INTEGRATION IS AN ART:
NECESSARY DIALOGUE ON DISABLED-NONDISABLED INTEGRATION(S),
POWER DYNAMICS, AND PARTNERSHIP IN PHYSICALLY INTEGRATED
DANCE, DANCE THEATER, AND COMMUNITY PERFORMANCE
Leora Amir
B.A., California State University, Sacramento, 1994
THESIS
Submitted in partial satisfaction of
the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
THEATRE ARTS
at
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO
FALL
2011
INTEGRATION IS AN ART:
NECESSARY DIALOGUE ON DISABLED-NONDISABLED INTEGRATION(S),
POWER DYNAMICS AND PARTNERSHIP IN PHYSICALLY INTEGRATED
DANCE, DANCE THEATER AND COMMUNITY PERFORMANCE
A Thesis
by
Leora Amir
Approved by:
_____________________________________, Committee Chair
Dr. Linda Goodrich
_____________________________________, Second Reader
Dr. Roberto D. Pomo
_______________________________
Date
ii
Student: Leora Amir
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University
format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to
be awarded for the thesis.
__________________________, Graduate Coordinator
Dr. Melinda Wilson Ramey
Department of Theatre and Dance
iii
__________________
Date
Abstract
of
INTEGRATION IS AN ART:
NECESSARY DIALOGUE ON DISABLED-NONDISABLED INTEGRATION(S),
POWER DYNAMICS AND PARTNERSHIP IN PHYSICALLY INTEGRATED
DANCE, DANCE THEATER AND COMMUNITY PERFORMANCE
by
Leora Amir
Through the lens of Disability Studies Theory and performance scholarship, this thesis
examines the diverse approaches of three contemporary dance-based performance
companies that integrate disabled and nondisabled performing artists. I demonstrate how
performances by AXIS Dance Company (Katie Faulkner’s Decorum), Dandelion
Dancetheater (Eric Kupers and Neil Marcus’ A Walk in the Park), and The Olimpias
Performance Research Projects (Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin) challenge
traditional exclusionary performance aesthetics and societal views through artful, subtly
political performances. I contend that these performances add vital “voices” to
performance, provide much-needed critiques of Ableism, and illustrate practices and
aesthetics that create pathways for more inclusive performance.
__________________________, Committee Chair
Dr. Linda Goodrich
______________________
Date
iv
PREFACE
Disability Studies via Performance: My Positioning to Disability and Nondisability
(a.k.a. Situating the Critic)
My awakening to Disability Studies came in a roundabout way through the
intersection of my own experience with possible illness/disability and the experience of
witnessing a performance evening unlike any I had ever seen before in how the
experience challenged my long-held unquestioned and unexamined assumptions about
disability. That evening included performances by AXIS and the Sacramento Ballet, and
ended with an AXIS-led improvisation-based dance workshop that was open to anyone
from the community—disabled or not. One of the things that stood out to me was the way
the AXIS performances embraced disability as possibility, and disabled performers as
equally as full of possibility, artfulness, meaning, and pleasure as their nondisabled
counterparts. The Physically Integrated Dance (disabled-nondisabled integrated)
performances I saw spoke individually and universally about a range of human issues in a
fresh way, partly through the inclusion of skilled disabled dancers and the artful
integrations between dancers with different embodiments—disabled and non. While at
the time, I could not quite pinpoint what I had seen and how it could have such a deep
affect on me, later I would discover that much of what impressed me in the performances
and workshop was the embodying of Disability Studies and Disability Culture aesthetics
and critiques. I saw a wide range of bodies/people/dancers disabled and not disabled,
collaborating through movement, dance, and improvisation.
v
That evening, AXIS’ workshop improvisations—including members of the
community as well as AXIS dancers and Sacramento Ballet dancers—seemed designed
to create fun and ease as well as to build from each individual’s strengths and individual
ways of moving and expressing themselves. A main emphasis of the improvisations
seemed to be to allow the opportunity for the participants to express their individual
“voices” through movement as well as focusing on the communication, often through
movement, between participants, dancers. At one point in the workshop, when I was
working with someone who was a wheelchair user and whose movement and
communication style were less familiar or predictable to me than a nondisabled person’s
would likely be, I felt like I was on the edge of my seat, so-to-speak. That is, I had to tune
in and listen well with my eyes and body as I moved together with a workshop
participant, reaching out of my comfort zone to communicate. I experienced new,
unfamiliar and pleasurable integrations and connections in watching the performances
and in participating in the community workshop. I felt the power of the images and
experience of artful integrations that build community.
At the end of the evening, when a member of AXIS asked workshop participants
for responses to the workshop, an excited little girl blurted out, “I learned I don’t have to
dance like everybody else. I can dance like myself.” This girl’s statement suggests that
she felt the power and value of her body’s unique movement versus being pressured to
copy others. What I witnessed and was part of that evening were energized integrations
of disabled and nondisabled performers, and in the workshop, of community members. I
saw something powerful—a rich, present, complex and living view of disability that sat
vi
in stark contrast to the limiting views and negative disability stereotypes and in contrast
to the social pressures to hide, change or overcome disability. The AXIS performances I
saw sat in stark contrast to performances in which nondisabled people play disabled parts,
and in contrast to dance performances where visibly disabled people are excluded. This
experience of performances and workshop exposed my presumptions and assumptions
about Nondisability and Disability and forced me to confront my positioning to Disability
and to Nondisability. I have struggled with writing this section. When I am in Disabilitypositive places, with Disability-positive people, I am comfortable “claiming disability”—
that is, explaining my political, social, cultural and embodied connection to disability, my
artful and powerful connection to “disabled.” Most of the time, I am not in these
environments and find myself either closeted or struggling to explain my positioning to
Disability in a way that will be understood.
As someone who does not look disabled, when I reveal my relation to Disability, I
see the changes come over the people who I am talking to. How I (often) seem to become
smaller in their eyes and thoughts. Their tones of voice change. Disability is serious and
they become serious. My life becomes sad or else hopeful in my quest to overcome
whatever they need me to overcome to feel better about the world, about me. Disability is
medical, right? So people want to discuss the medical to try to make sense of it. Many
people who I have been open with for years still do not “get it,” do not get disabled in its
broad definitions, as complex, as political in any way, as economic. The economic is the
main reason I am drawn to the closet, frankly. In this online world, do I want every one
of my future employers to know my relationship to disabled, if by-and-large disabled is
vii
viewed as a liability, a deficit, a negative? I am also aware that many people, for better or
for worse, do not get to make these choices, that is, to hide what could limit their
possibilities for employment and other opportunities. In Claiming Disability, Linton
writes, “When disabled people are able to pass for nondisabled, and do, the emotional toll
it takes is enormous” (20). Linton gives evidence for her position which I agree with,
however, I also find my somewhat closeted position to be a dynamic one. When I am
“passing,” I feel like I’ve unwittingly become a secret agent collecting information on
how people view Disability. I also get to witness the changes that occur when I “come
out” to people. I look at life from both sides now. As someone who was Nondisabled and
is now coming to deeply identify with Disabled, I carry both of these selves, cultures,
histories with me into my encounters. I find that both “passing” and “coming out” to
people who view disability narrowly, stereotypically, or solely, medically, does indeed
take an “emotional toll,” however “coming out” (however carefully) ultimately seems to
be the only choice that gives people the chance to perhaps broaden their ideas of what
disabled is, and can be, to engage in the necessary conversations. These performances by
AXIS, DDT and the Olimpias—engaging both disabled and not—also offer audiences the
chance to perhaps broaden their ideas of what disabled and integrated is and can be, to
engage in the dialogue, in the many dialogues.
viii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Preface................................................................................................................................. v
List of Figures .................................................................................................................... xi
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1
Models of Disability: Medical, Social-Construction, Minority, and Socio-Political ... 12
Art—NOT Therapy: Still Dogged by the Medical Model ............................................ 14
Disability as a Vantage Point, Disability as an Art, Integration as an Art .................... 18
2. "SEEING IS BELIEVING": AXIS DANCE COMPANY’S ARTISTIC
INTEGRATION(S) IN AN AXIS PHOTOGRAPH (JERRY SMITH); AND SEATS OF
POWER AND PARTNERSHIP IN FAULKNER'S “DECORUM” ................................ 31
AXIS Company Photograph (Jerry Smith): A Performance of Integration(s) ............. 36
Looking: What a Photograph Allows ........................................................................... 38
Integrating the Viewer/Audience, Inviting Questions, Inciting Conversation ............. 44
Power in Opposition: Decorum’s Seats of Power (Powerchair vs. Victorian Couch) . 45
Partnership: The Art of Lifting (The Embrace/Interdependence); The Art Lifting Legs
(Disabled Bodies and Movement for All/Art) .............................................................. 52
3. IS IT “A WALK IN THE PARK”? FROM AESTHETIC NERVOUSNESS AND
ABLEISM TO DANCING THE DIALOGICAL ............................................................. 60
Dialogical Performance and Aesthetic Nervousness .................................................... 65
Integration: Disability and Neil Marcus ....................................................................... 69
Integration: Nondisability and Kupers .......................................................................... 71
Integrations: Dance Theater, Contact Improvisation (CI) ............................................ 71
Power: Disabled Power, Nondisabled Fleeing—Aesthetic Nervousness and Dialogical
Openings ....................................................................................................................... 73
Partnership: Aesthetic Nervousness and Unison .......................................................... 76
Partnering: Gravity/Intimacy/Momentum/Pleasure (Empathetic Kinesthetic
Movement) .................................................................................................................... 79
ix
Claiming Pleasure, Performing Pleasure ...................................................................... 82
Partnering: Dancing Against/With Ableist Scripts ....................................................... 83
4. OLIMPIAS’ “JOURNEY”: ACCESSING MEMORIALIZATION, PRESENCE,
POWER AND COMMUNITY IN DISABILITY CULTURE PERFORMANCE .......... 93
Re-imagining Memorialization: Eisenman’s Memorial vs. Olimpias’ Journey ......... 105
The Score of Journey —A Combination of Closed and Open ................................... 108
Echoes of Holocaust History in the Present................................................................ 109
Loaded Locations: Berlin, California, Berkeley ......................................................... 111
Access in Theory and Practice .................................................................................... 113
Physical Access in Journey......................................................................................... 116
Creating Emotional Access: Holocaust and (Physical) Touch ................................... 117
Accessing “Voice,” Experience, Self, and Community.............................................. 119
Participants/Co-Creators: Performing Power, Accessing Touch ................................ 120
DiPietra: Power of Processing and Touch as “An Inversion of Being Processed” .... 121
Burns: “Middleman” in Historical and Present Drama .............................................. 124
Amir: Integrating History, Identities; Passing; Touch & Double Consciousness ...... 127
Marcus as Judge: An “Inherent Re-Interpretation of Power” ..................................... 129
5. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 136
Recommendations and Directions for the Present and Future .................................... 143
Appendix “Very Private” (Marcus’ Poem) .................................................................... 146
Notes ............................................................................................................................... 150
Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 153
x
LIST OF FIGURES
Page
1. Figure 1 AXIS Dance Company. Photo by Jerry Smith ............................................... 38
2. Figure 2 Lewkowicz backing her powerchair and self into Giles and Faulkner seated
on a Victorian couch. (AXIS Dance Company in Decorum by Katie Faulkner. Still shots
by RAPT Films.) ............................................................................................................... 50
3. Figure 3 Lewkowicz and Faulkner beginning an embrace [Photo on left] and ending in
a lift [Photo on right]. (AXIS Dance Company in Decorum by Katie Faulkner. Still shots
by RAPT Films.) ............................................................................................................... 55
4. Figure 4 Marcus and Kupers shaking hands (top); Kupers pulling away (bottom).
(Dandelion Dancetheater's A Walk in the Park).. ............................................................. 74
5. Figure 5 Two video stills of Marcus and Kupers moving in unison; Kupers doubling
Marcus’ movements. (Dandelion Dancetheater’s A Walk in the Park). ........................... 78
6. Figure 6 Marcus and Kupers embracing. Kupers standing; Marcus off ground with his
legs wrapped around Kupers. (Dandelion Dancetheater’s A Walk in the Park). .............. 81
7. Figure 7 Video stills (left and right photo) of Kupers swinging Marcus from one side to
the other side. (Dandelion Dancetheater’s A Walk in the Park). ...................................... 82
8. Figure 8 Kupers lifting Marcus. (Dandelion Dancetheater’s A Walk in the Park). ...... 86
9. Figure 9 Kupers lowering Marcus headfirst to the ground in Dandelion Dancetheater's
A Walk in the Park (2006). ............................................................................................... 87
10. Figure 10 Marcus takes a frightened-looking Kupers for a ride on Marcus' powerchair
in Dandelion Dancetheater's A Walk in the Park. ............................................................. 88
11. Figure 11 Seated in front of a slide of Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of
Europe (2005), Kuppers introduces the Olimpias’ Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in
Berlin (2010). Photo by Tim Householder. .................................................................... 101
12. Figure 12 The Line and the Gate in Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.
Photo by Tim Householder. ............................................................................................ 102
13. Figure 13 Marcus improvising/dancing with participant in Journey to the Holocaust
Memorial in Berlin. Photo by Tim Householder. ........................................................... 103
xi
14. Figure 14 Photos (left and right) of participants in the Braids of Life section of
Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Photos by Tim Householder. ................ 104
xii
1
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them
yourself.
~Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy
Warhol,111
Disability is an art...
~Neil Marcus, Cripple Poetics,120
…from the vantage point of the atypical…
~Simi Linton, Claiming Disability, 5
Something shifts on November 5, 2008 as President Barack Obama stands at the
helm of the United States speaking his first words as President, invoking a place,
America, “where all things are possible” (Obama 1). In his first three sentences, President
Obama speaks of and to the people who affected change through their votes and their
voices. Obama describes the people in this America, beginning with “young and old, rich
and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay,
straight, disabled and not disabled…” (1). While this moment stood out for many reasons,
by President Obama naming “disabled and not disabled” in this list which includes
groups of people based on age, class, political affiliation, race, culture, sexual orientation,
President Obama declares “disabled and not disabled” as an integral part of the diversity
in the U.S. He includes disabled in the list of people and groups who have fought and are
2
still fighting for civil rights, equality, justice and “voice”. In essence, “disabled and not
disabled” takes its rightful place in the national dialogue taking place (and at times not
taking place) about diversity, equality and access.
The inclusion of “disabled and not disabled” in President Obama’s list, like the
inclusion of markers of race and sexual orientations, came about not because of the mere
passage of time but because people worked to change things, that is, things changed for
people with disabilities because of the persistence and agency of activists, in this case
Disability Rights Activists, both disabled and not disabled. These activists, along with
scholars and performing artists have shown that in discussions of equality and rights,
Disability is frequently excluded from this dialogue having been relegated to the
categories of the medical, the therapeutic, associated with limitedness, lack. Disabled
people are seen as an individual medical problem in need of cure, care, charity, pity, and
overcoming. This is in contrast to Disability being seen as a vibrant difference, an aspect
of human variation, and disabled as a social, cultural, political designation deserving of
and often fighting for access, equality, “voice” (see Linton’s Claiming Disability, Lewis’
Introduction to Beyond Victims and Villains: Contemporary Plays By Disabled
Playwrights). Disabled people, like people of other minorities or with other markers of
difference, often have to contend with discrimination, marginalizing stereotypes, limiting
narratives, and harmful misrepresentations perpetuated by the dominant culture. Of
course, many people with disabilities, whether they claim the identity of disabled or not,
have complex identities which may include other minority identifications or other
3
markers of difference from the dominant culture. Following on the heels of the Civil
Rights Movement, the Women’s Rights Movement, and the Gay Rights Movement,
Disability Rights Movement activists in the United States, have sought changes in the
laws and societal attitudes to insure access and equality in social, political, employment,
healthcare, and educational realms.
Just as disabled and nondisabled activists have come together with agency to
“change things,” disabled and nondisabled performing artists have come together with
agency to institute changes in the forms and genres in which they work and to bring vital
new perspectives to the arts. Indeed, disabled performing artists have been a part of the
Disability Rights Movement since the beginning. I begin with President Obama’s
prominent inclusion of “disabled and not disabled” to declare this as a ripe time, and
likely, an overdue time for the viewpoints, awareness, possibilities, strengths, and
confrontations that disabled and nondisabled performing artists together in integrated
performances can bring to the social, political and artistic dialogues. Performance groups
over the last twenty-five years have been entering and delving into this dialogue,
employing dance, theater, and other performing arts to create more inclusive spaces and
practices for dancers, performers, and other participants. I have chosen to deconstruct
sections of works by three contemporary dance companies who create performances with
disabled and nondisabled performers. In doing so, these disabled and nondisabled
performing artists—including choreographers, dancers, dancetheater practitioners,
community performance leaders, and participants—expand possibilities in performance.
4
By examining the diverse approaches of three contemporary dance-based
performance companies that integrate and include disabled and nondisabled performing
artists, I demonstrate how performances by AXIS Dance Company (AXIS), Dandelion
Dancetheater (DDT, Eric Kupers and Neil Marcus), and The Olimpias Performance
Research Projects (Olimpias) challenge traditional performance aesthetics as well as
societal views through artful, subtly political performances. Specifically, I contend that
that by exploring Integration(s), Power Dynamics, and Partnership/Relationship—which I
will define next—between disabled and nondisabled dancers/performers, these three
performances (plus one photograph I view performatively) provide much needed
critiques of Ableism. As an alternative to oppositional relationships and exclusionary
practices, these performances ultimately suggest potential models for integration(s).
These AXIS, DDT, and Olimpias performances I argue provide
necessary/vital/needed/desirable voices to a productive discourse about disablednondisabled Integration(s), Power Dynamics, and Relationship/Partnership in
performance (and everyday life). While this is not a comparative study per se, these
groups’ performances viewed side by side illustrate diverse yet intersecting approaches
linked by dance, performance, deep engagement with Disability and Nondisability, and
by practices and aesthetics that create new possible pathways for more inclusive
performance and challenge Ableism.
In the following sections I define key terms as I use them throughout this study,
including Ableism, Art, Disability and Nondisability, Integration, Power Dynamics,
5
Partnership/Relationship, and Physically Integrated Dance. I then discuss briefly, the
medical model or disability and Disability Studies critiques of the medical model, along
with alternative models of Disability. I cite artists and scholars who view disability as a
“vantage” point, as “an art,” extending this into my study of “Integration as an Art.”
Countering a medicalized view that sees art/dance/performance involving people with
disabilities as necessarily therapeutic, these theorists and dance practitioners show the
negative effects of the medical model on performance and performers, and how these
performing artists assert their places in art. I introduce the three main chapters on AXIS,
Dandelion Dancetheater and the Olimpias performances and the theories I use in relation
to the performance genres in which they work.
I capitalize the key terms Ableism, Integration, Power Dynamics, and
Partnership/Relationship for emphasis. I capitalize the terms Disability, Nondisability,
Disabled and Nondisabled when using them as concepts, but leave them in lower case
when using them as more general descriptors. In terms of style, at times after my
analysis, I adopt a style of posing further questions for the reader to ponder on a topic,
while leaving these questions unanswered in this study. In this way, I acknowledge the
further directions my mind and others may go in dialogue with this study, while
attempting to limit the scope of my topic.
In the 2009 Encyclopedia of American Disability History, Judy Rohrer defines
Ableism as the systematic oppression of people with disabilities on par and interrelated
with other widespread systems of oppression such as racism and sexism. In Rohrer’s
6
definition of Ableism, she describes facets of Ableism that stem from what Disability
Studies scholars refer to as the Medical model. “One of the ways that society promotes
and fosters Ableism is by medicalizing and pathologizing disability,” states Rohrer (1, 3).
That is, that “disabled lives are thought of as bad, full of suffering, and burdensome to
both families and the larger society. Rather than understanding disabled people as a
politically oppressed group, the dominant ableist culture sees people with disabilities as
‘sick’ and ‘requiring a cure’” (3). Rohrer also notes, as other Disability Studies scholars
have that although disabled people form the “largest ‘minority’” in America, there being
“between 15 and 19 percent” of Americans with disabilities, and that anyone could
sooner or later be a person with a disability, “disability remains largely unconsidered and
unrecognized as a form of difference” (2). It is important to note that this disabled
minority population, cited by Rohrer, is not distinct from other minorities but includes
people from all other minorities, as well.
In Disability Communities and in dance and performance groups that integrates
disabled and nondisabled people as equals, the range of disability is usually considered as
a part of difference or diversity, however, disabled artists or groups that have disabled
performing artists often encounter people with Ableist notions who view disabled as
deficit. This may be especially true when these groups enter or attempt to enter the
“mainstream.” Disabled performing artists make their mark in the shadow of Ableism,
subject to discrimination, stereotypes, exclusion, and lack of access. Disabled performers
frequently encounter lack of access to training, performance opportunities, and to the
7
physical lack of access to the stages and performance spaces. Barriers can be physical,
economic, and attitudinal. Still, disabled performers make their mark despite Ableism
and barriers to access. These artists at times engage Ableism in their art to overtly or
subtly locate and challenge Ableism. Performers speak against Ableism, speak to
Ableism, and illuminate Ableism in various ways. Disabled performers also at times
employ, create, and develop rich, more inclusive aesthetics as alternatives to limiting
ableist ones. Importantly, in some of the ways Ableism affects disabled performing artists
and groups, Ableism also affects disabled and nondisabled integrated performers. By
association with disability and disabled performers, nondisabled performers who work
alongside disabled performers are subject to some of the same stereotypes,
discriminations and misrepresentations foisted on disabled performers.
I use the word ‘art’ in a broad sense throughout this thesis, yet I often mean
performing art, that is, dance, dance theater, theater and community performance as part
of the wide umbrella of art. In analyzing these performances, I attend to how these
performances show how Integration is an art, one informed by the art that arises from
disabled subjectivities as well as from other integrations. Where relevant, I also focus on
what is artful in the everyday and how choreographers and performing artists reflect the
everyday or social world in performance.
The words Disability and Nondisability when put next to each other may appear
as opposites, although there is much fluidity between these two locations which are
actually a myriad of locations—from medical to an embracing of a complex construction
8
of disability which may span the social, political, and cultural, corporeal, artistic and yes,
medical. Scholars, especially some with disabilities caution, however, that to make
disability to be so indefinite a location waters down the power and positioning of
disability. Linton for example writes, “I am not willing or interested in erasing the line
between disabled and nondisabled people, as long as disabled people are devalued and
discriminated against, and as long as naming the category serves to call attention to that
treatment” (Claiming Disability 13). Disability is complex, as is Nondisability. In using
the words disabled and nondisabled to describe people, my intent is not to essentialize,
but at times I do simplify for clarity which comes with its own risks certainly.
In Chapters Two and Three, in looking at AXIS and DDT performances, I take an
audience perspective in relation to Disability and Nondisability. That is, the dancers and
characters that look to be disabled or nondisabled or are presented as such, I view as
such, as the audience is given no further information. While the partnership of disabled
and nondisabled is integral in the AXIS and DDT performances, in the Olimpias
performance in Chapter Four, disability and difference are integral to the performance.
With the Olimpias’ Journey, I also take the view of audience but here the audience is a
participatory one. Difference in Journey includes both a range of disabled differences—
physical, sensory, chronic illness, cognitive differences, visible or hidden disability, or
“difference” can also refer to any differences both disabled or nondisabled have.
Nondisability, as a concept in need of recognition, drives my research as much as
Disability, Integration, Power and Partnership in performance do. These performances
9
and my analyses of them seek to turn the viewers’ and reader’s attention to Nondisability
as a positioning and subjectivity in need of critical attention in performance (as well as in
everyday life). Part of the aim of Disability Studies is to turn people’s attention to both
Disability and Nondisability, especially to the Ableism so deeply woven our cultures and
also so ignored and overlooked by the dominant (nondisabled) culture. In Rohrer’s
definition for Ableism, she notes that the term Ableism seeks to recognize and expose the
privilege and power afforded the so-called “able” or the non-disabled (2). She also notes
that denial of Ableism is part of Ableism (2). These performances call nondisabled
privilege and power into question. Linton writes that like the “growing recognition that
the white, the male, and the heterosexual positions need to be noted and theorized…it is
important to examine the nondisabled position and its privilege and power. It is not the
neutral, universal position from which people deviate, it is rather a category of people
whose power a cultural capital keep them at the center” (Claiming Disability 32). (Of
course, disabled people can also carry privilege due to any other number of markers-whiteness, economic advantage, straightness, etc). These performances work against the
denial of Ableism, by exposing Ableism—directly or subtly. At the same time each group
may in its own way enact Ableism consciously or not. I also feel it is important to be
aware of the Ableism and other isms within all performance work.
While Nondisability as a subjectivity, can be seen as a position of power and
privilege, Nondisability can also be seen as a position of weakness in its oft-ignorance of
Ableist attitudes and environments that oppress disabled people and in its oft-lack of
10
knowledge of disabled ways of knowing, of (disability) history, of disabled and
integrated art, performance and culture. In Waist High in the World: A Life Among the
Nondisabled, author Nancy Mairs, a wheelchair user with MS, writes from a disabled
perspective, “I don’t think it’s the normals’ [nondisabled people’s] own fault that they
lack disabilities to deepen and complicate their understanding of the world (72).
These performances implicate or highlight Nondisabled as a positioning in
various ways. In AXIS’ contemporary modern dance, Decorum, choreographed by Katie
Faulkner, two nondisabled characters are disturbed by a disabled character and pretend
not to be. Dandelion Dancetheater puts a big spotlight on the nondisabled protagonist in
A Walk in the Park presenting the audience with a nondisabled man’s evolving
reactions—from curiosity, to fear and then joy—in relation to a disabled man. The
Olimpias decentralizes nondisabled participants by inviting them along for the “Disability
Culture” ride as participants/co-creators.
Structuring each chapter into three parts, I first analyze Integration(s), then Power
Dynamics, and finally Partnership/Relationship/Touch. By Integration(s), I address the
Integration of people (dancers, characters, or participants) in the performance,
particularly in relation to disability and nondisability. I also address the Integrations
[plural], that is, the artistic elements or other integrations indicated by the performance
form or genre. I explore the connections between Disability Studies theories and the
theories and writings of AXIS’, DDT’s, and the Olimpias’ performance genres—
11
particularly, Physically Integrated Dance [PID], Dancetheater [Tanztheater], and
(Disability Culture-based) Community Performance.
