6. a clubhouse is not a home

day one of the autism, children and dance forum at pavilion dance south west (bournemouth)

I am back practicing - it feels so good! I’m in the UK for two days. It’s the culmination of two years of discussions with PDSW about autism friendly dance and now we have a forum together - there’s flyers and everything! I’m performing a solo that I’ve never performed before, it’s something I designed on someone else that’s found it’s way back to me. I have my amazing autism keyworker, Hannah Miles, delivering the practical workshop before this performance, and I will be leading a separate CPD session giving an insight to my process towards autism-friendliness.

We lead two school sessions (totalling 90 participants) each including a practical workshop and a performance. The workshops are inspired by the autism-friendly performance I created ‘The Crisp Sandwich Cafe’. This is our first time leaving our cafe and we visit two classes from a specialist school.

I just want to highlight some moments so that I don’t forget them:

# 1. pizza pringles cafe

When Hannah introduces that we will spend the whole session dancing with crisp packets, one child immediately suggests that we could also dance with pringles and/or pizza - then we could enjoy a little snack after our dancing…This makes me so happy. We get each other. The dancing with the crisp packets is immediately accepted, the question actually is: what could this become? what would I like it to be? It just reminds me that sometimes children do just get it - and when working with creating accessible material of course this varies, but that is true for any audience. It’s a good reminder for me to embrace the weirdness of the world I’m creating, because if it speaks to the inner child in me then it has value.

# 2. crisp sandwich fan club

One of the staff as we walk in tells us how excited they are for the show because they have one pupil who is using crisp sandwiches as a way to expand their eating habits. If I wait patiently, every bit of research I have done in books comes into fruition, there was a crisp sandwich cafe before there was an autism-friendly performance - but that continued because of how well those foods matched into a simple diet of someone learning to expand their tastes. Of course some people hate sandwiches, or crisps, or crisp sandwiches but generally i’d rather be a perfect match for twenty percent of an audience than be a slight match for eighty percent.

# 3. paint me like one of your visual stories

Children are visibly so excited they already know us, the school has shared our video introductions and visual story and so we’re not starting from zero - they know our names and our faces, we’ve sprung into materiality from cyber space and it feels like it makes the unknown just a little more known. One child has even drawn pictures of us based off of our visual stories so they can give us something at the start of the workshop!

# 4. robot

They pay so much attention when I’m performing, they are very excited when I am acrobatic, loudly laughing when I am disjointed and also convinced I’m a robot. We are together experiencing something, it just works somehow.

# 5. is this one of those audience participation things

The staff are incredible at joining in and it elevates the room immediately. The students get to watch their teachers being taught and it makes such a difference. 

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A Clubhouse Is Not a Home - The Brady Bunch, Season 1, Episode 6