In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews disabled dance artist and researcher Kate Marsh.
In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews disabled dance artist and researcher Kate Marsh. Based in the UK, Kate shares her perspective as an assistant professor at Coventry University. She reflects on how the discourse on disability has evolved during her career, from breaking literal barriers to breaking attitudinal barriers, and yet how today’s dance education landscape is experiencing economic cuts. She discusses her personal trajectory and how the pipeline she traversed is the epitome of a successful career in dance, and yet how so much of success in dance is based on luck, especially for those dancers with disabilities. She questions what institutions can learn from the bespoke training that disabled dancers have been giving themselves for a long time.
Kate Marsh is a disabled dance artist and researcher with more than 20 years of experience in performing, teaching, making, and researching dance. Her interests are centered around perceptions of the body in the arts and notions of corporeal aesthetics. Specifically, she is interested in each of our lived experiences of our bodies, and how this does (or doesn’t) inform our artistic practice. Her practice-research focuses on leadership in the context of dance and disability and draws strongly on the voices of artists to interrogate questions around notions of leadership, perceptions and the body. Kate’s work is strongly fed by co-design and co-facilitation, where we all arrive into our practice from our own place and pace, and this informs the ways we work together, privileging all experiences and ways of being, and prioritizing a playful, accessible and generative environment.
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Silva Laukkanen: Your name actually has come up. Several times in this process that I've been facilitating for the past kind of
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Silva Laukkanen: couple of years. Where we have these topic groups and topic groups have conversations, and they are all somewhere related to barrier free dance education for students with disabilities.
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Silva Laukkanen: And
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Silva Laukkanen: I really wanted to talk to you about that
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Silva Laukkanen: and I have not done a lot of research, because I know you and I I trust that our conversation can also just go smoothly like this. I mean, I know you. I've been in the same spaces with you, and it's always been such a pleasant experience. I was like, I don't have to worry about this. We can do this with Kate.
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katemarsh: Yeah.
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Silva Laukkanen: Thanks.
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Silva Laukkanen: So tell me a little bit about what's happening, Coventry, and about barrier free dance education, what is happening in the Uk. What is not happening? What do you think are the good things? What do you think are the challenging things?
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Silva Laukkanen: yeah, just let's just start talk about that, because I'm actually also quite unsure, like, because the last things that I feel like I heard is that the education
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Silva Laukkanen: field is kind of changing. And the programs that were dance programs that were inclusive are no longer there and like.
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Silva Laukkanen: so what's going on.
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katemarsh: Wow! What a what a broad provocation! I'll try. I might need to come. You might need to remind me or steer me.
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Silva Laukkanen: Of course.
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katemarsh: So yeah. As as you mentioned, my kind of my, my role is an assistant professor at the center for dance research at Coventry University. So I am kind of. I have the real privilege of
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katemarsh: being in and around really
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katemarsh: interesting discourse around dance pedagogy, whether that's specific to inclusive pedagogy, or or more generally, in dance, so that feels like a real privilege.
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katemarsh: parallel to that, or or somehow in the same area as that. Obviously I have a lived experience of myself navigating a dance education which I think, and I think many dancers would agree with this, that it doesn't kind of start and finish, and it's you're constantly navigating that training.
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katemarsh: and I also not not so much now, but occasionally. I I teach.
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katemarsh: So I'm I kind of have these various perspectives.
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katemarsh: My
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katemarsh: sense is I mean.
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katemarsh: this, maybe, is the whole world. But you know the Uk. Now, if it is, it feels a bit upside down. Generally it feels.
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Silva Laukkanen: Yeah.
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katemarsh: Like, there's been lots of shifts, lots of political economical shifts. And of course, that that kind of impacts on on training and education. So it does. It feels useful to say, you know. Yeah, I feel really passionate. I want to say, aside from thinking about the who is included in dance education. We are, we are regularly fighting.
