Champutee Breakdancing

The YouTube video below documents a breakdancing competition between LazyLegs and Hourth, two disabled breakdancers. It was forwarded to me, and I sent it on, without really thinking about it. But the Artistic Director for West Coast had a really thought-provoking perspective on it. She noticed that the video raises some pretty important questions about movement and level of disability. She even raised the question of whether the two should be competing against each other. In the light of the Pistorius mess, this got me thinking.

Note: I only know what I can see -- internet sources disagree and, for my argument, actual diagnosis is unimportant. Hourth has a pretty high level amputation (pelvis?) of one leg; the rest of his body seems unimpaired. LazyLegs has a more wide-ranging disability, visible in the whole lower half of his body. Disabled sports often have a "points" system in which the varying levels of disability are can be evened and the playing field leveled (but only somewhat, I imagine).

This particular competition seems to originate in and be designed for the non-disabled world. In such a world, the measure of a dancer seems to be the degree to which s/he can approximate the physicality and "Normal" movement of non-disabled breakdance. That and, of course, a couple of spectacular moments with assistive technology. With these criteria, it seems easy to acknowledge Hourth as the winner: he appears to be able to "do" more.

This approach misses what, to me, are some of the other more important criteria: artistic merit, individual expression, the creation of a vocabulary of movement that maximizes an individual dancer's body. I don't know how I'd rate the performances against each other; I do know that to prize the appearance of athleticism is to undermine the actual athleticism of dancing in any given body. I also know that sometimes the purely physical can have no artistic merit.

I kind of feel that while the movements caught here may attest to the viability of disabled dancers and while the dance itself may participate in aspects of disability culture, the spectacle of a competition in which the dancers perform to the expectations of non-disableds is just that: spectacle.