Macedonia

Artistic Works

SKIN

Producers: Renae Shadler & Collaborators with Roland Walter

text

In the intimate and playful duet ‘SKIN’, Renae Shadler and Roland Walter explore our physical surface, the skin, as a porous barrier between interior and exterior – both a boundary and a point of contact. Every body has its own identity in relation to the skin, which changes and transforms constantly through contact with others. This applies equally to people of different abilities, different ages, and even to the surface of the earth, which is shifting ever faster in the current Anthropocene age.

Performed by Roland Walter, a mature-aged dancer with full-body spastic paralysis, and Renae Shadler, a non-disabled dancer and choreographer, ‘SKIN’ creates a universe of its own in which their two distinctly different bodies can come closer to each other. The duet transcends the performers’ physical borders to imagine a shared movement language inspired by sea anemones, liquids, and the earth’s surfaces.