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katemarsh: Yeah. Yeah. I guess it is a fight we are regularly fighting to advocate for for just dance in education for anybody. So the the context in the UK is that the levels of education? So
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katemarsh: just to kind of give context, and I'm sure.
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Silva Laukkanen: Yeah.
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katemarsh: You, and anyone listening to this will know that the 1st moment when you you work towards a qualification is a Gcse. And that's that. It's it's been really cut. It's been significantly cut in the Uk. The people who are offering
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katemarsh: it hasn't been prioritised. The arts in education particularly dance. So we've seen Gcse programs being cut, which then, of course, means that the a level training, which is the one after that also suffers. And then in undergraduate and postgraduate training, which is kind of where I think we put our focus when we think about inclusive training, we think about kind of
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katemarsh: that training that is vocational that enables you to go. I've done this 3 years training. I can now apply for a job as a dancer, or I can audition.
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katemarsh: There's been huge cuts made, economical cuts made to universities and depressingly
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katemarsh: dance courses are often one of the 1st to go, because, you know the con that we live in a climate that is currently
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katemarsh: undervaluing
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katemarsh: dance in society and therefore dance in education.
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katemarsh: So on that depressing note
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katemarsh: focus on on some of the kind of actually, I think, as always happens in these things, and you know I am old enough to have been through a couple of cycles, of
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katemarsh: how dance education, dance training has shifted for disabled dancers.
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katemarsh: And if if I kind of go back in time, which is perhaps a little bit useful when I when I graduated at 21
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katemarsh: it was the year, or a couple at Canduka had been formed for maybe 2 years. They were very, very early on
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katemarsh: and prior to that I hadn't even thought I didn't even consider myself to be the the discourse around what it means to be in a different body. Mind on a dance. Training was just not there. Nobody, I mean I I really great teachers. When I was studying, but nobody had the language to say, How might we make this
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katemarsh: easier for you? Not easier, better. How might we include you? How might we challenge. The idea of what a dancer's body is, so that was never there.
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katemarsh: But I was fortunate enough to kind of fall into a relationship with Canduco.
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katemarsh: And it was at that point when it did. And I think that's kind of what your your
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katemarsh: suggesting in your your sense of of how things have shifted that there was definitely this momentum in the Uk for late nineties, early 2,000, where everybody was so much debate around, how do we find provide access, and that that that was quite practical. It we it often was based around what
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katemarsh: these dances literally cannot get into the buildings that this this work is being is being delivered in. So that was kind of that's that was one thing that was being addressed on a much broader level with the one is in the Equalities Act of 2,010, I think to check that before this is public
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katemarsh: And so, so you know, buildings had to be accessible. Therefore dance educators were
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katemarsh: readying themselves for disabled dancers who had who had
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katemarsh: It may, you know, maybe seeing Canduka, or been in a workshop, or or suddenly been open to the possibility that dance training was an option. So they.
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katemarsh: the dance educators, I think, had to start to to address it.
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katemarsh: and I think that kind of that momentum carried on for quite a long time, and then there was definitely, and I would say, this is more recent. What I've experienced is, there was some some sorry in between that where we are now. Then there was an acknowledgement of attitudinal barriers. So not just, but actually and then and that's what kind of I was talking about before the attitudinal barriers being actually
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katemarsh: how do we challenge. What a dancer's body is, how a dancer's way of being is in the studio. And
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katemarsh: yeah. And I think that that carried on for quite some time, and I think
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katemarsh: that I think, with kind of discourse around disability and disability studies that that's been a really useful vehicle for
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katemarsh: amplifying the issue and giving it weight, giving it. So it became. Not just about, I'm really where someone's drilling is that noise impacting.
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Silva Laukkanen: Do not hear it at all. Right? Yeah.
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katemarsh: So that that kind of
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katemarsh: more researchful discourse, I think, really impacted on on
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katemarsh: it's not enough just to let people in. It's not enough just to go. Oh, yeah, you're a disabled answer. You can come into this course. There's now physical access. And actually.
