PRODUCTIONS
UNCLEAR (PG18) – 30 Nov @ 19h30
DUST TO MAN and DIVERSITY IN DANCE – 1 Dec @ 19h30
CHINK IN A RUBBER WALL – 2 Dec @ 19h30
LISTEN TO MY HANDS and DIVERSITY IN DANCE – 3 Dec @ 15h00
Scroll down for more information on these productions
Launch Performances – 29 November @ 7:30pm

The ArtsAbility Festival celebrates its 8th year and continues to use the arts to drive social transformation, addressing the issues that people with disabilities experience in their lives. It challenges what it means to be human and highlights the significance of accessibility and intergration into the arts.
The launch will feature the collaboration with our dynamic international partners, Sensorim Ex from the USA and Diversity in Dance from the UK
Also featuring on the programme is our in-house company, Unmute Dance Theatre with the production Timelapse/We are Here, which looks at how human beings experience constant change from the day we are born. We experience many moments, some that remain with us as memories, some life in our bodies as feelings and others we forget. This piece uncovers how these moments move through time and space, what we do now and how it affects what comes next.
PRODUCTIONS
UNCLEAR (PG18) – 30 November @ 19h30

Unclear’ by queer disabled artist Louise Westerhout, in their first performance piece since stage 4 cancer and hip/femur replacement from February this year. Louise recounts in forensic detail the symptoms she remembers before, during, and now as a perhaps futile effort in clarifying when it started, what caused it, where next. Unclear exposes the uncomfortable, shifting realities of our mortal existence and our erroneous need for meaning. As a multimedia installation it offers nuanced diagnoses, on the personal, but also the socio-cultural pathologies which perpetuate illness, such as ableism, misogyny, ageism and queer phobia.
Unclear is made in conversation with Craig Leo.
DUST TO MAN and DIVERSITY IN DANCE – 1 December @ 19h30

Dust To Man is inspired by the Islamic story of Adam and Hawa (Adam and Eve). The production looks at the beginning of Adam’s purpose and what he was meant to do for man on Earth. “Caretaker, answer, rename and lead man’s doing today”. He was then influenced by what is forbidden which led to change and life as we know it. ‘When the Lord said to the angels: I am going to create a human (Adam) from sounding clay of altered black smooth mud. So when I have fashioned him and breathed into him (his) soul created by Me, then fall prostrate to him”.
The Diversity in Dance Project, funded by the British Council, is a partnership between Artscape and Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. Unmute Dance Theatre will host 3 dancers from the UK for 2 months to work on creating new work. The collaborative work will see able and disabled bodied dancers create and showcase what they’ve created at the Edinburgh Carnival in July 2022. The project will culminate again at the ArtsAbility Festival at the end of the year where dancers will showcase what they’ve been working on throughout the year.
CHINK IN A RUBBER WALL – 2 December @ 19h30

Italian artist Alessandro Schiattarella who is based in Switzerland returns to South Africa in 2022 to create a new work with the company dancers for the ArtsAbility Festival. Alessandro’s working relationship with Unmute began in 2016 with his first residency in SA with the company and since then this relationship developed with exchanges and two of his works “Altrove” and “One at a Time” which was performed at the ArtsAbility Festival in 2018. This year we are delighted to have him back with a new work.
LISTEN TO MY HANDS and DIVERSITY IN DANCE – 3 December @ 15h00

In September Unmute celebrated Deaf Awareness Month with a new work to create awareness for this month and sign language. The work brings out a world full of communication through his hands. He’s been in a quiet place finding it difficult to communicate with people who can listen – he is inviting us into his world where hands are louder than the voice.
This time he will be doing this work in collaboration with Jazzart Theatre
The Diversity in Dance Project, funded by the British Council, is a partnership between Artscape and Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. Unmute Dance Theatre will host 3 dancers from the UK for 2 months to work on creating new work. The collaborative work will see able and disabled bodied dancers create and showcase what they’ve created at the Edinburgh Carnival in July 2022. The project will culminate again at the ArtsAbility Festival at the end of the year where dancers will showcase what they’ve been working on throughout the year.