In the preface to the third edition of The Disability Studies Reader (2010), editor
and scholar, Lennard Davis notes the dramatic rise of Disability Studies in the last
twenty-five years, from a “neglected category” in need of legitimization, fighting for its
place next to race, class, and gender, to its current place, as an “essential category” that is
“definitely a part of the academic world and civil society” (xii, xiii).1 The Society for
Disability Studies defines Disability Studies as an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary
field which encourages “work from a variety of disciplines,” asserting that “the study of
disability has important political, social, and economic import for society as whole
including both disabled and non-disabled people” (Society For Disability Studies
“Guidelines for Disability Studies” 1). The Society for Disability also declares Disability
“a key aspect of human experiences on a par with race, class, gender, sex, and sexual
orientation” (SDS “Guidelines for Disability Studies” 1). Explaining the activist origins
of Disability Studies, Davis writes, “[L]ike the appearance of African-American studies
following rapidly on the heels of the civil rights movement,” Disability Studies stems
from the Disability Rights movement, and as such, retains its activist roots” (Davis 3).
Petra Kuppers in Disability and Contemporary Performance briefly elucidates what
disability has in common with race and gender as “ways of knowing difference,” while
being careful also not to smooth over the differences between these categories or, as she
puts it, these “ways of knowing difference” (5). Kuppers writes:
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Disability as a social category is not the same as race or gender, but it
shares important aspects with these ways of knowing difference. All three
terms relate to differences that are constructed as binaries and as
biological, and that come to carry heavy weights of excess meaning: like
race and gender, disability structures people into separate categories [note
10 here]. Meanings and metaphors are attached to this binary structure of
disabled/nondisabled (i.e. ‘normal’), similar to male/female or
white/nonwhite. (5)
While the disabled/non-disabled binary is certainly not yet at all as heavily problemetized
s gender and racial binaries have been in Western society, the dynamic tensions between
these two contrasting, faulty, and loaded binaries—disabled/nondisabled—are examined
heavily by scholars in the field of Disability Studies. The performances in this study also
frequently cut through and counter simplistic binaries that separate people and create
supposed opposites wherein nondisability would be “normal” and disability somehow
deviant or “other” due to disabled people’s physicality or biology.
Models of Disability: Medical, Social-Construction, Minority, and Socio-Political
Disability Studies scholars have problemetized the medicalization of disabled
people in society. Linton, after noting the "clear" benefits of medical treatments that have
“increased the well-being and vitality” of many people with disabilities, describes the
"enormous negative consequences" of the medical model, elaborating “Briefly, the
medicalization of disability casts human variation as deviance from the norm, as
13
pathological condition, as deficit, and significantly as an individual burden and personal
tragedy (Claiming Disability 11).” Sandahl and Auslander in Bodies in Commotion:
Disability and Performance, explain some of the affects of the medical model:
The consequences of the medical model have been devastating for
disabled people throughout history, resulting in denial of public education,
incarceration in nursing homes, involuntary sterilization, and “mercy”
killings. (Sandahl and Auslander 129)
In Claiming Disability, Linton writes, “The disability studies and disability rights
movement’s position is critical of the domination of the medical definition and views it as
a major stumbling block to the reinterpretation of disability as a political category and to
the social changes that could follow such a shift” (11).
Sandahl and Auslander also articulate that, “In contrast” to the medical model,
“the social construction and minority models of disability accept impairments as natural,
inevitable human differences that should be accommodated” (129). In the medical model
of disability, the person with the disability becomes the problem and they must be cured
or fixed (normalized) meanwhile societal response to disability and disabled people is
ignored. Linton writes:
Society in agreeing to assign medical meaning to disability, colludes to
keep the issue within the medical establishment, to keep it a personal
matter and “treat” the condition and the person with the condition rather
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that “treating” the social processes and policies that constrict disabled
people’s lives (11)
The pervasiveness of the medical model helps explain what disabled performers
(especially those with visible disabilities) frequently encounter when they perform work
or take the stage—people—mainly audiences who may view them as medical, their lives
as tragic, and Disability as “a personal matter,” not meant for stages.
Art—NOT Therapy: Still Dogged by the Medical Model
When I began my studies, people often asked me what I was studying, I
answered, “Dance and Disability Studies.” I was frequently greeted with the blank or
searching stare—a mental search for what these two surely incompatible things “dance”
and “disability” could do with each other (besides the fact that nobody I spoke to seemed
to have ever heard of Disability Studies). Sometimes I elaborated saying, “I’m interested
in dance and performance that includes dancers with and without disabilities.” I’d then
get the “Aha!” look of recognition, followed by, “O-oh, so you want to be a dance
therapist!” Here the medical model pops up quite clearly in that people with disabilities
plus dance equals therapy. The assumption also seemed to be that I was some kindly
able-bodied person whose goal was to help make “them”, those “other” disabled people,
and their lives better. I began this chapter with Art—with two artists’ words to
contextualize these performing artists place in art versus therapy. In Making an Entrance:
Theory and Practice for Disabled and Non-Disabled Dancers, Adam Benjamin, cofounder and former artistic director of the pioneering integrated dance group CandoCo
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Dance Company, devotes a chapter to the problematic and all-too-frequent association of
disabled dancers with therapy. Artists with disabilities, including performing artists with
disabilities and non-disabled collaborators are often put in the strange position of being
labeled not as artists, but recipients of therapy and healing (Benjamin 62, 63).
The determinations of many people involved in dance and disability, to
distance themselves from all things therapeutic arises from a number of
sources: The recent use of dance in the West as a therapeutic medium
associated with the medical model of disability—a model which considers
disabled people to be in need of ‘treatment’ as though they are necessarily
ill and need help, rather than being simply different….The frequent media
portrayal and interpretation of inclusive dance companies as being about
disabled people being helped by non-disabled people rather than as an
exchange of equals….(63)
Benjamin adds, “one begins to see why inclusive companies repeatedly stress their
distance from the world of therapy and emphasize what they have in common with newdance companies, notably in the way they create work” (63). While dance therapy is a
perfectly respectable field, and likely there is some overlap between what any dance
company does and dance therapy, these dancers and performers are artists first and
foremost.
While a certain amount of scholarship is beginning to emerge in terms of dance
(sometimes under the names “integrated dance,” “mixed abilities,” or occasionally
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“inclusive dance”) that incorporates dancers with and without disabilities, there are still
few official definitions for these terms or consistency in how these terms are applied.
Some working definitions of Physically Integrated Dance [PID], however, distinguish
themselves from these other terms. Many of these definitions are being forged by
dancers, choreographers, and teachers/facilitators who work in these fields. In this
section, I use posts by Wheelchair Dancer, a blogger who dances professionally with a
"West Coast" Physically Integrated Dance company.2 While her definitions do not appear
in a scholarly journal, I find her definitions get to the heart of this art form. Wheelchair
Dancer’s definitions are of PID as a professional art form involving trained disabled and
trained nondisabled dancers, while acknowledging that untrained dancers may be doing
other types of integrated dance (“What is PID: I” 1). Although AXIS (Chapter 2) is the
only group in this study who fits under the term Physically Integrated Dance, I include
these definitions for the way PID's goals and effects resonate and intersect with Olimpias'
and Dandelion Dancetheater's aesthetics.3 Additionally, because PID groups like AXIS or
CandoCo (England) have been some of the first to break into the mainstream in some
way and be accepted with contemporary dance audiences and critics, their aesthetics and
practices, serve as a jumping off point for many groups who enter this work.
Wheelchair Dancer refers to Physically Integrated Dance as “a form of dance. A
genre of dance. An art form in its own right” (“What is Physically Integrated Dance: I”
1). In terms of movement, Wheelchair Dancer notes that in PID there is no “set
movement vocabulary…no one technique, method, approach to thinking about
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movement….” (“What is PID: I” 1). PID groups work in a range of dance styles.
Additionally, many PID groups work with improvisation and Contact Improvisation in
creating performance with dancers with a range of embodiments.
In defining the effects of PID, Wheelchair Dancer writes, “The movement that for
me defines the genre, communicates a certain awareness and acceptance of the body. I
think it communicates a deep engagement with embodiment” (“More on Performance
and Physically Integrated Dance” 1). Wheelchair Dancer describes the range of effects
PID dance can have and roots these effects in the body, elaborating:
For me a successful PID performance has me admiring the aesthetics, yes.
It has me appreciating the social value of dancing PWDs [people with
disabilities], yes. But it also brings about within me a deep sense of
recognition of the power and potential of the body. It’s an embracing of
the body—any body—the fleshly body as a beautiful thing in itself. A
thing that can change the world, a thing to be admired; the thing that
unites us, a central part of our humanity. (“More on Performance and
Physically Integrated Dance” 1)
Wheelchair Dancer’s definition, rooted in the body and embodiment, speaks to the body
as a thing of potential, power, beauty, “fleshly” (actual), activist (capable of changing the
world), and unifying--something that brings people together, that is, the body as “a
central part of our humanity” (“More on Performance and PID” 1). Integration in this
definition goes beyond the mere Integration of disabled and nondisabled dancers and into
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the bodily, embodied Integrations of diverse of bodies and movement (“More on
Performance and PID” 1). Wheelchair Dancer also highlights PID performing artists’
engagement with the effects of PID in Partnership with collaborators and audience. “PID
is different from other dance forms in that the diversity of bodies onstage inherently
enables everyone involved in the process of producing a performance (and, yes, that
includes audience members….) to engage in a deep knowing, acceptance, and embracing
of all bodies” (“More on Performance and PID” 1). These collaborations illustrate the
power of Partnership onstage, behind the scenes, between audience and performer and
choreographer to engage in aesthetics and practices that stem from individual bodies and
speak universally.
Disability as a Vantage Point, Disability as an Art, Integration as an Art
Disability Studies shows how something is not merely “missing” from dance and
performance groups that do not have disabled performers, but that something (or
someone rather) has been excluded, often due to the barriers consciously or not
consciously created by people’s Ableist attitudes. All three of the groups I address at
times highlight the commonalities, connections, and intersections between disabled and
nondisabled characters/performers, that is, what disabled and nondisabled have in
common. At other times, these performing artists highlight and/or revel in the differences
and diversity of the disabled and nondisabled performers and characters. The
performances I explore particularly draw me in to how these groups embrace difference,
in particular, disabled difference and its influences on their integrated work, while I also
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recognize the power or zing of the universalities and human connections these
performing artists engage. In this thesis, I explore the artfulness in disabled-nondisabled
integrated work, and how this artfulness contributes to a much-needed dialogue. This
artfulness is predicated by the concept that Disability itself in everyday life and in
performance is or can be seen as artful. In this study, the artfulness I explore arises
primarily from disabled and integrated performers’ bodies, movement, relationships,
experiences and history, but the artfulness is not limited by these categories.
Disability Studies scholars, performance scholars and performing artists have
asserted the positive difference presented by Disability, by the actual presence of disabled
people in the arts. In contrast to the pervasive limiting medical and other models that
view Disability and disabled people in terms of deficit and stereotype, a number of
scholars and performance practitioners assert disabled difference as conveying different,
valuable, and needed points-of-view in this world. In Claiming Disability, Linton writes,
"The cultural narrative of this [Disability] community incorporates a fair share of
adversity and struggle, but it is also, and significantly, an account of a world negotiated
from the vantage point of the atypical" (5). Linton’s use of the phrase “vantage point of
the atypical” emphasizes Disability as a positive valued location. These “vantage point[s]
of the atypical” can be seen throughout this study, both the vantage points stemming from
disabled, nondisabled and disabled-nondisabled viewpoints; however the viewpoints I
focus on tend to be seldom-seen locations of Integration that stem from disabled agency,
inclusions and leadership in collaboration with nondisabled. Neil Marcus also points out
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disabled valuable difference when he declares that “Disability is an art,” yet here he
locates the vantage point as one of atypical, that is, Disability, as well as one of art, the
art inherent in Disability or the Disability inherent in art perhaps (Cripple Poetics 120).
Marcus’ statement, which is open to interpretation, begs the question, “How is Disability
artful?” Throughout this study, I focus on how both Disability and Nondisability are
artful in these performances. In a way, I am looking at the awareness of Nondisability
that comes from a Disability perspective, as well as how disabled and nondisabled
performers collaborate in performances in which there is a sense of equal participation.
One could also ask, “How is art Disability-full?” That could be explained as, “How can
art, in this case performance, expand when embracing aesthetics that stem from disabled
subjectivities, knowledge and experience?”
Disabled playwright Susan Nussbaum also writes of the freshness of disabled
subjectivities and voices on stage as well as the discrimination that keeps these “new”
voices from being heard—“Just when one thinks one has seen everything onstage, and
heard from all segments of society, along comes this new and utterly unheard from
minority, peopled with every kind of social outcast” (345, 346). Nussbaum then adds her
critique, “....The downside, of course is that no theater wants to produce anything about
disability. Everything that makes us interesting to write about also makes us qualified to
be discriminated against” (Beyond Victims 345, 346). Nussbaum first addresses the
virtually untapped possibilities of people with disabilities, then she hits the nail on the
head, following up with the catch-22 that despite disabled people’s viewpoints, voices,
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bodies—that is, disabled people’s difference from the norm—which potentially provide
something interesting and new in a world that thrives on the new and unseen, these are
ironically the very same things that make disabled people subject to discrimination and to
NOT being seen or heard from.