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katemarsh: you're in the space. We then started to think about, how do we need to change what we teach?
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katemarsh: How do we need to change the language we use to teach in order to be in order to prevent a scenario that I have heard, and I'm sure you have encountered so many times of. Yeah, I was there, but actually
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katemarsh: I was either a bit of a guinea pig for for the like, the only one in the classroom or the studio, or the rehearsal space, or I was just expected to do what others did and make my own adaptations.
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katemarsh: And I do. I think I mean, this is, I'm going back. I'm nodding a roller coaster, because this is depressing. Again. I I my feeling is, and this is this is slightly conspiratorial. Maybe
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katemarsh: I
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katemarsh: I
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katemarsh: I think
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katemarsh: there was there. Yeah, yeah, I am. Yeah. I will share this, I think, in the in the pandemic. And I know that we're all a bit like eye rolling when someone goes in the pandemic again. But in fact, I think that the and I can only talk about living here. But I think the pandemic
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katemarsh: really impacted on the lives of, and the perception of disabled people in in society. And I think that absolutely
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katemarsh: halted and actually kind of made quite significant backward steps in terms of that vibrant, intellectual, researchful debate around.
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katemarsh: It's not enough just to get rid of barriers in the built environment. It's not enough to say, you can come in here that we need to kind of speak to disabled students about what they need. We need to have discussions about what access looks like. And I think that in in a world that that kind of
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katemarsh: suddenly got incredibly small and and disabled people became vulnerable.
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katemarsh: And I mean that really, broadly, really, philosophically, because, you know, speaking for myself as a disabled person, I was not more vulnerable than a non disabled person during the pandemic because of the nature of my disability. However, in my community of disabled peers, I I knew many, many people who were vulnerable in that, and still are vulnerable. Now.
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Silva Laukkanen: Right.
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katemarsh: And that really
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katemarsh: that shifted. And I I am getting to a point here because I think the philosophical thing about that as soon as you start to perceive a group of people. And if we stay on dance education, potential students as vulnerable.
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katemarsh: there's a separation that happens that I think you stop having those those debates about what is possible, and it becomes a little bit about survival
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katemarsh: and a little bit about
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katemarsh: Yeah, it. I feel like we've slightly gone backwards to. It's just enough to be allowed in.
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katemarsh: And actually, I'd feel so strongly that in order to progress
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katemarsh: inclusive pedagogy, we have to go.
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katemarsh: Actually, actually, we need to have really transparent discussion around, how do we do this? And and actually, and I always feel a little bit conscious of saying this because of
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katemarsh: the the attachment I think we all feel to dance training and elements of codified dance training. But what can we let go. Of
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katemarsh: what? What, what do we? What what can shift.
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katemarsh: you know, and that
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katemarsh: I I'm slightly rambling now. I think so. Maybe I'll maybe I'll pause there, because that feels like 2 different things around some kind of insight into where we are. Now that yeah, I agree with you fundamentally, I think you're absolutely right that it feels
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katemarsh: there's a slight sense of starting again, that I feel that we're having some of the same discussions around what inclusion in dance training, or what? What a truly inclusive dance pedagogy would look like. And I certainly
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katemarsh: I would say there are many more.
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katemarsh: not many more. There are definitely more disabled students who are accessing
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katemarsh: University and Conservatoire educations in dance
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katemarsh: than when I was training. But there's not as many as you would expect if you think that that's been like a 30 year journey.
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Silva Laukkanen: Right.
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katemarsh: But in part
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katemarsh: that's because the the landscape of dance education has shifted considerably. I mean, there are. I'll stop rambling in a minute. There are really brilliant, and I feel like I really want to speak up for them. There are some amazing courses in the Uk that have offered undergraduate dancing that have been cut, that the staff have been made redundant. The court, and there are others that are feeling extremely precarious now. So when you're fighting that battle. It's kind of hard to to.
