More on Dance and Disability

Photo by: Mike Fischer
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Edited to provide visual description: Two women, one using a chair, dance in a garden of white and pink flowers. Both women appear to be non-white, but I couldn't guess at their ethnic background. Behind them is a house with a hint of a domestic world. The women, one older, dance with joy and passion, lifting their arms into the air; the wheelchair dancer balances in a wheelie. Her t-shirt reads: Earn Your Attitude: ACT UP!

Blue/Kay raised a couple of interesting questions in the comments that I would like to address. How often do I feel like I am "performing disability" in my dancing and how or why that varies? When does it feel good and when does it feel like an exploitation of disabled bodies?

The short and ideal answer is it feels good almost all the time. That's why I do it. But of course that is no answer at all. This is really complicated; it engages both the question of how do I move and how am I asked to move.

How I move. I am learning to move in different ways. The first is the most conventional for dance; I perform a limited set of movements or steps that define the vocabulary of a particular technique. For me, as a wheelchair dancer, these steps/movements are complicated by the question of my body and my chair. Some "steps" are about the body. For example, almost all barre work is about my body (except when we turn to work the other side without breaking the sequence). Center work begins to integrate body and chair; the trick is to make the whole damn thing seamless. Manoeuvring the chair is as much a "step" as, say, a side bend or a torso roll. It gets more complicated when I move with speed and force.

Then, there's the "natural" movement thing. I say natural movement not because we/I perform it without regard to dance training, but because it is movement that does not fit a named technique. For example, one of our dancers has a gift for making movement out of small gestures/details. Watching her rub her arm is mesmerizing, for example. She can make finger walking fascinating.

And then, there's disability movement. I am still working on this. I am working on how to reproduce and develop the myoclonic jerking; I don't have the control to imitate "simple" leg spasticity/fasciculations. Right now, I don't know quite what to do with it. Most times, I hope that involuntary stuff doesn't happen. But I do see that there is potential here. More on that as I develop. I have to say that I feel like I can write better about all of this than I can actually do it. I am still very much learning my own body and movement.

OK. What am I asked to do. In August of this year, West Coast added "head piece" to its repertory. It's not called that, of course, but, well, "head piece" is at first glance all about a turn of your head (note: technically, if all you do is turn your head, you will wreck your neck. You have to involve the rest of your body). Eventually, we do such radical movement as holding hands, bending, and I even get to turn around and move away from the group. But the head is the locus of emotion and primary site of movement. Head piece was choreographed originally for 4 TAB women, from different generations; it explores how little movement can be considered dance, and how little movement can have huge emotional impact. I LOVE this piece.

I was really scared to perform head piece at first in public. It is not just that the whole thing rests on remembering the sequence -- right, left, hold, up, center, right and then reverse, first variation, second shot, or whatever -- it is that I felt very self-conscious about what people would say. In some weird fucked up way, I worried that people would see us moving our heads and assume that, well, of course it's a head piece -- that's all disabled dancers can do. I was afraid that they would think it made sense to choreograph limited movement for people with limited movement. The very first time we did it, I could feel people going, well, is that all? Where are the turns and jumps? The second time, however, people were just overwhelmed. OK. Admittedly, this was also partially the "isn't it just amazing/inspiring that you people can dance" phenomenon at work -- but I also think people were genuinely moved.

That said, West Coast tends not to do work that is "about" disability per se. When I first started to create short, solo phrases, I remember thinking that it was exciting to be able to dance my disability. Now, I don't want to be doing that kind of stuff. I find it artistically limiting; I don't want to be endlessly showing me negotiating with myself over my fear/reluctance to use a wheelchair. I don't want to be locked into that drama at all. Far more exciting to be making cool shapes, cool moves. This is dancing my disability without making my disability the subject of my dance.

So, I think the West Coast position is a good decision; we want to be seen as dancers, capable of dance of any kind, in its fullest, broadest, most beautiful way. As dancers, we do not wish to be seen as "damaged" people endlessly recapitulating the tragic stories of our disabilities. And yet, no matter what we do, there is always someone in the audience who is watching us in that way. We just cannot escape that narrative. From the moment, we come into view, far too many people are already wondering, tearing up, or some other such junk. A friend with a dry sense of humour told me about the Nancy Reagan quote in which she claims she just "puddles up" in the presence of "retarded" children -- I can't find it on the Net, but I will take her word for it -- this is not the response I want to my work. No drama, no tragedy, no pity. Just awesome, bloody fantastic dance.

Most of our dance is abstract in some way, that is, there is no definite narrative or storyline. It is modern dance in which an audience member can construct a narrative if s/he wants, but it is not usually like older ballets in which we progress through a relatively clear plot. Sometimes, the choreographer works from a book/story, a poem, an idea, or a concept, but not always. I am still learning how choreographers work -- more on that later.

By far the greater part of what we do makes only respectful, stimulating requests of us. We are almost never asked to do things that are exploitative of our disabilities. I say, almost, because, of course, not everyone "gets" disability. And West Coast has worked with the odd person who has persisted in creating movement from the point of view of our losses. I did feel exploited. I hated every moment of it. But for the most part and hopefully for even more of our future, we have been and will continue to be fortunate enough to have choreographers interested in developing dance from our strengths.

Last summer, I was stressing about the tedium of being asked just to walk across the stage five times in a row for what seemed like hours at a time. I mean, really, how was this going to become dance? I didn't understand how closely the choreographer was watching and thinking about those passes. The walking is there in her piece, but you wouldn't know it unless you had been there to see us walk in the first place.

This is the most respectful and exciting work. This, I could do all day, every day. This is what I do.

Feel my JOY!