Victoria Lewis in “The Secret Community: Disability and the American Theater,”
declares, “We can wait to be invited or we can just show up,” in reference to performing
artists who were tired of waiting to be invited, that is, excluded from performance and
training opportunities. Ann-Lewis adds “without a struggle the old assumptions will
prevail: that the disability arts equal incompetence, amateurism, therapy and charity”
(“The Secret Community” 4). Ann-Lewis goes on to reveal the “secret,” namely that the
“disability movement offers a fierce critique of power in this country” which she calls “as
disturbing and potentially healing” as those of other groups who have fought for civil
rights, inclusion, and change (“The Secret Community” 4). Part of what is disturbing and
healing is the presence of actual Disability.4 That is, the embracing and celebration of
disabled difference, movement, voices and bodies—no longer hidden but out there on
stage for all to see. Linton writes, “Disabled people are expected to mask the behaviors
that would disturb the public, and certainly not to exaggerate or call attention to the way
out odd forms function. Well, in part, the art of our dance is to exploit and expand the
quirkiness of our form, and to cultivate the interesting styles such bodies can produce”
(My Body Politic 153). Furthermore, Linton taps into the radical power unleashed by
provocative performances that include disabled dancers when she explains, “Disabled
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dancers don’t simply serve as a reminder from the margins, that ‘We’re here, too.’ Our
bodies in motion insist that the terms dance and dancer be redefined. Our bodies on
stage challenge every assumption about the shame and displeasure that supposedly
shadow disabled people’s lives” (My Body Politic153). In these performances, disabled
and nondisabled performers together challenge assumptions and carve out new, more
Integrated spaces in performance.
In Chapter Two, where Disability Theory overlaps with Physically Integrated
Dance (PID), I show how the art and aesthetics of PID interrupt the negative (deficit,
medical, binary) readings of disability and disabled-nondisabled collaboration in an
AXIS Dance Company (AXIS) company photograph and performance. I provide
background on AXIS and Physically Integrated Dance and use dance reviews from the
New York Times and the San Francisco Bay Area publication, “Voice of Dance,” the
words of AXIS dancers, and two dance bloggers—Wheelchair Dancer and Amputeehee,
both dancers with disabilities. I deconstruct the Integration(s) evident in a 2007
promotional AXIS Dance Company photograph by Jerry Smith that I view
performatively, that is, as a performance of disabled/nondisabled integration. Using
Rosemarie Garland's theories on staring, I discuss how a photograph can allow seeing, in
ways that can be disrupted when people with disabilities are "in the picture" figuratively
or literally. Addressing the integration of disabled and nondisabled dancers and then
unpacking the artistic integrations, I uncover how the artistic/design elements in the
photograph connect the dancers, assistive devices and the individual stylistic choices of
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the dancers, into a social, artistic, professional vision of AXIS. This artistic context
counters and disrupts a stereotypical medical context and limited binary readings while
pointing to the dancers and group's artistry, diverse "locomotion" and sense of
possibilities vs. limitations and pathology.
In the next section of Chapter Two, “Opposing Powers,” in analyzing segments
from the contemporary dance, Decorum, I show how AXIS choreographer and dancer,
Katie Faulkner, engages the opposing powers of disabled and nondisabled in one segment
of her dance piece. Faulkner represents the contrasts between disabled and nondisabled
using the dancers' contrasting seats—that is, a power wheelchair and a Victorian couch.
In mining the associations reflected by these two different seats or spaces literally
clashing, I also read this scene as a reflection or metaphor for how disabled subjectivities
disturb and challenge nondisabled subjectivities. In the last sections of Chapter Two, I
analyze the disabled-nondisabled Partnering and connections evident in two segments of
Faulkner’s Decorum. Faulkner and AXIS in Decorum show how the actualities of
disabled bodies, movement and disabled-nondisabled partnership when integrated artfully
create powerful images that recognize and celebrate disabled-nondisabled integration.
In Chapter Three, I examine scenes from DDT’s A Walk in the Park, a duet
between a disabled performer and a nondisabled performer, who act the part of two
strangers meeting in public and tentatively, at first, form a relationship. While the piece
seems to be about the disabled man (danced by Neil Marcus), the protagonist is largely
the nondisabled man (danced by Eric Kupers) who is confronted with a disabled man and
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his inner hesitations and fear about how to make a connection. Kuper’s nondisabled
nervousness, fear, awkwardness, curiosity and Ableism become the focus. The
intersection of Dancetheater and Disability Studies becomes a prime place to explore
these nervous tensions and fears, as well as disabled, nondisabled, and integrated
movement, voices and experiences. I draw from Disability Studies theories and writings
by Garland-Thomson, Ato Quayson’s “Aesthetic Nervousness,” and also Marcus and
Kuppers who suggest that the places of fear and nervousness might be and can be the
places where disabled and nondisabled dialogue begin. Each of these writers also
suggests that nervousness, fear, and ableist behavior might also be the place where
dialogue ends for the nondisabled person (usually out of fear, discomfort) or for the
disabled person (often out of self-preservation). In analyzing this dance theater
performance, I focus on how the Contact Improvisation dancing and partnership (unison,
momentum, gravity, intimacy) connects these characters in closer intimacy and release of
tension, and how this intimate communication and embracing of joy in the dance speaks
back to Ableism in the performance text overlaying the scene.
In Chapter Four, to address Integration, I use access as a lens through which to
analyze the Olimpias’ Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin [Journey], a
participatory performance led by the Olimpias’ Kuppers and Marcus—both active in
supporting and creating Disability Culture—and performed by participants with and
without disabilities. Journey which aims to “re-imagine memorialization” is influenced
by Disability Culture and community performance aesthetics, engaging community in a
25
performative response to a present situation of lack of full disability access at the
(Holocaust) Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. I provide brief
background context of Holocaust history in relation to people with disabilities, or
Disability history in relation to the Holocaust. In doing so, I work with scholars’ and
activists’ (Evans, Lundqvist) idea that the Holocaust, in relation to disabled people, was
not fully an isolated time period and series of events but indicative of the systematic
discriminatory attitudes around Disability that continue in the present day. In addressing
Integration(s) in Journey, I begin with the concept of access as a necessary component
and precursor to participation and Integration in performance. I employ theories and
writings by Disability Studies, performance and community arts writers, scholars and
practitioners who value access and greater participation in terms of frequently
marginalized or excluded populations in performance. As theoretical touchpoints, I use
Galloway, Nudd and Sandahl’s “Ethic of Accommodation,” showing how their ethic,
along with Community Performance “attitudes and precepts,” alongside Kupper’s
privileging of “Radical Access”—briefly, physical, emotional, and performance access—
are calls for aesthetics that embrace a wider view of what access and accommodation can
be for disabled as well as nondisabled participants (Kuppers Community Performance 2).
Kuppers writes “the work I host as a community artist takes the necessary time
and the necessary space to focus on the specific bodily and sensorial creative expressions
of people whose bodies, senses or minds have been medically labeled as pathological”
(“Contact/Disability” 147). In addressing Power Dynamics and Partnership/Touch in
26
Journey, I “take the necessary time and space” to privilege three participants’/cocreators’ subjective and personal responses to their/our experiences in Journey.
In modeling diverse approaches in three different yet intersecting genres (PID,
dance theater, and community performance), each of these groups, AXIS, DDT, and the
Olimpias, has their own relation to Disability and Nondisability. While I do not seek to
over-generalize, I would like to address some of the places from which the groups seem
to operate in relation to Disability and Nondisability. AXIS, who helped found Physically
Integrated Dance [PID] in 1987, remains deeply committed to rich integrated
collaborations that are mutually beneficial to choreographers (mostly nondisabled),
collaborators (such as musicians and technical designers) and AXIS dancers. While
informed by contemporary modern dance, contact improvisation and aspects of Disability
Culture, AXIS remains firmly rooted in a balanced integration of disabled and
nondisabled dancers. AXIS promotes itself as integrated, yet also leaders in AXIS, such
as artistic director, Judith Smith, and other AXIS members seem to show a deep
embodied knowledge of both disability and disability politics.
When Dandelion Dancetheater [DDT] started working with dancers with
disabilities, they were already an established contemporary dance theater group who had
been exploring bodily, cultural, artistic diversities, albeit from a nondisabled perspective.
DDT expanded into working with performers with disabilities, having branched out of
aesthetics valuing diverse voices, bodies and cultures. DDT at times engages in practices
likely to irk people in disability performance communities. For instance, DDT artistic
27
director, Kupers at times performs in a wheelchair although he apparently does not
require one for mobility. Yet Kupers of DDT also co-creates work such as A Walk in the
Park (see Chapter Three) in collaboration with dancers such as Marcus whose (disabled)
embodiments and voices are rarely found, even in Physically Integrated Dance
performances. The Olimpias Performance Research Projects come out of a deep
connection to Disability Culture, a wide-ranging view of performance and access, while
expanding in many directions theoretically, practically, and experimentally. While
Kuppers is “deeply supportive of all expressions that broaden the human art practice,” her
“creative aim has never been to integrate disabled dancers into non-disabled dance
practices, or even to change non-disabled dance practices into accessible formats”
(“Contact/Disability” 147). So although in the Olimpias, Integration per se is not the goal,
nondisabled people are welcome to dance “as allies,” celebrating and joining in “the
creative expression of disability culture” and community (“Contact/Disability” 147). In
Journey, the Olimpias invite all—disabled, nondisabled or otherwise to fully join in the
experience.
AXIS, Dandelion Dancetheater and the Olimpias share a location—the San
Francisco Bay Area. AXIS is based in Oakland where AXIS members rehearse, perform
and teach. AXIS also tours nationally and occasionally performs and teaches overseas.
Dandelion Dancetheater is centered in San Francisco, while Dandelion Dancetheater’s
co-artistic director, Kupers, teaches in Hayward at California State University East Bay.
The Olimpias operate out of Berkeley in addition to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where
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Kuppers teaches at the University of Michigan. Kuppers and Marcus also work
internationally, having recently (2010/2011) facilitated workshops in Australia, New
Zealand, and in Europe. Although I did not choose these groups based on their location, I
find it an added plus that my location about two hours away allows me to attend
workshops and performances. It is also no coincidence that performance groups exploring
a diversity of bodies and abilities in performance are operating in the San Francisco Bay
Area, CA--both because of its history with Disability, especially Berkeley’s prominent
place in the history of the Disability Civil Rights Movement and Centers for Independent
Living, as well as there being a history of diversity in the Bay Area's dance community.
In a New York Times review of a Dandelion Dancetheater’s Mutt (2009), reviewer La
Rocco after noting that DDT is “rigorously diverse in terms of age, ethnicity, body shape
and size” added, “Outside of enclaves like New York and San Francisco, the world of
contemporary dance is not nearly so accepting of difference as one might hope in 2009”
(“Out of an Internment Camp” 1). All three of these groups seem to be supportive of one
another, although their aesthetics, methods, and genres diverge in many ways and at
times appear to clash, although they also clearly intersect. Members from one group can
at times be seen in another group’s classes, workshops, and audiences; AXIS, DDT, and
Olimpias also collaborate at times or can be seen on the same bill, such as during UC
Berkeley’s 2008 symposium Dance Under Construction X entitled “Willing and Able:
Re-figuring Dance, Performance, and Disability” in which all three groups performed on
one evening’s program.
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I began this chapter with an epigraph in which Andy Warhol notes how change
comes not through inaction or the mere passage of time but through people claiming their
agency and making change happen. AXIS Dance, Dandelion Dancetheater and the
Olimpias claim their agency in diverse ways, using artful performance to shift and change
how people view Disability, Nondisability, and Integration(s) in their worlds. The
particular way Warhol used art to change and expand how people saw art and the world
around them—could be used as an apt analogy for what these artists’ performed
integrations do. For example, the genius of Warhol's use of the Campbell's soup can as
artistic subject was that the soup can was right under everybody's nose, yet despite its
strong and attractive design, people did not see the Campbell’s soup can as a worthy
subject of art. While I hesitate to compare Disability with soup cans, in much the same
way, these Disability and Disabled-Nondisabled integrated performances make audiences
see and experience anew what was devalued and overlooked—disabled subjectivities, the
art in Disability and the art in Integration(s). These artists demonstrate how “new”
perspectives, bodies, movements, voices and aesthetics informed by Disability and
disabled-nondisabled integrations, make their mark on art and society by allowing
audiences to re-look at what they/we thought they/we already knew and perhaps to move
towards the change we want to see in our worlds.
Whether people consider the work of these three groups a twist on what audiences
have seen before or revolutionary, AXIS, DDT, and the Olimpias’ performances show a
variety of overlapping directions that performance work may take to create performances
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that do not just include a wide variety of embodiments, many seldom seen on stages but
present vital questions. These performances provoke questions and dialogue about
Integration—Disability and Nondisability, difference and commonality. The work
addresses artistic Integrations, that is, the methods, practices, and aesthetics each group
uses in the performance genres they practice and how these mediums may be used to
address issues of Integration. AXIS, DDT, and the Olimpias question Power, illuminate
Power Dynamics and in the end, claim and wield Power and agency in the creation of
bold works that challenge the status quo, that challenge Ableism. Each group uses
Partnership and Relationship in various ways—using dance partnering between disabled
and nondisabled dancers to build community, to explore Disability Culture (Olimpias),
and to enhance and broaden dance cultures. How each group explores Integration, Power
and Partnership is individual and unique in the performances, yet they are all part of
intersecting and overlapping dialogues claiming new places, spaces, challenges,
opportunities, and communities.