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katemarsh: Yeah. So in one way that precarity has put all potential dancers in the same boat. But I would imagine that. Well, I know if you're a disabled dancer.
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katemarsh: you're probably in a
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katemarsh: in the part of the boat with the hole in it.
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katemarsh: Probably.
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Silva Laukkanen: Right? Right?
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Silva Laukkanen: Well, I think that was the episode. Okay, that was perfect. I mean, I I think you touch so many points there
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Silva Laukkanen: so eloquently and so well, spokenly that
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Silva Laukkanen: I don't know. I I love that you call it rambling, and I'm just like
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Silva Laukkanen: talk to me more about that. That is so amazing.
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Silva Laukkanen: But I'm gonna shift gears a little bit in from in a way that you know.
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Silva Laukkanen: one of the topics we've been discussing is like a pipeline for students, with disabilities and students with disabilities. And you were saying this
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Silva Laukkanen: because you ended up going to Candoco.
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katemarsh: Yep.
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Silva Laukkanen: But and then, you know, you have had a pretty successful pipe in a in a way like a pipeline professionally in dance. When when we think about the mainstream idea of success in dance. Yeah. So
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Silva Laukkanen: talk to me a little bit about that. And I know your Phd was around the leadership in the context of dance and disability as well. Wasn't it really talking about that? So talk to me a little bit about the pipelines and the leadership, and
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Silva Laukkanen: I mean, we now have, and I know you were a part of this conversation with Kentucko about the leadership needing to represent the company. And I think we now have an artistic Co artistic directors who both identify with the disability. Yeah, so that seems to be now changing a little bit. Yeah, like in a in a more positive.
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katemarsh: Absolutely. Yeah.
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katemarsh: yeah, yeah. I mean, firstly, my 1st response would be to kind of thank you for talking about pipelines, because I often think that. And I don't. I don't articulate it very often that
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katemarsh: actually, because of of luck, because of the time that I emerged from. And I've written about this, that in 1996, when I and again I want to be really clear. The university I went to was really great. I did. I learned, I learned, and I had a great experience, but because of the the perception, the self perception, and the way the dance world was
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katemarsh: I was
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katemarsh: I absolutely assumed that I would move into a role in administration or not work in dance at all. I didn't. I didn't. I'd never seen a disabled dancer on the main on any kind of professional stage until I encountered Candoco. Probably I mean, I love this story. My personal tutor
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katemarsh: gave me a leaflet for a Candoco workshop, and I was probably about 4 months from graduation
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katemarsh: and what a generous thing for her to do, and to not make a big deal or do it. Just like to surreptitiously pop it in my pigeonhole. Then it was pre Internet.
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katemarsh: and just just yeah.
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katemarsh: yeah, I'm really Valerie Briggenshaw, very, very grateful for that. What a lovely thing! And that! So I that's how I literally I saw Dave Tall. I saw John French. It was a 1st or Celeste. It was the 1st time I'd shared a space with dancers with non normative bodies. But after that, because it's sorry. My point was after that, just because of luck, my trajectory has been, yeah, actually.
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katemarsh: you know, I'm I'm I'm I'm 49. I've never, ever not worked in dance. Who can say that?
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katemarsh: Do you know.
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Silva Laukkanen: Right. I mean.
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katemarsh: I don't want to get on the nerves of dances, because it's such a hard environment. I've never even I, you know I I have. I've gone from Greenwich Dance Agency to Canduco, to teaching, to fairly successful freelance to Coventry, where I did my Phd. And I'm now an assistant professor. I kind of
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katemarsh: I I you know it's the
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katemarsh: I have experienced barriers in terms of.
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Silva Laukkanen: Right.
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katemarsh: People's kind of expectation of what I can and can't do. But actually
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katemarsh: my pipe, the pipeline I have I have
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katemarsh: traversed has been
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katemarsh: really good. You know I am the. I think I am the epitome of a successful career in dance.
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katemarsh: yeah.
