Ep. 69 - Access and Excess (SKIN)

Gabrielle Martin chats with Renae Shadler about SKIN, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival: February 4-6 at the Annex in Vancouver, BC.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Renae discuss: 

• How did this project first begin?
• What did you discover about your own assumptions and movement in this process?
• How did the presence of caregiving and support structures change your thinking and development of the show?
• How did this project deepen or challenge the framework of modern life, including the textures of the anthropocene?
• How did the image of sea amoeba influence the show, and allow for merging without suppressing difference?
• How do you craft a dramaturgy that resists normative readings of the body on stage?
• What is your wider practice beyond SKIN? What questions continue to animate your work?

About SKIN

Every body tells its story through the skin. 

Constantly shifting through contact, the skin transforms—between bodies, and in its exchange with the earth, whose surface we are changing ever faster in the Anthropocene.

Performed by Roland Walter, a dancer with full-body spastic paralysis, and Renae Shadler, a non-disabled choreographer, SKIN creates a universe where their distinctly different bodies move toward one another. Through touch, habitat, and imagination, they develop a shared movement language inspired by sea anemones, liquid states, and the shifting textures of the earth.

This duet is not about access, but excess—a space where multiple lived experiences coexist. Between contraction and expansion, Walter and Shadler explore new ways of relating, dissolving the idea of “more” or “less” able bodies. SKIN becomes a meditation on contact and transformation—on how our environment both shapes us and is shaped by us.

About Renae

Renae Shadler is an Australian choreographer, performer and researcher based in Berlin who experiences her life and work as a web of interrelations. Since 2015, she has been developing her Worlding choreographic practice, which seeks to dissolve the perceived border between internal and external processes, between bodies and worlds.

Her work spans diverse contexts: from dance on stage and major festivals, to museums and outdoor public engagement projects. Alongside performances, she has created lectures, the Worlding podcast series, and the ongoing knowledge lab Moving across Thresholds, which hosts online/live gatherings and festival events.

As founder of Renae Shadler & Collaborators, she has presented and developed work at venues such as Dancehouse (Australia), Palais de Tokyo (France), Tanzhaus Zürich (Switzerland), Radialsystem and HELLERAU (Germany), among others.

She is a recipient of the George Fairfax Memorial Award and the Marten Bequest Theater Fellowship. SKIN — her duet with Roland Walter, a performer with spastic paralysis — was selected for Perform Europe 2024/25, Tanzplattform Deutschland 2022, and Aerowaves 2021.

Roland Walter was born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1963 with a lack of oxygen, which caused his spastic paralysis. Walter lives with full-time assistance in Berlin. In 2010 Roland started working as an artist. As a performer he experiments with his body and works with artists worldwide, showing the audience a change of perspective. Roland also holds lectures and workshops in schools. So far Roland has worked and researched in Berlin at Theaterhaus Mitte and in the Sophiensaele, among others. With his paralysed body he fascinates the audience.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

Renae joined the conversation from Berlin, Germany.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Credits

PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.

Show Transcript