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Chapter 2
"SEEING IS BELIEVING": AXIS DANCE COMPANY’S ARTISTIC
INTEGRATION(S) IN AN AXIS PHOTOGRAPH (JERRY SMITH); AND SEATS OF
POWER AND PARTNERSHIP IN FAULKNER'S “DECORUM”
AXIS has begun a new dialogue and created a culture where none existed
before. And after 20 years, it has gotten to the point where, nowadays,
when I see a dance company that does not have a diversity of body types
or a wide range of movement vocabulary, I shake my head and I think
something is missing. Because I know it is.
~ Tom Metz, former AXIS dancer (Metz 1)
AXIS’ recent motto declares, “Seeing is Believing,” but what are audiences
seeing when they see AXIS Dance (Judith Smith “AXIS Breaking News!”)? What are
they believing? Since 1987, AXIS who is based in Oakland, California has been at the
forefront of Physically Integrated Dance, a dance form or genre of Contemporary Modern
dance that incorporates dancers with and without physical disabilities who dance as
equals. This is certainly not all Physically Integrated Dance does but this is where it
begins. Through Physically Integrated Dance [PID], AXIS, as one of over thirty PID
companies, has helped change and broaden who is seen as a dancer and what types of
bodies have been commonly seen as suitable for dance. AXIS began as a workshop for
women wheelchair dancers, and under Artistic Director Thais Mazur shifted into a dance
group of dancers with and without disabilities who choreographed their own work (Judith
Smith “Artistic Director’s Report” 1). After ten years, AXIS shifted its focus again, and
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under Artistic Director Judith Smith chose to stretch its boundaries by pursuing
collaborations with what has come to be a range of well-known contemporary
choreographers. Bay Area dance reviewer Allan Ulrich writes, “The list of
choreographers who have fashioned dances for AXIS over the past several seasons reads
like the crème de la crème of the dance world,” including Bill T. Jones, Stephen Petronio,
Joe Goode, Alonzo King, Victoria Marks, and more recently Alex Ketley and David
Dorfman (“AXIS Dance Company, 2005 Home Season” 1). Longtime Artistic Director,
Smith writes, "What started as a brilliant idea of Thais Mazur, our founding artistic
director and visionary leader for a decade, has grown into a highly reputable
contemporary company that has put physically integrated dance on the map of both the
dance world and the disability world" (“Artistic Director's Report” 1). As an awardwinning professional touring dance company, AXIS claims a place in the contemporary
dance scene on its own artistic merits. AXIS is also highly committed to teaching dance
and holding workshops for dancers of a wide range of ages and abilities, as well as
training educators. In doing so, AXIS is one of a still small number of companies
providing dance training to people with disabilities as well as to people without
disabilities who show an interest in PID.
AXIS’ performances have had profound effects on many choreographers, dancers,
audience members and reviewers. Throughout the following comments about AXIS,
these audience members and collaborators speak to the power of PID and AXIS’ work to
challenge the status quo particularly concerning the inclusions of disabled dancers and
33
Disability in the integrated work. Their comments illustrate the power of AXIS’ work to
challenge expectations, as well as to change how one views performance and how one
views themselves in relation to the work. For example, choreographer Bill T. Jones, who
won an Isadora Duncan Award for his work with AXIS in 2000, said, “There is no more
defiant land that I can think of than AXIS. They showed me what dance could be”
(“Redefining Dance and Making It Accessible to All” 1).
At times the effect of seeing AXIS perform can create some confusion in an
audience member or reviewer not accustomed to the “newness” of the form of Physically
Integrated Dance. For example, more than twenty years past AXIS’ founding, New York
Times dance reviewer Bruce Weber in a recent AXIS review titled “A Dance Company
Mixes Arms, Legs and Wheels,” describes his and the audience’s “initial impact” of
seeing AXIS, performers with and without physical disabilities, as “vexing” (1). Weber
goes on to reveal his initial reactions to AXIS. Weber describes his quick shift from
feeling “sympathy for dancers without legs” to realizing the “lesson” that “sympathy is
irrelevant.” Weber states, “AXIS work instructs the viewer in how to appreciate it.”
Weber declares the second part of the “lesson.” “Forget what isn’t here, and pay attention
to what is. Recognize the chairs [wheelchairs] for what they are and not as substitutes for
what they’re not,” Weber declares (1). This is a lesson well understood by many in
Disability communities, and Disability Culture yet is often still missing in meaningful
ways in normative circles including in many performance and dance realms.
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Seeing AXIS is believing that one can have the same high expectations as one
would seeing any other contemporary dance group. Reviewer Allen Ulrich writes, "...so
irresistible has been AXIS' rise that one long ago stopped marveling at how these dancers
transcend their handicaps. In fact, one attends their concerts with the expectations one
brings to any superior repertory modern dance company" (Ulrich 1). Here Ulrich
describes a transition in reception like Weber in the previous review. These reviewers
went from feeling sympathy for the dancers and looking for how the dancers transcended
"handicaps," to appreciating the dancers’ artistry, having equally high expectations, and
seeing what disabled and nondisabled dancers together can add to performances.
For former AXIS dancer, Metz, quoted in the epigram beginning this chapter,
seeing AXIS means believing that AXIS’ nondisabled and disabled integration adds to
the dance. This has changed his way of viewing and now when disabled and nondisabled
integration is absent, he knows there is “something missing” (Metz 1). After seeing
AXIS, Metz has come to want to see “a diversity of body types or a wide range of
movement vocabulary” which speaks to the knowledge that PID ideally adds to dance by
embracing a wider range of acceptable body types and the expanded “movement
vocabulary” that can stem from a range of bodies (1). Seeing AXIS’ integrations of more
diverse body types and movement also exposes the limits of nondisabled companies who
choose not to embrace a wider view of what bodies, movements, and people can be a part
of in contemporary modern dance.
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One dancer, an online blogger, dance teacher, performer and disabled, wrote of
the effects of seeing AXIS both before and after she became physically disabled. "I saw
Axis perform maybe 15+ years ago (long before having a disability of my own) and it
totally changed me. I betcha you never look at a person in a wheelchair the same again.
I sure didn't. And my having seen Axis is probably a huge reason why when I woke up
in the hospital with a leg missing, it never occurred to me that I would have to give up
dance" (Amputeehee 1). This dancer's experience speaks to the transformative power PID
may have upon an audience member. If “Seeing is Believing,” believing means this
dancer could not see (AXIS) dancers in wheelchairs in terms of lack or limitation
anymore after seeing AXIS. Indeed after an accident where she lost a leg, she knew she
would still be able to be a dancer. For this dancer, seeing AXIS perform was
transformative and clearly expanded her view of what physically disabled people can do
and of who could be called a dancer. In Weber’s article, AXIS’ Artistic Director (and cofounder), Judith Smith, speaks to how AXIS doesn’t look at disabled in terms of
limitation but in terms of “possibilities” (1). Hitting on what gives AXIS a seldomexplored and powerful edge, Smith states, “There is a potential for movement that is
radically expanded from what another dance company would have” (1).
In an article entitled “Accessible Dance: What is it?” current AXIS dancer Alice
Sheppard writes about AXIS:
We dancers come from all over the world to have the opportunity to work
in an environment that believes in the beauty of disabled bodies and their
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assistive technologies and in the power of the equal collaboration of
disabled and non-disabled dancers. Our moves, our ‘steps,’ and our power
come from an understanding that together we can do more than any one of
us—disabled or not—could do alone. (1)
AXIS performers show their beauty and sense of balanced Integration(s) in their dance
performances, as well as in the images they project to the world.
AXIS Company Photograph (Jerry Smith): A Performance of Integration(s)
I came up with the idea in rehearsal one day when I was looking at all of
the different ways we locomote and the difference and beauty of the things
that locomote us—especially with the addition of Lisa [Bufano]’s cheetah
running legs and Rodney [Bell]’s chic magnet wheels. I was very excited
about that particular incarnation of the Company and wanted to do a
‘family portrait’ of sorts. But I wanted it to be somewhat anonymous and
timeless since dancers come and go.
~ Judith Smith, AXIS Artistic Director, (“AXIS
Photo Info” 1)
AXIS' Fall 2007 newsletter contains a long horizontal color photo taken by
photographer Jerry Smith (1 3/4" high and 8” wide on the printed page) of the AXIS
dancers (see figure 1).. AXIS also uses a black-and-white version of the full photo on
AXIS’ T-shirts under the words “AXIS Dance Company...redefining dance.” (Note: I
include the full color photo above, figure 1, while the photo in the newsletter crops out
37
most of the left dancer). This tightly cropped photo focuses on the wheels, feet, and/or
curved metal prostheses (called “Cheetah running legs”) of seven dancer-members of
AXIS shown from approximately their knees down to the shiny hardwood floor—
possibly a dance floor. The dancers who alternately either stand (on feet or prostheses) or
sit side-by-side in either manual or power wheelchairs (powerchairs) face the camera, the
audience, the viewer, the photographer. That is, the dancers’ wheels and feet face either
directly head on towards the camera or at a slight angle in an artful confrontation that
seems to say, "Here we are. This is part of what makes us unique—our bodies and the
range of mobilities our bodies suggest. This is not all we are, but this is us--together,
powerful, beautiful,” or what Judith Smith, AXIS artistic director calls “the beauty of the
things that locomote us” (“AXIS Photo Info”). This chapter explores how this photograph
of AXIS dancers is in essence a performance of integration—the integration of
people/dancers, bodies, assistive devices/technology (that is, the wheelchairs, prostheses
and mechanism often viewed by dancers as part of their bodies) as well as the movement
suggested by these bodies/dancers. Secondly, this photograph integrates the use of
artistic elements, such as pattern, color, and angle of dancers clothing and bodies that
connect the dancers to one another and disrupt a disabled/nondisabled binary viewing of
the dancers. Thirdly, this photograph of AXIS could be said to integrate or invite the
viewer or audience into the photo and hence, into the conversation of integration(s).
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Figure 1. AXIS Dance Company. Photo by Jerry Smith
Looking: What a Photograph Allows
Although this thesis grapples with dance-based performance, I begin with a
photograph, because a photograph’s stillness allows a viewer to look, to see, to stare
even, or perhaps to look away or to look back. A photograph can allow a viewer the
opportunity to look intensely or for a longer period of time. Jerry Smith’s photograph of
AXIS dancers gives the viewer permission to look which is critical given the ways in
which societal viewing of Disability both onstage and off has been highly troublesome.
Garland-Thomson writes, “The artistic genre of performance lends itself especially well
to the project of re-narrating disability because the body is the artistic medium of
performance. Thus….the body that performs in the social realm is the same body that is
the instrument of artistic performance (Garland-Thomson “Dares to Stares” 33). AXIS, in
performance and in this photograph, re-narrates Disability with Nondisability to highlight
the artistry and diversity of bodies, performers, people.
Smith’s photograph of AXIS, like an AXIS dance performance on stage, not only
allows a viewer to look, but invites a viewer to look. Why is this important? Many
people experience tension or feel uncomfortable negotiating encounters with people with
visible or prominent disabilities or differences. Disability Studies and Performance
39
scholars Garland-Thomson and Kuppers as well as others, discuss and explore the ways
in which the viewing of disability and disabled people/performers in both social and
staged performance has been problematic. Garland-Thomson explains, “Everyone knows
that you are not supposed to stare. Yet everyone does. Both furtive and compelling, the
staring encounter generates discomfort and provokes anxiety” (“Dares to Stares” 30).
Encounters with visibly disabled people at times involve staring and discomfort. She
elaborates on the “furtive and compelling” aspect of staring in relation to people with
disabilities:
Despite the ubiquitous admonitions not to stare, even children learn every
early that disability is a potent form of embodied difference that warrants
looking, even prohibited looking. Indeed, the stare is the dominant mode
of looking at disability in this culture….Because staring at disability is
illicit looking, the disabled body is at once the to-be-looked-at and not-tobe-looked-at, further dramatizing the staring encounter by tending to make
viewers stealthy and the viewed defensive. (Garland-Thomson “Dares to
Stares” 31)
Jerry Smith’s photo of AXIS dancers, unlike a live encounter, is one wherein the viewer
can look without making the “looked at” uncomfortable, without encountering the
“looked at” in live form, without being stared back at, without having to be “stealthy” in
looking at visibly disabled dancers and their non-disabled-looking fellow dancers. By
being a still photograph, the viewer is potentially freed somewhat from negotiating this
40
territory or rather eases the tensions therein by giving the viewer time to look at dancers
with disabilities or as Garland-Thomson put it, this “potent form of embodied difference
that warrants looking, even prohibited looking” (31). Smith’s photo embraces Disability
as what Garland-Thomson might call “a potent form of embodied difference,” that occurs
in relationship with nondisabled embodiment (“Dares to Stares” 31).
