Sometimes, the opening ceremonies for the Paralympic Games last year were a beautiful celebration of the talents of the dancers and disabled athletes on stage, such as when the brilliant South African dancer Musa Motha made magic with her crutches. But then there came a time that many in this disability dance community found disturbing: non -disabled artists who understood the majority of the dance set made a sequence in which they seemed to try to emulate the motha movement, collecting their own crutches and using them as accessories.
“That was quite shocking to see, for those of us in this field,” says Elisabeth Motley, a disabled and choreographer with headquarters in New York City.
It was a particularly pointed example of the surprisingly common appearance of simulated, appropriate or imitated disability in dance performance. There is the recent music video for “Abracadabra” by Lady Gaga, for example, in which the pop star and her backup dancers use canes to simulate the deteriorated movement as part of her choreography. There is Marie Chouinard's work in 2005 Body_remix/Goldberg_variationswhere dancers use crutches and prostheses as tools to explore the limitations and potential of their movement. And the characters with disabilities are still frequently interpreted by artists without those identities on Broadway and beyond.
This type of simulation can perpetuate harmful ideas about disability and deny opportunities to disabled artists. “There is a big problem with the people who try to imitate the movement of disabled people without having the experience of being in the world as someone who appears in that way,” says Raquel Meseguer Zae, co-artistic director of Candoco Dance Company, which focuses artists with disabilities. “It's not authentic, and I don't understand why we are still doing it.”
Why it happens
To Zae's question because This is still happening, Laurel Lawson, dancer, choreographer and founding member of the kinetic light of the disability arts as a whole, says that he frequently listens to the same incorrect response. “The answer that people always give us is that there are not enough qualified artists,” she says. “There are many disabled artists. We all know it and, nevertheless, there is still the breath of the un disabled artists to occupy that space.” (Like Alice Sheppard, founder and artistic director of Cinetic Luz, says: “If a disability is desired, disabled dancers must hire”).
The artist and choreographer based in New York City, Jerron Herman, who explores the aesthetics of disability in his work, says a more likely explanation. “The fear of saying 'disability', or committing to disability, is how these things come out,” he says. “It is considered to be cheaper and easier not to participate.” Marisa Hamamoto, founder of Infinite Flow Dance, who uses disabled dancers and without disabled, expresses it more bluntly: “I think many people feel uncomfortable with people with disabilities,” she says.
In cases such as Paralympics, it may be that non -disabled dancers have imitated disability as part of a well -intentioned but wrong attempt to “create loyalty between non -disabled dancers and disabled dancers,” says Victoria Marks, a choreographer and scholar who directs the dance disability laboratory in UCLA. “But social and political identities are not the same, so it is a false equality.”
It marks the fear that choreographers are attracted to appropriate disability “extend the innovative possibilities of dance,” she says. “As, 'look what I can do with my body; now look at what I can do with a chair on wheels.' It is an expansion of the company capable of dance: to innovate, climb to the top, do more great things, expand virtuosity by itself.”
The problems to appropriate disability
The damage to appropriate disability goes beyond casting issues. “There are deep implications for mimicry,” says Herman. “You are saying: 'We do not need your body for this incarnation and this expression', so it makes the body disposable.”
The idea that disability can be represented by using a mobility device such as a wheelchair or a crutch also points to a erroneous problem problem about what these devices really are. “What people think as a medical team is part of our bodies, our achievements and our personality,” says Sheppard. “When a non -disabled person dances in a wheelchair, the chair separates from its social and political context,” says Marks. “They are not neutral objects. They are not interesting things about wheels.”
Disabled dancers provide training and technique to their movement that cannot be learned or replicated quickly. Lawson says it is obvious when a dancer is not trained, say, dancing with a wheelchair, and compares it with how easy it is to detect an unreasonable model with cut -off shoes for an ad. “It's not your body, they don't know what they are doing and they don't have the technique for it,” she says. “Like all the dance technique, it is something that is learned through years and years of repetition.”
Confine disability performance to a series of movements tested instead of an incarnation of a lived experience will always be inaccurate, says Herman: “Disability performance cannot be exact,” he says.
Advancing towards an authentic representation
There is evidence of growing awareness in dance and theater spaces that disabled characters must be interpreted by disabled artists, and disability should not be imitated. Perhaps the most notable, Jenna Bainbridge became the first disabled artist to play WickedNssarose, who uses a wheelchair, earlier this year, more than 20 years after the show opened on Broadway. (This followed the disabled artist Marissa Bode playing the role in the film adaptation of 2024).
This type of authentic representation has a real impact. “When I was 18 and did not understand my disability or what meant being a disabled artist, that representation was not available to me,” says Candoco Dance Company artistic director Dominic Mitchell. “I think people underestimate the power they have. Change the cultural perspective and create opportunities for younger people to witness themselves. I think I would have transformed my life as an 18 -year -old boy to witness Candoco.”
There is still considerable job to do, both on and off the stage. “Money is needed, it takes time. It means supporting disabled artists and helping us build the training pipe that is extremely incomplete. It means ordering disabled choreographers and making work accessible to the disabled public,” says Lawson.
“It means assessing the experience of disability outside the stage so that it can value it in the cultural field,” says Sheppard. “Learning in our bodies, some of the dance studies and part of the street, cannot be replicated. What we know about the movement is sacred.”
Beyond representation
The justice of disability in the dance does not begin and ends with the identities represented on stage. It is also about power, resources and access outside the stage, and who is creation The work we are seeing. “If we think of a non -disabled person who orchestra the dynamics of power that is on stage, which establishes a place of distrust for me as a disabled person,” says Elisabeth Motley, a choreographer and interpreter based in New York City.
Alice Sheppard, founder and artistic director of the kinetic light of the disability arts as a whole, agrees. “It's not just about putting someone on stage,” she says. “What are you doing with them? Do you have an interesting choreography to realize? We cannot ignore these questions only to deal with the issue of representation. Just put the disabled people on stage will not solve the problem: you need business people to understand the choreographic potential that a disabled dancer brings.”
Candoco Dance Company, a company based in the United Kingdom that has historically included disabled and non -disabled dancers, is considering these questions at this time. “We are experiencing a transformation in our company because we had the experiences lived in terms of disabled artists, but narratives, aesthetics and stories have arrived mainly through non-disabled choreographers,” says co-artistic director Dominic Mitchell. “We recently made a pivot to commission a disabled choreographer, and the content, approach, politics and ethics around ways of working have completely changed, in really exciting ways.”
See the work of the most disabled manufacturers on stage will require dismantling the barriers that currently exist for them. “The work that is required of the disabled dancers to produce their work is much more intense than for non -disabled dancers,” says Motley. “People who are doing this really brilliant work are getting fatigue much earlier.”
Author: Saxon
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