Stopgap Dance Company: Lived Fiction review – a thrillingly inclusive celebration

For nearly 30 years, from community origins to world-class status, Stopgap Dance Company has been making work that doesn’t just argue for diversity in dance but shows it, in all its richness and power. Its latest creation, Lived Fiction, is no exception.
Choreographed by a team of deaf, disabled, neurodivergent and non-disabled creatives, some standing, others using wheelchairs, this is a piece that is accessible to all, and which includes every form of communication, from audio description (spoken and on screen) to pulses that capture the rhythm of the music. Out of what it calls “the flex and stretch” that people with disabilities bring to their lives every day emerges a glorious complexity.
Lived Fiction is full of wit, sophistication and spellbinding movement. Over and over again, its intensity and invention take you by surprise. For example, there’s a duet for Nadenh Poan, who is strapped into his wheelchair, and Emily Lue-Fong, who is non-disabled. As she enters, and curls her body around him, Lily Norton’s live audio description poetically encapsulates not just what we are seeing, but how it makes them feel. “I think they look like ancient ammonites,” they say. The words, thoughtful and involved, add to the power of the duet that takes off into lifts and spins in smoky light.
Later, Hannah Sampson, who has Down’s Syndrome, shakes her hips to make the zips in her trousers jangle. Jannick Moth, sitting in the audience, responds, rattling his braces and leaping up to join her. The conversation between the two is at once visual – we can see the interchanges and the smart shimmies – and described, as their thoughts become the audio description. The layers add to the experience, expanding and enhancing it.
The performance is full of this generosity and inclusion, of warmth and a sense of joy. These diverse dancers take such care of us, and our needs, that it’s impossible not to feel ashamed that the world takes so little care of them. It makes its plea for progress through beauty and love.