The Caroline Plummer Fellow 2010 | Suzanne Cowan

Suzanne Cowan

Caroline Plummer Fellow in Community Dance

With her Caroline Plummer Fellowship in Community Dance, Auckland performer and choreographer Suzanne Cowan plans to choreograph a dance project, called Sight lines from the perspective of people with visual impairments.

Working with the Dunedin sight-impaired community and students from Dance Studies, she plans to use the media of 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 the 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," she says.

"It is a wonderful opportunity to develop something really 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.

Ms Cowan received First Class Honours upon completing her Master of Creative and Performing Arts degree from University of Auckland in 2009. She also worked for an international mixed ability dance company 'Candoco' for three and a half years touring internationally (from 2000 - 2003).