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katemarsh: because and and I would also
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katemarsh: add to this, and I do think this is a problem, and it's something I I would really like to do more on is, I think, we? Still I I am I. I recognize my own privilege
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katemarsh: and fortune.
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katemarsh: but I think we still exist in an environment where many disabled dancers have a career, and then, when they stop performing, there's kind of nowhere to go
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katemarsh: the which leads on to your next question about
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katemarsh: About my my doctoral research, because
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katemarsh: that that
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katemarsh: really was, was a kind of call to rethink leadership, to rethink how how we acknowledge and perceive leadership in dance, but also that
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katemarsh: we have to have disabled leaders in dance education. We have to have them making decisions about module, content about the language of education. We have to have them teaching in our studios,
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katemarsh: and that until that happens
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katemarsh: it will always be based on luck, like the luck I've experienced or the luck of you're a disabled student who goes to somewhere and you happen to go to you happen to do a release based class or any technique class with somebody who who
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katemarsh: does, who knows who gets it, and actually.
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Silva Laukkanen: Right.
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katemarsh: Yeah.
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Silva Laukkanen: Stories. Yeah, the success stories here for students with disabilities who have gone through formal dance education is because they found that one professor, that one support in the institution, not because the institution was supporting them
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Silva Laukkanen: the way they supported their non disabled peers.
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Silva Laukkanen: So, yeah, exactly.
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katemarsh: And and I think you raise a really interesting point then, because
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katemarsh: and this is not this, this is not by any means a complaint, but it is something that I would like. I think
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katemarsh: you know, in our bubble, in the lovely bubble that you and I exist in. You know we are often. I often find myself surrounded by brilliant, like minded people, and and you know we can dream big and be in those spaces. But I think
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katemarsh: actually, if you think, if you consider so, for example, in in higher education institutions, if
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katemarsh: if you are a disabled student and you are seeking support from. I don't. I don't know if you have them in in America and in Finland, but you know the Department. The disability disabled Student Support department is very often that if their perception of how to support a disabled student doesn't really apply to how to support a disabled dance student.
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katemarsh: it's often around additional funding, which is super useful or additional support with learning, which is great. But it doesn't ever kind of
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katemarsh: that, you know. There's not a kind. There's not this sense of
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katemarsh: it, doesn't it doesn't negate the feeling which I think is really strong.
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katemarsh: How it feels to be the only one on a dance course. And with that, maybe that one professor or that one teacher
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katemarsh: actually. So we, it's about spreading that that very
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katemarsh: specific knowledge and and slightly. And I this is one of the things I I really love to talk about of slightly subverting, and I know I've talked to you about this subverting the idea
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katemarsh: that we need to include disabled people into dance education, to teach them about dance and start to think about what can the experience of disability whatever that, or or existing in a normative world, in a non normative body. Mind, what can that do
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katemarsh: to to shift and change for the better
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katemarsh: education and and training in dance, because I truly believe it does.
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katemarsh: I really think it can. And I think that's.
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Silva Laukkanen: Right.
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katemarsh: That's where I see it really working. When we really listen to the when we, when we understand that there's new knowledge that can be generated through these experiences. That's not about doing it's not about letting people in a little bit, or it's about actually going, come in and change things
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katemarsh: we're ready to to let go. I mean, I I always again. I have a nervousness around this because
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katemarsh: I like. I've never. I've never done ballet.
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katemarsh: That might be because I'm not very good at ballet, or don't have a ballet, but it might be because of any of those things it might be because when you're 5 and you have a disability.
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katemarsh: your parents don't necessarily want you to be the only disabled kid in the ballet class, there could be a number of reasons.
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katemarsh: but I never, ever so I never.
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katemarsh: I've done one ballet class in my whole career.
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katemarsh: So I say this lightly, and I really respect. I have many friends who love ballet, and I really respect it as a form and as a way into education.
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katemarsh: But does it have to be as compulsory as it often is in dance training, because it is so codified and it's so inherently based on a normative body, mind.
