Songs of the Wayfarer by Claire Cunningham

Scotland-based performer Claire Cunningham explores what can be learned from those of us who reach for the ground through crutches, as four-legged creatures.

In her new solo work, Songs of the Wayfarer, Cunningham delves into the choreography of crip* navigation – the experience of moving through the world and natural environment as a disabled person. Using and misusing her crutches as an extension of her dancing body, she examines the act of journeying. Drawing inspiration from the world of mountaineering, explorers and expeditioners, and from Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" (Songs of a Wayfarer), Cunningham invites us to pay closer attention to the ways we navigate both familiar and unfamiliar landscapes and profound loss and change in our lives.

One of the UK’s most acclaimed and internationally renowned disabled artists, Cunningham creates work informed by the lived experience of disability, and by crip, queer and feminist thinking. Investigating personal questions with universal resonances, she explores the potentiality of her specific physicality, crafting a unique vocabulary riddled with dark humour that challenges conventions around virtuosity, classical aesthetic and dance.

*Crip is a political and cultural identity embraced by some disabled individuals.