Move Beyond Words: Helping dancers with dyslexia to thrive
By Gerard Davis
Charlotte Edmonds was the first participant in the inaugural Emerging Choreographer Programme at London’s Royal Ballet in 2016 and has since created works for Studio Wayne McGregor, Yorke Dance Project and many others. Elizabeth Arifien has a background in musical theatre, choreography and, more recently, filmmaking. Both women are highly accomplished, extremely articulate and, like an estimated one in ten people in their native UK, they’re dyslexic.
They first met in 2018 and formed an instant connection. “Being freelance in the creative industries and having dyslexia can be very lonely,” says Arifien, “so meeting someone who understood what I was going through was a breath of fresh air.”
Judging from how they interact with each other during our Zoom meeting, they clearly get on incredibly well, and a major result of their friendship has been the formation of Move Beyond Words, a platform and support system for dyslexic artists. Dyslexia is mainly considered in terms of problems it causes academically and is overlooked for issues it might cause for those in the arts, according to Edmonds. “As a choreographer, for example, I’d really underestimated the amount of admin involved in running your own company. But the issues are not just about reading and writing; there are so many layers to dyslexia that need understanding.”
Dyslexia possesses plenty of positive attributes: it’s associated with fine problem-solving skills and an excellent long-term memory, for example. Less welcome are characteristics that can include uncoordinated motor skills, poor sequential memory and difficulties with planning and organization. Struggling to process spoken instructions can be another area of concern, which, for dancers, can make things like auditioning a particularly fraught experience. “The hurdles I’ve had to face trying to jump through audition hoops,” says Arifien sadly. “I’ve achieved some wonderful things in my career but, because I was coming up against certain obstacles so often in the audition process, it did something to my confidence. I had to stop and take a break.”
As an art form, however, dance has proved a godsend. “I’ve danced since I was three,” says Arifien, an alumnus of the Liverpool Theatre School, “and it’s always been my escape. Dance is a space where no-one can tell me whether I’m right or wrong; it’s my true way of expressing myself.”
Edmonds, who studied in London at the Royal Ballet and Rambert schools, concurs: “I would often be going in the wrong direction in my dance classes — left instead of right, that sort of thing. I’d get really embarrassed, but it actually started a conversation with my teachers and one day, it was suggested that one of my mistakes might make an interesting idea. That encouraged me to create my own material because, as the author, I could attach emotions and inspirations to the movement, which really helped with retaining information. At school, I even started revising for history tests by creating a kind of dance. That’s essentially how my choreographic journey began and that’s why dance isn’t just a passion for me, it’s actually enabling me to help myself with my dyslexia.”
Do they think that arts organizations are doing enough to accommodate people with dyslexia? “No,” says Arifien flatly. “I’ve been freelancing for 10 years and there’s a lot that needs to be addressed. It’s a shame, because people with dyslexia have these amazing visual minds that go off on rich tangents that inhabit completely different spaces from other people. As a result, organizations are missing out on some of the best storytellers.”
“Many people with dyslexia gravitate towards the creative arts,” says Edmonds, “because they’re going to thrive in that kind of atmosphere. It’s still a vulnerable environment for them, though, and they can find it really damaging if organizations don’t give the support they need.”
One of the most prominent features of Move Beyond Words are the podcasts where Arifien and Edmonds talk to artistic practitioners who have dyslexia. Guests in the first series include author and historian Stella Tillyard, actress Lauren McCrostie and ex-Royal Ballet principal Darcey Bussell. “These are people we put on a pedestal but we don’t often get to see their inner workings,” says Arifien. “We had many guests who were close to tears because their experiences with dyslexia had been suppressed for so long.”
Edmonds points out that their guests have had different paths to get to where they are today, “but what they share is an extraordinary amount of resilience and determination. Their stories are something everyone can learn from, whether they have dyslexia or not.”
2021 sees Edmonds and Arifien furthering their ambitious plans for Move Beyond Words. A second series of podcasts is in the pipeline and they’ll be hosting online workshops specially designed to help dancers with dyslexia. They are currently conducting research on different support methods in order to compile a toolkit that will enable organizations to better support dyslexic dancers. They’re also looking to create further artistic projects after the success of their collaboration on the dance film UN[BOX]ED (produced with the Royal Opera House in 2020 and for which they recruited a predominantly dyslexic artistic team and crew) and with the choreography Words Fail Me, presented at London’s V&A Museum in 2019 as part of the Dyslexia Creates annual conference.
Despite the difficulties they’ve faced during their lives and careers, both are learning to see the good dyslexia has brought them. “Dyslexia teaches me to be curious about the unknown,” says Edmonds. “It gives me the capacity to look at things differently and it gives me the willingness to push boundaries.”
For Arifien, “dyslexia is a teacher. It’s something that challenges me and forces me to reflect on my ways of working. It’s a teacher I didn’t love at first, but we’re beginning to have a warmer relationship now.”
Ultimately, both women are eager to help people struggling with dyslexia and they offer some pertinent advice. “Find your passion,” says Edmonds. “Find something you love because that’s what’s going to drive you forward. It will help alleviate the anxiety, stresses and pressures of everyday life and will become a beacon of light for you.”
“You have to trust that there are ways of handling difficult situations. And you really need to be kind to yourself,” says Arifien. “Dyslexia has changed the course of where I visualized my life going and my personal journey has been a process of coming to fully accept who I am. I’ve really learned, as cheesy as it sounds, to dance with my dyslexia as opposed to battling with it.”
If you would like to get in touch with Charlotte Edmonds and Elizabeth Arifien about any of the issues discussed in this article, please contact them at: info@movebeyondwords.co.uk.