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katemarsh: And and actually, if it when it's so compulsory, and that is shifting a little bit, I think, but when it remains so compulsory, the disabled answer in those contexts is always going to feel, I think, like
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katemarsh: they should be accessing that
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katemarsh: they should be. And if they're not doing, they're not doing it properly and sorry. I must add to this.
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katemarsh: I'm not in any way suggested, because I also know many disabled dancers who love ballet. So I want to own that for myself it's very personal.
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katemarsh: And I, you could apply that to anything. You could apply it to ballet, to Graham technique, to Cunningham. Any of these traditional techniques when they're when they're super super compulsory
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katemarsh: that it becomes. I think it's it that we we create a hierarchy in dance. Pedagogy of this is the if. And also there's that time, old thing, is that dance training has to be hard.
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katemarsh: and that's really.
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Silva Laukkanen: Right, yeah.
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katemarsh: If it's not hard.
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Silva Laukkanen: Painful physically and emotionally and spiritually.
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katemarsh: Exactly that. And if you're not kind of sweating, crying, and in in pain, it's not. You're not doing it right. And I know this is a slight cliche.
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katemarsh: I still think that I still think that's there a little bit.
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Silva Laukkanen: Oh, I think I do, too. I do, too, and especially here I mean I mean not Finland in the Us.
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Silva Laukkanen: you know. For years I have booked and hoped to go back to school, but yet I couldn't find a program that I wouldn't need to take ballet 4 mornings in a week, I mean there's and there's no way my body with like my age having 3 children, would would even put myself through that, you know. So I I totally there. I think it's super old
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Silva Laukkanen: fashion idea that the base, the base for a good dancer is that they know ballet, and that is the kind of no matter how good or bad that it
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Silva Laukkanen: technique itself is. But that kind of an idea is just.
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Silva Laukkanen: Yeah, should should be retired.
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katemarsh: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I really agree. And I think as soon as we can shift that thinking.
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katemarsh: And when we do, we like to categorize in dance, don't we? We like to say, this is a Cunningham technique class. This is a Graham class. This is a ballet class, and this is improvisation, which is the natural home for disabled which is, you know, I love improvisation. It's my, it's my favorite form, but that's not because I'm disabled. It's because it gives me great joy to move in that way.
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katemarsh: and I know lots of disabled dancers who much prefer technique class and a mixture of everything, but I think is that mix? Is that having the choice?
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katemarsh: You know.
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Silva Laukkanen: Yeah, I.
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katemarsh: I would like disabled students to be able to go. Actually, I am going to do a ballet class because I love it. And I really love
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katemarsh: thinking about how I can you put that that language, that of plies and tangies, or whatever whatever it is that but that so hard, not ton juice whatever you know
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katemarsh: again. Totally respective.
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katemarsh: that. Ha! That! How I want. I want everybody to be able to choose actually to be able to say it doesn't have to be like you say, 4 ballet classes a week. It doesn't have to be 4 Cunningham classes a week. I also know many dancers who hate improvisation, they find it exposing, and it makes them feel vulnerable.
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katemarsh: You know. I'd like them to be able to choose, not necessarily to do that, and we still
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katemarsh: which, if I can just kind of just add one thing on to that. And this is that I've been thinking about this recently, it's a bit. It's a slight change. And I think it's extremely relevant to the risk. The kind of research you're doing things you're thinking about is that when I when I 1st started thinking about inclusive pedagogy and inclusive dance education, I was quite negative about the notion of bespoke training.
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katemarsh: So we talk about that. A lot in the Uk. That, and it felt like an excuse. The disabled dancers create their own training. They go to workshops, they meet people. They they do a class here, a class there, and they don't necessarily come out with a qualification, is it? So? We talk a lot about bespoke training. And initially, I was like, well, that's just an excuse. That's an excuse for the institutions to say we don't need to do it because there's bespoke training.
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katemarsh: But I've really shifted in that. That actually.
