Book Review

Michele Powles, Touch Compass, Celebrating Integrated Dance

David Ling Publishing Limited

ISBN 978 1 877378 17 1

Reviewed by Sally Chance

Michele Powles’ beautifully presented, easily consumed book is a chronicle of the first ten years of Touch Compass, a pioneering integrated dance company founded by Catherine Chappell and based in Auckland, New Zealand.

Integrated dance refers to the collaboration of dancers with and without a disability. A brief glossary at the back of the book refers to an integrated dance company as follows: ‘Have been described as performance orientated and presents the strengths of people with and without disabilities. They intentionally feature people with disabilities in every performance.’ 1

The book charts the development of the company’s philosophy and how the people involved have navigated a complex set of terminology choices that reflect it. We learn that the company initially described itself as a mixed ability dance company, but rejected this term after a number of years because of the implication that the skill levels of the dancers with a disability were lower than the dancers without a disability. The glossary infers a set of globally understood terms, including some rather confusing distinctions between “Arts and Disability” and “Disability Arts”. I’m not sure that everyone in the field does necessarily understand the same thing and I felt an old nervousness about “getting the words right” as I began to set down these thoughts.

What is completely clear however, is how this change of description marked a leap in confidence and maturity for Touch Compass. Throughout the book the wonderful normality of the company’s inclusive ethos becomes integrated into the language of the book, just as it has in practice for everyone involved in the company. Reading it feels like becoming part of the Touch Compass experience. You find yourself thinking: “I’ll have what they’re having!”

Having been on a similar journey here in Australia with the first ten years of Adelaide’s Restless Dance Company (now Restless Dance Theatre) it was a great pleasure for me to read of Touch Compass’s trajectory. I remember meeting Catherine Chappell and seeing the company’s work in 1998 in Adelaide as part of the inaugural High Beam Festival. The realisation of this tour was a fabulous example of Catherine’s determination to profile the work of the company internationally and to do whatever it took to make it happen. At the time, Restless was about to go into production with a big new work made by the company’s first international director, and I remember that when I met Catherine I was feeling totally consumed by the sheer energy and fascination of the work, just as Catherine clearly has been throughout Touch Compass’s life span. Evidence of her commitment to the company and to integrated dance and her personal and professional regard for the dancers is a constant thread.

I was struck in reading of her early motivation for starting the company how Catherine’s goals were entirely aesthetic. I realised that my initial goals were probably more concerned with the social justice of creating opportunities for people with a disability to take part in dance, than the dance itself.

I vividly remember the sheer beauty of the aerial choreography, which has always been a feature of Touch Compass’s work. It was fascinating to read of the importance of aerial work for the company philosophically and aesthetically, as well as its popularity among audiences. Dancer Suzanne Cowan says: ‘It just sort of seemed like a metaphor for human potential and the human desire to grow and evolve. There’s something satisfying in seeing people flying around; it suggests a whole sense of transcendence.’ 2

Aerial work has become a key component of the company’s community-based workshops. Touch Compass began in community settings with workshops led by Catherine. Ten years later, she has the support of a full company of dancers whose skills, in turn, inspire young people all over the country.

Restless has never pursued aerial work, but the book jogged my memory with many other parallel themes. Establishing the grass roots of the company through dance workshops for community-based groups and disability support services, getting to know each other so closely that you feel like family, nightmare access scenarios to rehearsal spaces and backstage areas, the work gradually becoming valued for its high artistic quality by critics and audiences and understood by families and disability services, years of project to project funding and the high levels of volunteerism this entails from the small number of dedicated individuals, who ensure the continued existence of the company because of their own passion, commitment and time….

All of this is part of the Touch Compass story.

The book itself is clearly set out, highlighting sequential stages in the company’s artistic and structural journey, as well as providing some context with chapters on Dance Theatre and integrated dance in New Zealand.

The text is punctuated with exquisite images, in both black and white and full colour. Both text and images include glowing press quotes. The inclusion of perspectives from some of the longer term and core dancers is particularly rich. Renowned Adelaide-based choreographer Leigh Warren always used to say after seeing a Restless performance that he felt that he’d truly met the dancers. The book’s anecdotal and friendly personal experiences contribute to a similar feeling of meeting some strong and memorable artists and human beings.

Anyone wanting a “how to” guide to establishing a disability cultural organisation won’t find the finer details among the uniformly positive testimonials and tantalisingly brief references to problems overcome and artistic challenges resolved.

There’s plenty of good and very little bad or ugly in the stories and anecdotes and the company’s genuine warmth and artistic rigour emanates from each page. This is understandable and entirely appropriate in a celebratory book, designed to mark a particular and highly successful moment in time and place.

I don’t know of many other books celebrating or deconstructing the work of the handful of disability cultural dance organisations in the Southern hemisphere.

In 2000, Accessible Arts New South Wales published ‘+ve/–ve, Writings on Integrated Dance’, which was launched as part of the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Arts Festival. In its introduction, Andrew Morrish notes that ‘books become an important marker for a field.’ 3

With this in mind Touch Compass, Celebrating Integrated Dance is an important book. I’d like to offer the company my congratulations and all good wishes for many more years of success.

1 Book Touch Compass, Celebrating Integrated Dance, p 118
2 Book Touch Compass, Celebrating Integrated Dance, p 46
3 Book Chapter Introduction by Andrew Morrish, +ve/–ve, Writings on Integrated Dance’ p 7, produced by Accessible Arts NSW, 2000

Sally Chance is currently exploring the cultural lives of very young children through a Fellowship from the Australia Council’s Dance Board. She trained in community dance at the Laban Centre, London. Sally was the founding Artistic Director of Restless Dance Company, developing and leading the company’s philosophy and practice from 1991 – 2001.

 Touch Compass – Celebrating Integrated Dance

By Michelle Powles
David Ling Publishing Ltd

Congratulations to Touch Compass, not just for doing tremendous pioneering work under difficult circumstances over the last ten years, but also for publishing a book about their journey and achievements. Hopefully this will be a forerunner for many more publications of this sort, as documenting our dance works and journeys will foster our dance industry's confidence, feeling of identity and growth.

Getting Helen Clark to write the foreword in her role as Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage got the book off to a fantastic start. Then writer Michele Powles introduces us to some background in integrated dance (formerly mixed-ability dance) and describes how Touch Compass's founder and artistic director, Catherine Chappell, became involved in it. Next the book explores Chappell's journey of developing her own ways of practising integrated dance with her emphasis on making art rather than it being therapy or rehabilitation.

Portraits of the three disabled founding members, Jesse Johnstone-Steele, Rodney Bell and Lusi Faiva, follow; they, and others later in the book, describe how becoming involved in dance entirely changed their outlook on life. Subsequently the company's collaborative philosophy is highlighted; how everybody is encouraged to participate on as many levels as possible: as trust member, dancer, choreographer, organiser.

The last section of the book is dedicated to describing the company's dance and dance theatre projects. The photographic images are superb, perfectly depicting the company's energy and spirit. Everything is attractively laid out with pleasant integration of text and images. Quotes from reviews of Touch Compass performances add an outside perspective to the writing. A resource list at the end points to significant links and sources.

The book could have made better use of the opportunity to discuss pertinent issues of integrated dance, clarifying and discussing different approaches in an evolving art form and positioning themselves more clearly in that context. Apart from that it does a great job of documenting the company's history plus it is a visually, tremendously pleasing book, therefore setting another milestone for Touch Compass and adding to their list of accomplishments. Surely it will sit on every New Zealand dance lover's bookshelf.

Reviewed by Dagmar Simon