This photo is direct and open in that it reveals or directs the viewer’s gaze to the
diversity of bodies and assistive equipment for mobility, yet at the same time this photo is
indirect and mysterious in the way the photo excludes dancers’ faces and other prominent
elements of diversity or identity. The viewer’s eyes will not meet the dancers’ faces,
eyes, gaze, or staring back, so in effect, the confrontation of bodies might be lessened
through the exclusion of the dancers’ faces. Or perhaps, the confrontation between viewer
and dancers in the photograph might gain intensity, because the viewer does not meet the
expected faces or the “expected” feet of dancers. Instead, the viewer or audience comes
face to face, so to speak, with symbols of Physically Integrated Dance, that is, integrated
dancers’ symbols of movement—bodies, mechanism, wheels prostheses, equipment,
feet—which could be said to stare back at the viewer, confront the viewer with the beauty
of both difference and commonality, the beauty and style of disabled-nondisabled
integration, of AXIS’ brand of Physically Integrated Dance.
The disabled performer is both marginalized and invisible relegated to
borderlands, far outside the central area of cultural activity, by the
discourses of medicine. At the same time, people with physical
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impairments are also hypervisible, instantly defined by their physicality.
The physically impaired performer has therefore to negotiate two areas of
cultural meaning: invisibility and instant categorization as passive
consumer and victim in much of the popular imagination.
Disabled performers have successfully and visibly taken up the
medium of performance to expand the possibilities of images, spaces, and
positions for their bodies. In their work in public spheres, they attempt to
break through stereotypes of passive disability. (Kuppers Disability and
Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge 49)
Kuppers observes the tricky areas disabled performers have to negotiate and contend
with--these cultural territories of invisible and marginal or else hypervisible, while also
noting the power of performance, to “expand the possibilities of images, spaces, and
positions for their bodies” (Disability and Contemporary Performance 59). Kuppers
elaborates on how “hypervisible” might lead a viewer to instantly categorize and define a
disabled performer based on their physicality. Garland-Thomson’s descriptions of staring
in terms of disability seem to highlight the “hypervisible” aspects of staring that she
points out is, “the dominant mode of looking at disability in this culture” (“Dares to
Stares” 31). The medical model of Disability rears its head in both Kuppers and GarlandThomson’s descriptions. Kuppers explains that the marginalization and invisibility is
propounded upon disabled performers by “the discourses of medicine” (49), while
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Garland-Thomson notes that staring itself, which is clearly an example of hypervisibility,
“says ‘What is wrong with you?’ and starers become doctors” (“Dares to Stares” 31).
In this photo of AXIS dancers, Disability is not marginalized, Disability has been
“re-narrated” as central and integrated. Disability is no longer invisible but visible.
Disability here is not minimized, covered over, glossed over (as unimportant), but “in
your face” in a somewhat gentle confrontation. These dancers with physical disabilities
along with the nondisabled dancers are not medicalized but appear as professional,
stylish, confident dancers. The possible hypervisibility of these disabled dancers is
(perhaps) mitigated by the connections between the dancers, that is the visual
commonalities and relationship that connects them into one diverse group, rather than a
photo that might separate dancers based on mobility type or might focus solely on
difference versus commonality. At the same time, it is the range of disabled dancers’
bodies and equipment styles integrated into the group and photo that makes this image
unique or stand out, so to speak. I describe this photo in more detail to highlight next, the
integrated artistic elements and how they undermine a binary reading of Disability and
Nondisability.
Reading the AXIS Newsletter photograph from left to right, I see seven dancers.
The first dancer is just suggested by the edge of one wheel of a power wheelchair. The
second dancer stands and is wearing a black skirt with a wavy bottom edge—one leg
wears a black sock or stocking with the foot uncovered, while the other leg is bare. The
third dancer facing forward sits in a manual chair with red rims on her wheels. Her bare
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feet rest on the footrest and angled outward slightly, and her big right toe is lifted up.
The fourth dancer’s curved metal lower leg prostheses stand on the floor in parallel and
angled to the right. The fifth dancer sits in a power wheelchair facing the camera. Her
dark pants and dark shoes rest on the footrest of her chair. Her four wheels are visible—
two smaller in front and two slightly larger in back. The sixth dancer stands on bare feet.
She wears pants with small horizontal black and light grey stripes. The pants are cut at
angles, forming a sort of arrow pointing down. And lastly, the seventh dancer sits in his
manual wheelchair angled in towards the rest of the group so his outside spokes are
visible. The unique design of his wheels, three equidistant spokes that emanate from the
axis of the wheel, each spoke a series of circles like three bubbles getting consecutively
larger as they move from axis (center) out to the wheel. His black sneakers rest on the
footrest of his chair. He’s wearing white (or light) pants and has a black strap behind his
legs.
The elements in this photo activate looking and engaging by drawing the eyes in
different directions, to different details, thereby mixing up what could become a
disabled/non-disabled separation or binary. While I began discussing this photo in terms
of what a photograph’s stillness offered— mainly, the ability to look, to see, Disability,
and Integration, without making anyone disabled or non too uncomfortable, now I
emphasize how the intersections of the artistic elements make this a very active photo to
look at. Artistic Integrations seem to lead or direct the eye towards different elements
with and without regard to Disability and Nondisability. The artistic elements, that is, the
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pattern (stripes), color and line, connect the dancers across Disability/ies and
Nondisability by drawing on what these dancers have in common, visible connections or
similarities vs. their differences. At the same time, dancers' physical differences are
clearly visible; however the artistic elements undermine a viewing of Disability and
Nondisability as opposites. That is, stripes, angles, and color connect bodies, equipment,
clothing, and styles thereby having the effect of integrating disabled and nondisabled in a
way that blurs or downplays the separations between physically disabled and
nondisabled, at the same time each dancer retains their individuality look and style. For
example, the horizontal stripes on a dancer’s pants echo the subtle stripes that are the bars
of a chair behind another dancer’s legs. Concerning angles, the angles of a dancer’s
arrow-like pointed pants echo a dancer’s angled Cheetah running legs (prostheses) and a
dancer’s wheelchair angled in. These angles draw my eye from one direction to the other-from one dancer to another, disabled or not. The cool white, black, gray and silver tones
echo in metal, socks, spokes, prostheses, pants, shirts. These artistic integrations connect
dancers across Disability/Nondisability, across each dancer’s style, their bodies,
equipment and clothing creating new integrations and connections.
Integrating the Viewer/Audience, Inviting Questions, Inciting Conversation
Additionally, Jerry Smith’s photo of AXIS seems to integrate or invite the viewer
in through the curving formation of the dancers on either end of the line; each dancer and
his/her chair framing or book ending the photo. Both dancers’ wheels—angled in towards
the group—(on the image on the T-shirt) make an inviting oval that includes the viewer.
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Alternately, in the newsletter, the photo is cropped on the left offering a line on one side
which seems to go on with the feeling that any number of people could be in this line,
while the dancer on the far right curves or angles his wheelchair in creating an including
curve. This curve and the straightforward directness of the dancers
wheels/prostheses/legs/feet seem to create a welcoming feeling, while the diversity of
bodies and equipment suggesting diverse mobilities and “locomotion” could be said to
create a sense of integrating, an acceptance of the range of people’s bodies, differences—
disabled and not.5 This integrating invites the viewer into a conversation.
Jerry Smith’s AXIS photograph speaks to the Integration of dancers—disabled
and not—that serve to disrupt medical or disabled/nondisabled binary readings by
proposing artistic readings of disabled and nondisabled integrated dancers. This photo
also integrates the viewer or audience by inviting or welcoming the viewer to look at
Integration(s) and to compare or contrast their own body or mobility type. This
photograph invites the viewer to look, at leisure, to consider, perhaps to only see the old
stereotypes despite the photographer and group’s attempt to counter medical and binary
readings in this photo and show something new or known—Integration(s)— “the
different ways we locomote and the difference and beauty of the things that locomote us”
(Judith Smith “AXIS Photo Info” 1).
Power in Opposition: Decorum’s Seats of Power (Powerchair vs. Victorian Couch)
Decorum is a contemporary Physically Integrated Dance piece fifteen minutes
long which AXIS performed in home season concerts as well as on tour between 2005
46
and 2007. Three dancers, Faulkner, also the choreographer, Sonsheree Giles and Bonnie
Lewkowicz perform Decorum. Dancers Faulkner and Giles appear to be nondisabled,
while Lewkowicz, disabled, uses a powerchair. All three dancers appear to be white and
range in age from 20’s to 40’s.
Decorum begins with Lewkowicz making hand and arm gestures, whispering and
laughing in her powerchair to the soundtrack of furtive French whispering. Decorum
builds with a series of scenes where all dancers come into relationship with each other.
At one point, Lewkowicz while feigning innocence, backs her powerchair repeatedly into
the Victorian couch the other dancers sit on. Dancers make many smallish gestures that
repeat in the same and different orders. The gestures such as a dancer’s hand moving fast
in front of her chest, often seem to indicate inner conflicts for the characters. In recurring
sections, the three characters seem driven to touch each other with their hands and to
physically move or control each other. Subsequently, over and over again, they are driven
to control themselves, pulling themselves together, and pulling their reaching arms and
bodies in, thereby preserving their “decorum.” The tone then shifts from a focus on the
tensions between and within the characters, to some “all out” dancing sequences where
dancers come forward toward the audience and back. In the end the tone shifts again to
one of tenderness and wistfulness when the characters come together with a sense of soft
resolution, as if after a family or intimate fight or struggle. These last scenes show
Faulkner lifting Lewkowicz—now out of her powerchair—in a mutual embrace. In the
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final images, all three sit side by side on the Victorian couch together. When taking their
bows, all three dancers bow from their seated positions on the couch.
An AXIS press release describes Decorum as "a glimpse into the lives of three
women trying to find meaningful existence under the rigorous and watchful eye of
societal expectation" (de Freitas/AXIS 1). No mention of disabled or nondisabled
necessary. In the online dance publication Voice of Dance, former San Francisco
Chronicle and Examiner reviewer, Allan Ulrich describes Decorum as a "mingling of
abled and disabled dancers in an intimate family drama" (“AXIS Dance Company, 2005
Home Season”). Ulrich describes Faulkner as creating "a small seething world of curdled
emotion and thwarted desire," and also mentions the "succession of subtle power shifts"
(1). Ulrich does mention the dancers in the piece as being disabled and nondisabled, as
well as "power shifts", but Ulrich does not indicate that Disability and Nondisability as
subject necessarily have any import to this dance; however some of the power shifts in
Decorum strongly engage disabled and nondisabled power. In Decorum, Faulkner
initially delineates disabled and nondisabled power by separating disabled and
nondisabled characters, then brings them into clashing contact and then brings the
characters into partnership and a resolution that creates new relationships between the
characters and symbols of power.
Although Disability and Nondisability is not necessarily the main subject of the
dance piece, in sections of Decorum, Faulkner forefronts Disability and Nondisability in
a way so as to hardly be ignorable. For example, Decorum begins by delineating two very
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separate spaces on stage, one occupied by a disabled person and a symbol of Disability—
a powerchair, the other by two nondisabled-looking people and a symbol of
Nondisability—a Victorian couch, each carrying its own relationship to power. In the
first space, the viewer sees Lewkowicz who is spot lit and sits in her power wheelchair in
the downstage left corner of the stage. Lewkowicz makes hand and arm gestures, laughs,
whispers, and pulls herself together in an almost regal composure. The rest of the stage is
dark. Then lights come up on Faulkner and Giles, nondisabled dancers who sit side by
side on a Victorian couch across the stage on the right. It is difficult to ignore the
contrasts inherent in these two spaces—the first space Lewkowicz' disabled, solo with
powerchair and all its associations in relation to power. Faulkner and Giles' space could
be called nondisabled and social—the two characters are together. They sit on a Victorian
couch with all its associations. The contrasting seats—powerchair and Victorian couch
each carry a different weight and power. A Victorian couch could suggest classical, old,
still, controlled, special occasions, upper class, while a powerchair suggests new, modern,
mechanized, mobile, everyday, not upper class. Symbols of Disability can carry both
power and a lack of power. On one hand, Lewkowicz in her power wheelchair can be
seen as lacking power, as a symbol of weakness, dependence and impairment—when
seen in a typical ableist societal view. Or Lewkowicz could alternately be seen as
person/dancer/character wielding power who uses a powerful tool, an assistive device,
that is, a power wheelchair. A powerchair has weight, speed, stamina and, well, Power.
49
Lewkowicz’ powerchair might also be thought of as part of her body that enables
mobility, activity, dance, independence, relationships.
While the danced drama between members of the trio unfolds in Decorum, the
separate worlds of these characters and their chairs break down, as Lewkowicz enters the
space of the Victorian couch and Faulkner puts these chairs and characters disabled and
nondisabled into new relationships of power. In one moment, Lewkowicz and her
powerchair come into contact with this Victorian couch and its inhabitants, Faulkner and
Giles (see figure 2). Faulkner and Giles face the audience as they sit squarely on the
Victorian couch. Each has their left arm bent up 90 degrees at the elbow, palm facing
forward and their right arm straight out to the side, palm facing forward. Faulkner and
Giles sit with composed expressions as Lewkowicz, her left arm up in a similar manner
and with an equally composed facial expression, backs her chair into the right side of the
couch the other two sit upon. Lewkowicz with her powerchair actually pushes the couch
a short distance, while Faulkner and Giles seated keep their arms up trying to keep their
balance, composure and “decorum” despite the assault. Faulkner’s and Giles’ legs fly
apart to some degree at Lewkowicz' blow. Lewkowicz rams her powerchair into the
Victorian twice more, each time to similar affect, moving the couch and disturbing its
inhabitants. Lewkowicz looks back over her shoulder a moment smiling. She is having
fun with them, pleased with herself. Although Faulkner and Giles turn towards
Lewkowicz briefly, their main focus is facing front and gaining control both physically
and inwardly.