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katemarsh: now that the now that the the climate feels so precarious.
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katemarsh: I actually think
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katemarsh: then it it would be really good to think more about. Can we capitalize or not? Capitalize is not quite quite the right word. But can we think more about what this bespoke training is, and maybe rather than saying, maybe we maybe if we valued it more
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katemarsh: if we met a dancer, I mean, I you know, I'm gonna make a confession, actually. And I've I really was like, Oh, Kate! Afterwards I met a younger dancer who, very much younger than me, probably like mid twenties.
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katemarsh: and we I was talking, and I said, and they were disabled. Answer, and I said, Where did you train like we say all the time where? Where, and I just dropped it in. And this dance just said to me, I didn't IJI did. I actually I did. I did. Yeah, I did exactly. Did a residency here, a class here.
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katemarsh: a weekly improvisation, and that was my, and I controlled my learning. And
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katemarsh: it. I think, valuing that. And I'm absolutely not advocating for letting institutions off the hook, but actually, what my institutions learn from the bespoke training that disabled artists have been doing for a really long time.
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katemarsh: Maybe
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katemarsh: so.
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Silva Laukkanen: Yeah, what's a? Yeah.
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katemarsh: Early thought so, yeah, I I.
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Silva Laukkanen: I, actually, yeah, that's a really interesting talk thinking, because, I think about like in the Us, these pedagogies that are created by these companies who actually the inclusive dance companies who do the training for their disabled dancers because there is nowhere else to go. And it is a great training it is designed for, and with
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Silva Laukkanen: dancers, with disabilities.
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Silva Laukkanen: And so, instead of the idea of bringing these trainings into the institutions, what if we create a a degree that you go and study with each of these companies and each of these organizations and workshops that that becomes your training and your decree.
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Silva Laukkanen: So. But yes, I also do not want to let institutionalize Dad's education off the hook being like, well, you know what? We gotta figure it out.
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katemarsh: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
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Silva Laukkanen: There has to be some sort of a balance there.
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katemarsh: Yeah, and to and to fund those, you know, to actually make sure they're funded to make sure that it that they are, that it's yeah, they're supported and fund. Because I agree with you. I think that the like, if I think about access can doco at points in there kind of, and I know that.
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katemarsh: you know I've always been a huge advocate advocate. I am an advocate for for candy. Co's education program, which is has. And I do feel like it's that that's going to be really crucial for them, in how they, how they
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katemarsh: how they go, where they go next, I think. And I'm really excited about that because they're really on it. They're really thinking about their education and training. And I think that will be really good.
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Silva Laukkanen: Oh, that's exciting to hear. Yeah, yeah, that funding point is a really great, because until this point, this is like what also separates inclusive dance companies from the mainstream dance companies is that they do the training and pay for the training and take the time off the training for their dancers themselves. So that is, that has to be balanced somehow.
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Silva Laukkanen: Well, Kate, I mean I could talk to you forever. But
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Silva Laukkanen: What? What is what is happening for Kate in 5 years. What is your? Where are you gonna like now? You're Dr. Kate Marsh.
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Silva Laukkanen: You're amazing. What what are you gonna do.
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katemarsh: I don't know. 5 years. Wow! I don't know. i i i oh, gosh!
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katemarsh: You know when you don't want to. You don't want to say something in case kind of, I think.
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katemarsh: I think.
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katemarsh: Do you know what I actually I am really enjoying, like one of the one of the things I get to do that I love so much is I get to
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katemarsh: to supervise research because one of my jobs at at cedar is to supervise other students, Phds.
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katemarsh: and they're all brilliant. All our Phd students. Pgr, researchers are just brilliant at Coventry. They're so interesting.
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katemarsh: One of the things I'm really proud of, and I should actually credit Professor Sarah Watley, who's the director of Cedar who has
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katemarsh: really put years and years into thinking about inclusivity in dance. Not just that thinking just really. Thinking about dance as a as a
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katemarsh: a way of knowing ourselves.
