TYPE OF WORK
Integrated dance, performance, education, improvisation, choreography

TARGET GROUPS

• Integrating physically disabled and non-disabled people through dance/physical theatre.
• Education and racial integration in South Africa.

GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
UK, North Africa and Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, North America, South America, East Asia Pacific, Australia/New Zealand, Central and Eastern Europe, Western and Southern Europe.

COMPANY POLICY
Adam Benjamin addresses cultural and social issues through the medium of dance. Work is always inclusive and accessible to students/participants who have a desire to participate, regardless of age, race or disability.

The company leads teacher training courses to professional companies such as Scottish Dance Theatre and Vertigo Dance Company (Israel).

Adam Benjamin’s book Making an Entrance is required reading on a number of Arts Council England supported training programmes. In addition, workshops with ‘non-dancers’ (primary school teachers, cancer sufferers and support groups, etc.) take place in a variety of settings.

SCALE OF PROJECTS
Number of Practitioners: 1-3
Number of participants: 20-30
Preparation time: 1-5 days
Contact time: 2-10 days

Overseas ACD projects usually involve at least three visits, particularly where the work is new. This is to ensure adequate preparation/research and to make sure that the work takes root and can continue to develop when the teaching team leaves.

Tshwaragano (South Africa, 2000-01)
Aim: To introduce to dance teachers and professionals ways of including disabled students into all levels of dance and cultural activity. This involved working in schools as well as with those involved in dance at a professional level, creating a professional work for the stage in collaboration with the Imoloji Ka Ntu Choir in Soweto (Nelson Mandela’s choir).

The project brought together both black and white dancers from different backgrounds, disabled and non-disabled. (The teaching team from the UK consisted on one white, and two black dancers, one of whom was disabled). Participants learned not only from the project leaders, but by resolving problems that arose from their own work together in the studio. In addition there were daily discussions addressing the issues that had arisen in the community settings.

Partners: MODE, DACTS, The Imilonji Ka Ntu Choir, Museum Afrika, FNB Vita Dance Umbrella.

Outcomes: “Principal beneficiaries among the trainees appeared to be the disabled and less experienced Tshwaragano participants, who in the context of the Dance Factory sessions were of course self-conscious about their lack of experience in the face of professional dancers. Some spoke of how the children’s lack of inhibition (in the teaching component) fed their own confidence, others of how the children’s respect and wonderment at their level of skill fostered their belief that they really had absorbed the skills and were ready to pass them on. In general, they returned with visibly increased confidence and better social bonds with their more experienced colleagues.”
(Louise Katerega, member of teaching team)

The professionals’ performance won the Dance Indaba award for ‘Best Ensemble’, 2002, and the community workshop programme led to an upsurge in interest and projects across South Africa (see Future Projects).

Adugna Potentials
Third stage of an integrated project to provide trainees with further teaching skills and performance pieces for schools, colleges and community settings in and around Addis Adaba (Ethiopia, spring 2003).

Remix Dance Theatre Company (South Africa)
Further work with this racially and physically integrated company to develop a performance piece, Taking Care of Small Things, for the international Dance and Disability Festival in 2004 (South Africa, 2003; UK, 2004).

Adam Benjamin
7 Rush Park terrace
Gunnislake
Cornwall PL18 9NR

T/F +44 (0)1822 832 160

E info@adambenjamin.co.uk
W www.adambenjamin.co.uk

“Tshwaragano may not have the high profile of the Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre outreach projects. Yet in so many ways it outstrips those undeniably historic happenings. This is particularly true of its national networking reach and its already proven ability to trigger, like wildfire, a whole new era in developmental, community and professional dance.”
Adrienne Sichel, The Star (South Africa, 2000)

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