Suzanne Cowan awarded Caroline Plummer Fellowship

5 October 2009
Auckland performer and choreographer Suzanne Cowan has been awarded the Caroline Plummer Fellowship in Community Dance and plans to choreograph a dance project called Sight lines, from the perspective of people with visual impairments.

Working with the Dunedin vision impaired community and students from Dance Studies, Suzanne will use dance, photography, video and sound to create a “vision for dance as a means of embracing diversity and difference”.

The planned finished work will involve a performance at Otago University and in a Dunedin community arts space; a website designed for people with visual impairments; and an academic research paper for publication based on the project’s findings.

“I am thrilled and honoured to be the next recipient of the Caroline Plummer Fellowship,” Suzanne says. “It is a wonderful opportunity to develop something unique in an exciting part of the country. It is also an opportunity to build on my choreographic experience and take it in a whole new direction.”

She says her interest in the creative possibilities inherent within physical and sensory impairment stems from her own experience of living with a spinal injury and using a wheelchair.

Suzanne received First Class Honours in a Master of Creative and Performing Arts degree from the University of Auckland this year. She also worked for an international mixed ability dance company Candoco for three and a half years, touring internationally from 2000 to 2003.