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katemarsh: and including everybody in that.
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katemarsh: And and knowing the world, I'm I'm misquoting her. She says it really beautifully.
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katemarsh: and
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katemarsh: I part of that is that. And I do think it's because I am there as a disabled
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katemarsh: director of studies for Phd students. I have now been on the supervisory team for 3 other disabled dancers. That's really exciting. So actually, in 5 years, all of us, and hopefully more, there will be. There will be a community of and I'm not saying you have to have a Phd. To be a leader. That's absolutely not what I mean. But what I do think is that research
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katemarsh: undertaken by disabled people in dance is really valuable because we have a history, and it's often really good and comes from a really good place. But we have a history
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katemarsh: of non disabled researchers and professors looking into the world of inclusive dance and and trying to create solutions or understand it more.
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katemarsh: It's really important that that research comes from the perspective of a disabled researcher. I am getting somewhere at this point. So in 5 years all of those students will have submitted their Phds, and will then be supervising that that they become
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katemarsh: these signposts.
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katemarsh: I mean, I want them to do what they want to do, but I do know it will make it easier
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katemarsh: to go, actually, come and do your come and do research here. Come and work here or do this. It spreads, it just spreads it more
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katemarsh: so that I'm loving, that it really excites me, that I don't
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katemarsh: that that the community is shifting. And that's not just about research. Actually I I know that I make myself sound like a really old lady, but
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katemarsh: I I love it. There is some.
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Silva Laukkanen: We're just very wise, Kate, very wise.
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katemarsh: I'm genuinely excited by by Young, and I've said this before by younger disabled researchers, choreographers, makers, teachers, because actually they are that they they are having these. They're making work that is looking like Dandore, who I? You know he's just amazing, and that Dan is making work that talks about crip time that talks about
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Silva Laukkanen: Right.
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katemarsh: Yeah, and and bringing. And it's been such a well received work. And
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katemarsh: And Dan will now make the next show on Canduco.
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katemarsh: So it's really these shifts are really exciting. And so I guess you know what I what I imagine. In fact, what will I be? 54? I hope I'm very much hope I'm still working.
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katemarsh: I hope I'm still kind of
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katemarsh: supporting artists, because that that's what
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katemarsh: that's what I absolutely love to do.
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katemarsh: I often when I'm when I speak about things, or when I'm asked to kind of contribute to things. And you I'm sure you've had me say it more than once
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katemarsh: one of my questions, when I go into conferences.
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katemarsh: universities, studio anywhere, and maybe this, maybe we all sit with this but one of the questions I really try and ask myself is who is in here?
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katemarsh: And that's kind of shifted. Now to who is in here? And what is this space like.
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katemarsh: So I've become, and I know I know that you probably do the same thing. I've become super aware of the semiotics of space, of dance spaces. I'm like, Oh, this is super inaccessible. And even though you could come in here if you were a wheelchair user or you had a visual impairment, it's super inaccessible because it screams normativity.
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katemarsh: It it just says, this is this is a space where normative dance happens, or it's a normative conference, or and I think I hope I'm still. I hope I'm kind of in that discussion about. I hope I'm still asking myself
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katemarsh: who who is who is in here? And I also would acknowledge that's massively shifted in my and yours as well, probably in my my career in dance it, even our understanding of what disability is.
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katemarsh: and the language around that is shifting. I want to keep up with that. So I really hope in 5 years I'm I'm in that discussion, or at least, that I'm always listening and noticing
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katemarsh: what other people, what the people who are coming up, what they want, what's current and important to them, because I think that will keep it alive. That will keep things going.
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katemarsh: and maybe like a nice holiday, maybe finally, a really nice long holiday at 54, and that my children will have moved out.
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Silva Laukkanen: That's an amazing 5 Year Plan.
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katemarsh: Yeah.
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Silva Laukkanen: Thank you, Kate, so much for chatting with me.
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katemarsh: Thank you. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.