THE POWER OF DANCE
Pelenakeke Brown is the new artistic director of dance company Touch Compass – and the first to be living with a disability
Artistic director Pelenakeke Brown
I first got into art and dance when I was 7 or 8 years old. A family friend, Abigail Hector-Taylor, was studying Dance at Unitec and she would take me to community dance classes facilitated by Catherine Chappell. Catherine formed Touch Compass and asked me and fellow dancers from the class to join. I worked with them from 1997-2000, toured New Zealand and went to the High Beam Festival in Adelaide. I loved it.
I moved to New York six years ago where I worked with arts organisation Culture Push and juggled working as an independent artist. I have done projects with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Performing Arts Library (part of the Lincoln Center) and, most recently, the Goethe Institute in Munich. Excitingly, this year I was named an artist-in-residence at Eyebeam, a studio dedicated to artists working across technology and social justice, which was my dream residency opportunity. Working as an independent has meant I’ve had to hustle (a lot) but has also given me the freedom to explore my practice in multiple ways and connect with many communities and art forms.
I was in London when the borders closed to non-citizens of the US and ultimately, I couldn’t get back. I needed to be somewhere I could stay long-term, so I decided to come home. I miss New York and am really worried for my community there, but I am checking in with folks, donating to mutual aid organisations and trying to support how I can. Touch Compass is the silver lining to all this change and disruption. We’ve all had plans change and there is grief around that but I am ready to be here and support the wonderful work occurring in New Zealand and share some of what I’ve learned.
Questions that inform my art practice are: How can disability be seen as artistry? How can values and tenets of disability and care be part of my disability aesthetic? Where can I find overlapping sites of knowledge? How does this work honour crip time and the vā? What sites of choreography and movement can I find in everyday objects/movement? Whose story am I telling? And whose is not being said?” I work across multiple mediums: drawing, writing and performing. Is it a poem, a drawing or a choreographic score? I think the work can be all those things and I challenge you to see it that way. I always wish to expand what can constitute dance and where choreographed movement can be found. The work is always connected by the vā (inbetween space or spatial relationships). My work investigates the relationships occurring within the space, context and history. I also love duality and finding this duality everywhere. I’m most intrigued in finding sites and projects that hold both disability concepts, like crip time and Samoan concepts, (like the vā). As a disabled, Samoan/Pākehā I contain many genealogies and I want to honour that and find places where these intersections are housed.
Being appointed as the interim artistic director for Touch Compass is huge. And it’s hard to put into words. But it’s special and exciting. I am the first disabled Samoan/Pākehā artist to lead the company. I think that statement sums up the magnitude of it. Often in the disability arts it is not led by people who have lived experience. I think having someone who is from that community shifts everything, even in seemingly minute ways. While in NYC I have been focusing on fostering spaces for disabled/chronically ill folks and contributing to the conversation that is occurring: of understanding disability as a creative source.
I always wanted to return home and contribute to the arts here. With this appointment I thought about my community and the Samoan saying “o le ala i le pule o le tautua” (the road to leadership is through service).
I like to think of Touch Compass as a laboratory that explores exciting, performance ideas and projects. First and foremost thinking about disability as artistry. Disability and the way we move and navigate the world is a source of creativity. I want Touch Compass to be a company that fosters these ideas. I want it to reflect Aotearoa and the many cultures that we have. I want it to honour tangata whenua and tangata haua (disabled people), as well as our Pasifika people and other residents of Aotearoa.