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Figure 2. Lewkowicz backing her powerchair and self into Giles and Faulkner seated on a
Victorian couch. (AXIS Dance Company in Decorum by Katie Faulkner. Still shots by
RAPT Films.)
What are we seeing here in terms of Power? Lewkowicz in this segment wields
Power in the way she both physically and emotionally disturbs the nondisabled others.
First we see the raw physical power of Lewkowicz and her powerchair, powerful enough
to move a couch and its two inhabitants, multiple times. In an ableist societal view, one
in a wheelchair might be viewed as weak, less than or sad; here Lewkowicz exhibits
physical control and strength, that is, the physical strength of her chair or body (if the
chair is viewed as an extension of her body). Emotionally, Lewkowicz appears to be
having fun with Faulkner and Giles, as they struggle to hide their annoyance, which can
be seen on their faces as they quickly try to gain their composure at each blow to the
couch. Lewkowicz joy can be seen in her amused smile as she looks back briefly after
ramming the couch with her chair.
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Interestingly, all three characters throughout this scene mostly pretend to not
notice what is going on, except for the moment when Lewkowicz looks back and smiles.
The relationship between Lewkowicz, and Faulkner and Giles can be read as a metaphor
for the ways in which disabled people and subjectivities can at times disturb nondisabled
people and subjectivities. That is, at times disabled people occupy a position of Power in
their ability to disturb nondisabled others simply with their presence, unexpectedness,
and/or power. In this case, Lewkowicz presence is a rather forceful one, yet all pretend
for the most part that nothing is happening. Lewkowicz pretends she is not backing into
the two on the couch. The two on the couch pretend they are not being disturbed
physically and emotionally, while clearly they are.
Perhaps this is just drama, characters, or family members as reviewer Ulrich saw
it, and disability and nondisability should not be read into this scene, yet how can one
ignore the Power of Lewkowicz (character or no) and her powerchair to both physically
and emotionally upset the other characters and the ground or couch they sit on? How can
one ignore the juxtaposition of the power—disabled power and the Victorian—dominant
archaic Victorian power which privileges control despite the realities of life, and
especially many disabled people’s inability to control their bodies at times. Disabled
people and disabled power, at times raw, physical and delighted like Lewkowicz and her
powerchair's rammings upset seemingly-settled nondisabled people's spaces, no matter
how hard everyone involved chooses to ignore it or attempts to stay composed.
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Partnership: The Art of Lifting (The Embrace/Interdependence); The Art Lifting
Legs (Disabled Bodies and Movement for All/Art)
In a subsequent scene towards the end of Decorum, all three characters come
together in Partnership in a cross pollination of disability and nondisability symbols,
bodies, and movement. The audience witnesses the new juxtaposition of Lewkowicz’
(disabled) body sitting on the Victorian couch. The dancers come together in Partnership
and lifting and in appreciation of (Disabled) difference, that is, particularly in how
Lewkowicz moves and sits. This scene employs Lewkowicz, her body, her movement,
and her actualities in relation to/with Nondisabled dancers. This scene, as an example of
Physically Integrated Dance, runs counter to the fact that disabled people’s actualities
(bodies, movement, circumstances) are rarely seen in performance despite the
prominence of disabled characters. That is, although disabled characters are very
common in performance, actual disabled performers are rarely given the chance to play
these characters. In these omissions, something is frequently lost.
Carrie Sandahl, Disability Studies and Theater scholar, problemetizes the way
actual disabled people have been removed and distanced from stages at the same time
disabled characters are so frequently on stage. Sandahl gives three ways that disabled
people have been removed and distanced from stages—first, through the use of Disability
metaphors, secondly through the lack of hiring of actual disabled performers to play
disabled roles, and thirdly through the lack of the depiction of disabled realities, such as
physical disabled realities when nondisabled people are cast in roles. Sandahl explains
the ways disabled people have been removed from stages. Sandahl shows how Disability
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and disabled characters or people are often used as a "metaphor for otherness," either
positive, such as Oedipus gaining insight from being blind, or negative, such as Richard
the III's hunchback to indicate his evil character. Sandahl uses these examples to show
how using this type of theatrical metaphor for Disability creates distance between these
depictions and actual disabled people. Sandahl continues, "Theatrical representations of
disabled characters are often removed another step from disabled people by the practice
of casting able-bodied actors to play those [disabled] roles. Such practices filter out many
of the markers of actual disabled bodies" (19). Sandahl gives an example from X-Men
wherein non-disabled actor Patrick Stewart is cast to play the role of Professor Xavier, a
wheelchair user. Sandahl describes how Stewart's nondisabled body differs from a
person who actually uses a wheelchair. Sandahl writes that Stewart's body "bears none of
the markings that bodies in [wheel]chairs often bear, such as altered posture, atrophied
muscled, and curving feet. Even in the realm of science fiction and fantasy, disability
becomes a fable for the abled" ("Considering Disability" 19).
In these last sections from Decorum I describe, Lewkowicz' body, bodily realities,
and movement are no "fable for the abled" (Sandahl 19). Disabled movement is not
mined here for a nondisabled performer to enact far away from the presence of actual
disabled performers, as Sandahl notes is so common in performance (19). Lewkowicz’
details, her disabled actualities are not medicalized or shown in terms of limit or lack;
they are integrated into the art, into dance partnership. Faulkner as choreographer mines
Lewkowicz actualities for their artful possibilities.
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Toward the end of Decorum, two characters/dancers, Faulkner (nondisabled) and
Lewkowicz (disabled), show graceful partnering with one another in an intimate lift
which works as a loving artful moment and also works against the ableist notion that to
be lifted or to need to be lifted (i.e. dependent or interdependent) is necessarily bad or
negative (see figure 3). In this scene, Faulkner and Lewkowicz sit in close proximity to
each other—Lewkowicz in her powerchair parked close to the right side of the couch
where Faulkner sits. First Faulkner and Lewkowicz make eye contact. Then Faulkner
reaches her hand out tenderly touching Lewkowicz' two hands that are touching one
another on Lewkowicz’ lap. They lift their three touching hands together up over
Lewkowicz' head. Their hands separate at this point, Lewkowicz bringing her arms
down, slowly and tenderly to hug Faulkner, while at the same time Faulkner continues
circling her arm, up, back and down, ending in a low hug, her right arm around
Lewkowicz' back, her left arm sliding under Lewkowicz' knee. The recorded music plays
slowly, introspectively, perhaps wistfully, the cello prominent. Then Faulkner rises to a
stand, Lewkowicz suddenly in her arms in this embrace, in this lift.
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Figure 3. Lewkowicz and Faulkner beginning an embrace [photo on left] and ending in a
lift [photo on right]. (AXIS Dance Company in Decorum by Katie Faulkner. Still shots by
RAPT Films.)
If "Seeing is believing," what am I seeing? First, I see the art in a lift, in two
dancers executing a graceful loving lift. Dancers often lift or get lifted. This is a part of
dance, this interdependence, most viewers see as a natural or integral part of dancing, but
does this lift gain a different meaning or resonance when a dancer who's disabled who
perhaps might need to be lifted, gets lifted? I observe the seamlessness--the art in the
choreography and the artistry in the dancers’ execution that turns a tender hug into a lift,
and by doing so (consciously or not) speaks back to (nondisabled) fears that one might
have to be lifted or dependent or interdependent at some point. Or alternately speaking to
the (nondisabled) fear that one might have to lift another, possibly even be burdened by
another's disability? Decorum shows the lifting that could be seen as a burden by the
lifter or the lifted, in a new light of intimacy and artful performance which may resonate
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in the social world. Lifting is not stereotypical sad dependence but can be mutual
Partnership, intimacy—an artful loving embrace. Integrated, powerful.
When Faulkner and Lewkowicz gently sit down, all the juxtapositions come
together. Lewkowicz’ sits on the Victorian couch. The image is of Lewkowicz (disabled)
body out of the powerchair and on the Victorian couch. Do disabled and Victorian go
together? I want to say, “Yes,” as I see the three dancers/characters on the couch together.
The three dancers sit together wearing slightly different clothes of the same color. Light
blue slightly flowing skirt (Faulkner and Giles) or pants (Lewkowicz), creamy off-white
shirts in different cuts all without sleeves. History flashes in my mind. How were
disabled people treated in Victorian times? Did it depend upon one’s class? Weren’t
disabled people often hidden away? Lewkowicz' right leg starts bouncing fast—likely, a
spasm. Faulkner using her hands lifts Lewkowicz' right leg over the left so it is crossed,
then Faulkner lifts, not just lifts with her leg, but as she did with Lewkowicz, Faulkner
uses her hands to lift her own right leg over her left, and Giles does the same, using her
hands to physically lift her right leg over her left like a person might do whose legs are
paralyzed or don't move well. Faulkner and Giles sit up straight, their backs away from
the back of the couch, while Lewkowicz sits up seemingly shorter, her back curved a bit
and supported by the back of the couch.
Decorum’s final scene speaks to the strength of Partnerships that include actual
disabled people in Physically Integrated Dance performance. Partnership and partnering
here includes beautiful seamless lifts, artful integration of disabled movement (spasm),
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bodies (curved posture), actualities/realities (lifting a paralyzed leg, posture). These
moments also echo into the social world. A spasm is an ordinary part of the scene, which
adds some reality or even visual texture to the scene. Lewkowicz’ leg spasm in
performance broadens the range of acceptable bodily movement on stage as well as in
everyday life. Legs might need to be lifted, yes, but importantly AXIS finds the art in it,
in the different weight and the different way a person moves a paralyzed leg versus a
non-paralyzed leg, thereby showing the audience something new (perhaps) movement
rarely if ever seen on stage, showing the audience new ways to view and understand a
dancer, a person, a body, its movement, its artful possibilities.
AXIS through Physically Integrated Dance brings necessary “voices” and bodies
to the dialogue concerning disabled and nondisabled integration(s), power and
partnership with disabled-nondisabled integrated dancers. Photographer Jerry Smith with
AXIS, create a promotional photograph, a “performance” of Integration(s), which uses
artistic integrations (i.e. artistic/design elements) to counter medical and therapeutic
readings of Disability and disrupt a disabled-nondisabled binary reading which would see
disabled and nondisabled as distinct opposites. These artistic integrations also connect the
dancers across Disability and Nondisability into an embodied social, artistic, and
professional vision of AXIS. Furthermore, the subject and framing of Jerry Smith's
photograph of AXIS could be seen as an invitation for the viewer to engage with the
photo's Integrations.
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AXIS embraces the Power of disabled bodies in Decorum wherein Lewkowicz
with her powerchair rams and teases the two nondisabled dancers. Lewkowicz’ body
which includes the assistive technology of her powerchair, exhibits a raw physical power
to physically, as well as psychologically, upset the two nondisabled characters. This
scene exemplifies how disabled subjectivities can upset nondisabled people in everyday
life. The images of the disabled power of Lewkowicz also counter the common
stereotype or image of disabled people as weak, passive or powerless. Indeed she is
strong enough to move a couch a few feet and to upset its inhabitants. Finally, Decorum
shows disabled and nondisabled characters unite in Partnership, in a lift that embraces the
intimate power of the dancers and the artful interdependence in lifting. Faulkner with
dancers Lewkowicz and Giles uses dance to re-frame negative (ableist) associations of
disabled people’s actualities, that is, circumstances (such as interdependence or
dependence), bodies, and movement by highlighting relationship, emotion/intimacy, and
artistic possibilities stemming from disabled bodies, movement, and circumstance.
Faulkner’s choreography in Decorum explores the ripe embodiments that stem from a
dancer’s (Lewkowicz’) everyday (disabled) movement and paralysis. AXIS dancers’ in
Decorum show an acceptance for the actualities, realities and art of dancer Lewkowicz'
(disabled) body, as well as embracing the art of/in Lewkowicz’ body and movement
when seen on both disabled and nondisabled dancers' bodies—alike and different. AXIS
creates and performs vital images of Integration(s) of Disabled and Nondisabled dancers
showing energizing Integration(s), illuminating Power Dynamics and challenging,
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graceful Partnering that embraces a large range of physical embodiments and movement,
bringing together dancers, collaborators and audience.
Some performance companies excited by the Integration(s) of Physically
Integrated Dance and how these Integrations can enliven performance, have branched out
from their nondisabled beginnings to form collaborations with dancers with disabilities to
create new work. In the next chapter, we look at a performance—a collaboration between
Dandelion Dancetheater’s Eric Kupers and Neil Marcus, where the partnering is not
always so slick and smooth. In the next piece, Disability and Nondisability are not
incidental to the performance or subtly woven in, but the encounter between disabled and
nondisabled takes center stage as the main subject of A Walk in the Park.
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Chapter 3
IS IT “A WALK IN THE PARK”? FROM AESTHETIC NERVOUSNESS AND
ABLEISM TO DANCING THE DIALOGICAL
Sometimes I imagine that the most severely handicapped dancer in the
world could have a style and aesthetic so unique and captivating in its
originality that geniuses in the classical world of dance would be willing
to travel many thousands of miles across continents to get even the briefest
insight into the origin, technique, and inspiration of such moves.
