‘It’s impossible to create art that meets the needs of everybody. There may be moments that aren’t tuned to your frequency.” The introduction to Stopgap’s Lived Fiction (★★★★☆) at Brighton’s Corn Exchange refers to audiences’ different access needs, but also works well as a statement about dance. Some things resonate with you, sometimes you’re desperately looking for a window in. But Lived Fiction offers many windows into the world of Stopgap, a company of Deaf, disabled, neurodivergent and non-disabled dancers that has spent two decades making works that are poetic and subtly political. This one is unapologetic: “We don’t give a damn about being invited to the table. We’re inviting you to ours instead.”
It’s a show where everyone’s needs have been thought of: there are guides in large print and braille, ear defenders, fidget toys, a quiet space, captions and a live audio describer, Lily Norton, who tells the audience they can leave the auditorium any time they like, make noise, stim, whatever makes them comfortable. Norton is as much a performer as any of the dancers, describing the actions as they happen and displaying a nice way with words: the “crosshatch” of the dancers’ movement, the “puzzle of muscle and metal” between dancers and wheelchair.
Each dancer has their voice, their individuality and their moments of tenderness, like Hannah Sampson, who swizzles her hips with joy, or Nadenh Poan, strapped into his wheelchair so that it follows him into headstands and rolls.
As a non-disabled viewer, it’s fascinating to process all the different inputs: the dance itself, the description plus its text on screen and some wryly knowing voiceover too. The description not only itemises the movement but also elevates small things you might not see – in an intimate, atmospheric duet between Poan and Emily Lue-Fong, for example – into something quite beautiful. And quietly revolutionary.
Elsewhere in this year’s Brighton festival, Lîla Dance are asking for a different kind of revolution. Climate change can feel an esoteric subject when transposed into dance, but the Bournemouth-based company do a good job of making its potential effects distressingly real in Fault Lines (★★★☆☆) at the Dance Space. “2045. Desert land. 50 degrees,” the projection reads. “2050. Low lying cities. 48 degrees.”
The music shimmers like heat haze, its pulse ticking, loose-limbed but precise dancers propelled by its thrum. It’s as if the movement is pushing them and the momentum is out of their control. People must flee, and we see bodies struggling with shrinking space, or weakly writhing, panicked voices. It’s an evocative picture, the imminence brought home by visualising these scenarios, even in a fairly abstract way. But Fault Lines refuses to lose hope, and offers an alternative view of the future too in this sincere and well-crafted piece.
Lived Fiction tours until 15 November. Fault Lines tours until 14 June and is at Assembly @ Dance Base, Edinburgh, 20-25 August
