Scottish Dance Theatre - Angels of Incidence
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Now on tour throughout the UK, Scottish Dance Theatre's Spring Tour includes Angels of Incidence, an ambitious integrated piece by Adam Benjamin which can be seen this season only. |
The extraordinary work by Adam Benjamin, one of the co-founders of CandoCo has been commissioned by Scottish Dance Theatre's Artistic Director, Janet Smith. It features both able-bodied and disabled dancers performing together in an uncompromising integrated work that celebrates diversity in dance and society.
Janet Smith hopes that the piece will encourage people with disabilities to embrace careers in performing arts and that it will challenge people's perceptions of disability.
The four international performers with disability who have joined the company to make and tour Angels of Incidence are Caroline Bowditch, Michael King, Cornelia Kip-Lee and Daniel Daw.
Adam Benjamin is a co-founder and former Artistic Director of CandoCo, the UK's first integrated professional dance company. His work includes disabled and able-bodied performers and his book, 'Making an Entrance: theory and practice for disabled and non-disabled dancers' was published in 2001.
Caroline Bowditch
Caroline gained an Education degree, majoring in performing arts and has been dancing in mixed ability companies for 15 years. Since arriving in the UK in 2002 she has been mentored by Adam Benjamin, CandoCo and Yael Flexer, Bedlam Dance. Caroline has participated in several residencies with CandoCo, was a participant in The Dancers Project 2005 at The Place and was one of five disabled choreographers undergoing training on the Cultural Shift project 2005 (East London Dance).
She was recently one of 22 artists invited to be part of Colina 2006 (Collaboration in Arts) where she choreographed a new piece ‘Staircase’ which involved sending choreographic directions to eight dancers via text message throughout the piece. She has choreographed and performed work as girl jonah with Fiona Wright, including showing at British Dance Edition 2006 and Dance Umbrella 2006, and was commissioned to produce a site specific piece for Trafalgar Square as part of the Liberty Festival in September 2006. Caroline is a founder member of Weave Movement Theatre, Melbourne, and The FATHoM Project, Newcastle.
Dan Daw
Dan completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts at the Flinders University Drama Centre in 2004. Since joining Restless Dance Company in 2002, Dan has performed in seven major works, including a collaboration with Australian Dance Theatre. In early 2006, Dan worked for FRONTLINEdance as a dancer for their 5th Anniversary Tour.
Dan has received a number of awards including: the Outlet Dance Award, the Dame Ruby Litchfield Scholarship and the Russell Page Fellowship in Contemporary Dance.
Michael King
Michael trained with CandoCo’s education team, after which he co-founded FRONTline Dance in the Midlands, enjoyed Ariel puppetry with the Flying Piglets in New Zealand, acted and directed theatre in London. He is also a qualified teacher and a swift-water rescue technician.
Cornelia Kip Lee
Cornelia Kip Lee is an American dance artist and the founding artistic director of Air Borne Dance Theatre. In the past three years, Lee has received 10 artist grants, including a Mary Duke Biddle Foundation grant for a series of 16 performances throughout North Carolina. In 2003, in Opening Acts, she became the first dance artist in the history of the American Dance Festival (ADF) to perform with a wheelchair. Of her performance at the 2004 Acts to Follow, ADF, dance critic Byron Woods wrote, 'Cornelia Kip Lee continued to knock down difference in her fully embodied work, Parting.'
A former member of The Dancing Wheels of Cleveland, Lee is a Yoga teacher and a certified teacher of DanceAbility and of InterPlay performance art. She loves creative collaboration and is delighted to be working with Adam Benjamin and Scottish Dance Theatre.
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