4 Legs Good

Claire Cunningham

Glasgow

French Premiere Danced conference

Scottish artist Claire Cunningham chooses the format of a lecture-performance to talk about her career as a disabled dancer and choreographer. Sprinkled with humour and self-mockery, her story alternates knowledge and movement, text and gesture, not forgetting audience participation. A way of “playing with life’s crutches” and to open up our perception of what dance can be.

Solo or as part of a group, Claire Cunningham constantly explores the potential of her physicality by constructing her own gestures or inventing a choreographic vocabulary adapted to the possibilities of each performer. She dances with her crutches as if they were partners in their own right. With 4 Legs Good, she deals with the stages she went through to construct her identity, analysing her practice, her relationship to her crutches and the way they connect her to the world. This analysis forms an extension of her work with the inclusive Candoco Dance Company in London, for which she created a turbulent surrealist show called 12, in which she creates an amazing fantasy world. For Claire, each project broadens our acceptance of a “dancing body” with disability, freeing it from the constraints of traditional dance techniques.

La représentation à Marseille reçoit le soutien du British Council