Episode 29: Glasgow-based disabled artist Claire Cunningham on choreographing care

Based in Glasgow, Scotland, Claire Cunningham is one of the UK’s most acclaimed and internationally renowned disabled artists. Her work, which is often biographical and deeply personal, explores Crip & disabled experiences, practices of care, and questions societal ideas of knowledge and value. The movement vocabulary she uses to delve into these these topics is often rooted in the use/misuse, study and distortion of crutches – the objects she uses to engage physically with the world.  

Claire has made everything from solos to large ensemble works. Notably, in 2012, she created ‘12’, an exploration of the word crutch in a metaphorical sense, on Candoco Dance Company. Since then, she’s made the solo 'Give Me a Reason to Live', inspired by the role of beggars and cripples in the work of Dutch medieval painter Hieronymus Bosch, and the full length show  'Guide Gods', looking at the perspectives of the major faith traditions towards the issue of disability. Claire’s new show ‘Songs of the Wayfarer’, is inspired by Gustav Mahler's 'Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen' as well as her life experience as a disabled person, the memory of her training as a singer, and the expertise of mountaineers and disabled friends. In this, her first solo piece in 10 years, she asks what it means to hike, and to strive for great heights. 

After seeing her perform ‘Songs of the Wayfarer’ at HAU in Berlin, and ahead of its run at Sadler’s Wells' Lilian Bayliss theatre from 4th-6th December, I couldn’t wait to talk to Claire about how she challenges conventions around virtuosity in dance, making work that attracts disenfranchised audiences to the theatre, and how she’s going to continue her work in a new context as as Professor of Choreography, Dance, and Disability Arts at the Hochschule fur Zeitgenössische Tanz in Berlin.