Unlimited Festival
Dance
Aby Watson:-ish
Tramway, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
***
THE chatty informality running through Aby Watson’s dance/performance piece is how she opens up a serious, potentially awkward issue: what do people generally perceive as ‘disability’. No immediately obvious signs identify Watson as dyspraxic. However her condition - a developmental coordination disorder - means that Watson has to anticipate, and think through, her everyday movements and any on-stage actions. The strapping on her ankle is a painful reminder that things don’t always go according to plan. “I fell over the floor” she tells us, before laughing wryly at how appropriately dyspraxic the rehearsal incident was.
Elsewhere, the visual jokes and humorous gambits in -ish all connect into a collage of ‘either/or’ episodes where the writing on the wall - steady/wobbly, rising/falling, mind/body - prompts Watson, with BSL Interpreter Amy Cheskin, to explore what her own ‘inbetween-ness’ represents within the of blunt dichotomy of ‘able/disabled.’ The first polarity is ‘visible/hidden’. Watson shrouds her entire head in a cluster of bright balloons: we see a living, breathing body - but we don’t actually see ‘her’ as a facially expressive human being. As an illustration of how we’re inclined to focus on ‘difference’ and disability rather than the individual as a whole, this is astutely, provocatively ridiculous. More balloons, a space-hopper, subsequent flurries of physically intense bouncing and rolling that dice with control suggest how random and chaotic the connections between Watson’s brain and body can be.It’s playfully done, but there’s no mistaking the effort involved, even for the simplest of tasks. Chaskin meanwhile is helpfully on-hand, signing not just Watson’s words but vividly miming the various musical instruments on the jazzy sound-track that powers the bursts of stubborn choreography. Tramway’s Unlimited Festival has now ended but - yet again - the programme of live performances, installations and film has shown disabled artists challenging attitudes to difference and disability with an unflinching honesty and real creative energy.
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