Dancing
without
sight
By Anthea Skinner
Dance and circus company
Blindful has had a busy
year. It has performed
at festivals around the
country, completed its first
Abbie Madden (centre) with Romain Hassanin and Ryan Darwin.
international tour to New
Zealand and won the Best
have varying degrees of what they
Emerging Producer Award can see and experience,” she said.
Blindful’s performances aim the blindfolds, essentially I am no
at the Melbourne Fringe.
to explore the ways that
vision and eyesight impact
on movement and dance.
The company’s founder
and artistic director, Abbie
Madden spoke to Link
about her work.
B
lindful’s performers include
Abbie, who is vision impaired,
and two sighted dancers, Ryan
Darwin and Romain Hassanin.
“We actually all wear the
blindfolds throughout the show,”
Abbie said.
“I wanted to level the playing
field, so we are all working without
any sight.”
It was important to Abbie that
“We take all of that away using
Using movement, Blindful’s
performers are able to explore space
beyond the confines of vision.
“I think seeing less of the outside
better off than Ryan or Romain. and what you look like as a dancer
I think the only difference was I was means you instinctively focus on the
more comfortable sooner with not inside and how things feel – which is
having any sight. way more useful and important; ask
“I wasn’t really able to offer them
most dancers and they’ll talk about
advice … more so time to adjust and what something feels like. This is where
get used to working blindfolded. We we have the advantage,” she said.
all had to figure it out for ourselves as Far from letting her vision
we all have different ways of working impairment negatively affect
and handling the lack of sight.” her dancing, through Blindful,
Abbie first developed the idea
of exploring the effect of eyesight
on movement while she was working
Abbie is showing that it can
actually be a strength.
“As I’ve been visually impaired
with dance company ‘ponydance’ for my whole life and danced
in the UK. essentially my whole life too, they’ve
“I’m a restless person. I always
need to be busy doing something,”
she said.
“While I was in the UK and
gone hand in hand I don’t know one
without the other,” she said.
“I don’t think I ever thought I
couldn’t be a dancer because of
working for ponydance we had my eyes, it was always because of
she also wore a blindfold, removing big gaps of time where we weren’t other things like ‘am I being creative
her reliance on her residual sight. rehearsing. I figured the best way to enough?’, ‘am I flexible enough?’ – all
“Something people don’t
keep dancing was to make my own the other self-confidence issues that
realise is that very few people are works and performances, so I every dancer has.”
completely lacking in sight, people started Blindful.”
linkonline.com.au
www.blindful.com
arts
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