Spacehold Collective: Considering Equity, Diversity & Inclusion in Performance-Making Practices to Facilitate an Anti-Oppressive Rehearsal Environment / Rohan Dhupar (2023)

I am a performance-maker in the fields of dance and theatre with practices in choreography and direction. Spacehold Collective is a titular umbrella for my artistic research spanning workshops, writing and performance work. This paper details a year-long research project investigating principles of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in performance-making practices, culminating in the presentation of a contemporary dance work Why Storms Are Named After People at the Laban Theatre. The practical research focuses on the field of dance with theoretical and observational insights from theatre, music and community arts disciplines, and is situated within the cultural landscapes of the UK and North America. This inquiry was born out of the urgent need to address the historical implications of theatre and dance rooted in systemic forms of oppression as well as my own lived experiences as a queer Brown artist encountering tokenism and micro-aggressions in predominantly white spaces. A broad review of literature identifies socio-political, artistic and community philosophies which aim to reconsider hierarchical dynamics and decolonise performance-making practices. This becomes tangibly articulated through the lens of EDI, particularly in response to contemporary instances of harm and abuse in arts organisations. This research acknowledges EDI efforts at an institutional level move with a gradual top-down approach and aims to identify tools which practitioners can adopt within their own work to promote EDI on a ground-level in the context of facilitating a collaborative rehearsal process. The research context distilled to an ethnographic approach where interviews and shadowing opportunities with practitioners such as Gerrard Martin, Alan Muraoka, Julian Nichols and Susan Stroman revealed manifestations of this ethos in the contexts of contemporary dance and musical theatre. Training opportunities revealed two specific anti-oppressive tools which became the pillars for practice-led research: Room Agreements, derived from community practice, and Body Mapping, derived from intimacy direction. I preliminarily experimented with these tools in workshop settings, and then more thoroughly in facilitating the extended making process for Why Storms Are Named After People. The collaboration with participants encouraged a feedback loop of collective observations and introspective reflections to gather qualitative data regarding how these tools impacted participants’ engagement within the process and my own choreographic practices. This resulted in an articulation of boundaries for the space which directly impacted methods of communication, consciousness around the use of language, avenues of decision-making and the choreographic material itself. The anti-oppressive rehearsal environment effectively encouraged my choreographic practice to evolve in dismantling learned rigid and autocratic habits, and participants felt a greater capacity to engage with challenging and rigorous material within the process and performance.