Great companies aren’t made overnight. They put the hard yards into establishing an identity, deciding where they want to go, how to get there and how to bring an audience along for the journey. The always challenging task comes with a greater degree of difficulty when the remit is to develop performing artists with disability and put them and their concerns centre stage.
Jianna Georgiou. Photo © Shane Reid.
Restless Dance Theatre was founded by Sally Chance in 1991 to enable young people with and without disability to come together for workshops and perhaps one or two productions a year. It was timely. People with disability were thinking of themselves “more as a public issue rather than a private problem”, as the organisation People with Disability Australia puts it (1981 was declared the International Year of Disabled Persons by the United Nations).
From its beginnings as a predominately community and youth organisation, Restless has developed over three decades into a multifaceted company with a distinctive voice and national and international following. If the arts provide somewhere for ideas to be challenged rather than happily confirmed, Restless...
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