~ Neil Marcus, “Is Yours the Stuff Dreams are
Made Of? Part II, a dance journal,” Contact
Quarterly, 58
In everyday life and in staged performances, people connect and disconnect.
Sometimes people are attracted to one another; sometimes they flee. People live and
perform with nerve and/or nervousness in the face of what or whom they view as
different, unknown, dangerous, perhaps exciting. A Walk in the Park is a staged
dancetheater performance that explores the nervousness and attraction, the connection,
disconnection and re-connection between a nondisabled man and a disabled man. Eric
Kupers, co-artistic director of Dandelion Dancetheater and writer/performer Neil Marcus,
stage an encounter that reflects an everyday encounter in a park and opens up disablednondisabled connection and Integration as a process with a range of messy and delightful
results. A Walk in the Park highlights the Power of dancer Marcus’ (disabled) presence,
body, movement, voice, and performance to disturb as well as excite. A Walk in the Park
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shows how dance Partnering can be a tool in the process of disabled-nondisabled
Integration and of appreciating the Power of disabled movement for all audiences.
Dandelion Dancetheater calls their work “emotionally-driven” and “grounded in a
fascination with the intersections of risk-taking and accessibility, where we invite people
to feel, remember, reflect and transform” (Dandelion Dancetheater Official Website).
Dandelion Dancetheater describes their cast of performers as “diverse in terms of size,
age, sexual orientation, and cultural/ethnic background,” as well as in terms of artistic
genre (Dandelion Website “Mission Statement”). Many, but not all, of Dandelion
Dancetheater’s works prominently include dancers/performers with physical disabilities.
Recent work of Dandelion Dancetheater’s from 2005-2011 nearly always includes
performers with disabilities. Most recently, for example, in July 2011, Dandelion
Dancetheater (under Kuper’s direction) collaborated with AXIS on Dislocation
Express—“a travelling performance in three acts weaving in and out of BART stations”
which was performed around commuter trains in the San Francisco Bay Area (Dandelion
Dancetheater Official Website).
Kupers with Dandelion Dancetheater began working with dancers with
disabilities they were researching, creating and performing the “Undressed Project”
beginning in 2002. Kupers, co-artistic director of Dandelion Dancetheater, who had been
embracing different bodily diversity in choreography and improvisation, “invited Marcus
to join the cast” (Belmar 1). Kupers found that Marcus’s “distinctive movements—
spastic and sustained by turns—opened up choreographic possibilities” (Belmar 1).
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Kupers and Marcus began a video collaboration of which A Walk in the Park is part.
Kupers who earned his MFA at University of California Davis, teaches at California State
University East Bay in the Department of Theater and Dance where Kupers began the
Dance for All Bodies [DABA] program at CSU East Bay. In the notes that accompany
the video of A Walk in the Park, Kupers writes, “DABA seeks to create a university
program dedicated to training people of all sizes, shapes and physical abilities in
movement, dance and physical theater.” In 2006, Kupers and Marcus performed A Walk
in the Park at the first public performance of the Dance for All Bodies Program at CSU
East Bay, Hayward, California.
Neil Marcus is “an icon in U.S. Disability Culture” (Kuppers Madrona Mindbody
Institute Website 1). Born in New York and currently living in Berkeley, California,
Marcus describes himself as “TV and film actor.poet.writer.butoh dancer.contact
improvisation lover. Lecturer with a twist.” (Cripple Poetics 120). In his various works,
Marcus works with “the key idea: disability is not a brave struggle in the face of
adversity, disability is an art” (Cripple Poetics 120). From 1988-1998, Marcus toured
with his autobiographical play “Storm Readings,” performing it over 300 times, including
an appearance at the Kennedy Center in a program hosted by Michael Douglas. Marcus
also appeared on an episode of “E.R.” Marcus writes, “My main education comes from
acquiring Dystonia at age 8.and I was much influenced by the human growth movement
in the 60s and 70s” (120). Marcus also performs and creates work with the Olimpias [see
Chapter Four]. In 2011, Marcus released Special Effects: Advances in Neurology, a
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collection of his Disability-centered ‘zines (photocopied missives) he distributed to
people in the ‘80’s. Marcus’s ‘zine pages reflect his early sense of Disability as artful,
social, and political, as well as reflecting his creative approaches to dealing with the
social stigmas surrounding Disability. While Marcus works with Dandelion Dancetheater
for certain projects, he is not currently a core member of the company.
Dandelion Dancetheater explores “the endless possibilities of the human body as
a potent means for personal and collective growth”; Dandelion shares these explorations
“with diverse populations through performance, teaching, speaking, video and writing”
(Dandelion Dancetheater Official Website). Dandelion Dancetheater, using “dance,
collided with experimental theater, video, writing, music and image, aims a kinesthetic
microscope at the ever-changing intricacies of the human heart” (Dandelion
Dancetheater Official Website). A Walk in the Park dives into the “changing intricacies”
in the not-so-smooth road to connection between a disabled and nondisabled man. The
Dandelion Dancetheater Official Website states that A Walk in the Park “looks at
loneliness and the fleeting opportunities for connections through the lens of a meeting
between two men, and the ways in which they navigate fear, shyness, desire and
connection.” This description touches on universal human themes, while the insertion of
Disability and Nondisability into the equation provides this performance with dynamics
and aesthetics that are seldom, if ever seen in traditional (nondisabled) stages and
performances. Throughout this chapter, I address the characters by the dancers’ names,
Kupers and Marcus after establishing that Kupers plays the nondisabled man and Marcus
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plays the disabled man. For clarity and where pertinent, I sometimes include “disabled”
or “nondisabled” in a description.
A Walk in the Park portrays a public encounter between a nondisabled man played
by Kupers and a disabled man played by Marcus. A Walk in the Park traces the evolution
of this relationship, initially more from the point of view of Kupers (the nondisabled
protagonist) who goes through a range of emotions from nervous curiosity and
playfulness to fear and confusion, then Kupers and Marcus reconnect with excitement,
sensitivity and joy. For clarity, I name the three main section of A Walk in the Park--the
Narrative section which tells the story of Kupers and Marcus connecting, breaking apart
and reconnecting; the Partnering sections with vigorous dancing, and "Dancing
with/Against Ableist Texts" where Kupers and Marcus dance together while an ableist
monologue plays in the background.
In the beginning of A Walk in the Park, in what I call the Narrative Section, the
nondisabled man reaches out with nerve and nervousness to touch the disabled man who
reaches out to touch Kupers as well. Kupers clearly views Marcus, the disabled man as
different and unknown, possibly dangerous, possibly exciting. Kupers and Marcus make
contact, their index fingertips touching. This contact leads to Kupers and Marcus'
alternating call-and-response dance. One sings a word and does a movement, and then the
other sings and moves. Next, Marcus and Kupers shake hands; Marcus shakes Kupers
hand with a fast up-and-down intensity and Kupers runs away across the stage. Kupers
soon comes back, slowly reconnecting with Marcus. In the Partnering section, Marcus
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(dancing out of his chair) and Kupers reconnect and dance vigorously, smiling wide,
moving with gravity that tips them over, with intimacy, and with momentum as Kupers
swings Marcus back and forth, Marcus’s feet off the ground.
In the "Dancing with Ableist Scripts" section, a woman’s recorded monologue
plays describing a disabled man she met (likely Marcus) who she describes in terms of
being limited, confined, strange, and not having a life worth living. Meanwhile, Kupers
and Marcus dance on the floor then standing, in even closer communication and physical
contact, acting as a team. Kupers and Marcus’ movements, playfulness and sensitive
bodily contact contrast the negativity in the woman’s description of a disabled man. The
piece ends with Marcus and Kupers dancing happily off stage together to a sweepingly
upbeat classical music track.
The tone in A Walk in the Park shifts back and forth from light and playful to
serious, sometimes foreboding in conjunction with the woman's ableist monologue, and
then to a lighter and playful mood again. Kupers and Marcus’ dancing often shows the
influence of Contact Improvisation, a dance form which embraces physical
communication and connection, gravity, momentum, awkward movement, and often a
looser sense of control (Albright 84).
Dialogical Performance and Aesthetic Nervousness
A Walk in the Park, is in essence a danced dialogue between disabled and
nondisabled subjectivities, aims to draw the viewer into nondisabled, disabled and
integrated experiences of life, dance, and relationship while providing a much-needed
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critique of Ableism. To do so, A Walk in the Park puts the spotlight on the position of
nondisabled through Kuper’s character thereby exposing nondisabled curiosity, fear, and
detachment in order to—in dialogical moments—open up these nondisabled reactions to
much needed critical questioning.
Conquergood’s concept of Dialogical Performance, a place of “genuine
conversation” is defined as a “genuinely moral….performative stance toward the other”,
[one which]:
struggles to bring together different voices, worldviews, value systems,
and beliefs so they can have a conversation with one another….so they
can question, debate, and challenge one another. It is a kind of
performance that resists conclusions, it is intensely committed to keeping
the dialogue between the performer and the text open and ongoing.
Dialogical performance is a way of having an intimate conversation with
other people and other cultures. Instead of speaking about them, one
speaks to and with them. (Sterne and Henderson, 29)
I use the Dialogical Performance stance as a launching point to analyze how this
performance “speaks to and with them” which still seems to be a radical or revolutionary
concept, given the vast exclusion of disabled performers in dance/performance realms.
Furthermore, even within most dance companies that do include dancers with and
without disabilities in meaningful ways—companies “which have surely broadened the
cultural imagination about who can become a dancer”— a person such as Marcus whose
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body “with its distinctive movements—spastic and sustained by turns” does not adhere to
the “cultural conceptions of grace, speed, strength, agility and control,” are rarely seen
(Belmar 1, Albright 83). A Walk in the Park, however, could certainly be considered part
of what Ann Cooper Albright in Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in
Contemporary Dance calls the “more radical cultural work…taking place within the
Contact Improvisation community” (Albright 82). In particular, A Walk in the Park
presents dialogical moments or openings for dialogue where the viewer is left with
questions that the performance suggests. For example, the moment when Kupers, in fear
and confusion, runs away from Marcus, and the audience is left to wonder what made
Kupers flee. Although a dialogical performance stance “resists conclusions,” this dance
does in a sense have a happy ending that does conclude. I do, however, feel that the
majority of A Walk in the Park poses questions about Integration, Power Dynamics and
Partnership/Relationship that do resist firm conclusions and that do linger unanswered A
Walk in the Park ends.
Ato Quayson’s Aesthetic Nervousness heavily influenced by the work of
Disability Studies scholars, including Garland-Thomson, Lennard Davis and Mitchell and
Snyder, refers first to the tensions between disabled and non-disabled characters, that is, a
“short circuit triggered by the representation of disability” (15, 16). Secondly, Aesthetic
Nervousness refers to an interruption that can happen when a reader (or viewer)
encounters Disability in a “text”, in this case, a performance, when the viewer’s
perspective is “affected by the short-circuiting of the dominant protocols governing the
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text” (Quayson 15). That is, where Disability is a main element onstage, the viewer
experiences an interruption in the tools or methods used to view and assess the text, or
performance (Quayson 15). In the Narrative and Partnering sections, both aspects of
Aesthetic Nervousness— the “short-circuiting” or tension between characters, and
disruption between viewer and “text” occur.
Aesthetic Nervousness is rooted in Ableism. In the Encyclopedia of American
Disability History, Rohrer writes, “Ableism is a term for the discrimination against, and
subordination of, people with disabilities. Ableism exists at all levels of American
society—ideas, attitudes, practices, institutions, social relations, and culture” (Rohrer 1).
In the social relationship in A Walk in the Park, a viewer can see Ableism in the attitude
and emotions of Kupers who fears and is nervous, unsure and hesitant around Marcus
because of the way Kupers perceives Marcus and his difference that is Disability. Kupers
initially seems to see difference which makes him nervous over commonality, that is,
what both men have in common as people. Due to the attitudes, ideas, practices and
culture of exclusion, performers with disabilities akin to Marcus’s are often not
welcomed or seen in the performing arts. An Ableist viewpoint centers the dominant
“nondisabled experience and point[s] of view” (Linton Claiming Disability 9). A Walk in
the Park does center nondisabled experience, but not in a particularly ableist way. A
Walk in the Park centers Nondisability in order to question and problemetize
Nondisabled reactions toward Disability.
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Integration: Disability and Neil Marcus
If, as Marcus proclaims, “Disability is an art,” in A Walk in the Park, Marcus
represents a disabled presence that expands the aesthetics of the art in this performance—
in terms of Marcus’s movement, voice and text—that is, the ableist woman’s monologue
penned by Marcus (Cripple Poetics 120). Marcus’ embodiment is of a type not
frequently seen on stages, even ones that supposedly include or integrate dancers with
disabilities. In Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary
Dance, Ann Cooper Albright, delineates two directions that contemporary dance
integrating people with disabilities might go. The first direction Albright describes is that
of groups such as Candoco or perhaps AXIS, that is, work that “uses the difference in
physical ability to create new and inventive choreography” yet she feels this work is “still
informed by an ethos that reinstates the classical body within the disabled one. Although
embodied differently, cultural conceptions of grace, speed, strength, agility, and control
nonetheless structure these companies’ aesthetics” (83). Albright contrasts these models
with Contact Improvisation:
Gone are the formal lines of much classical dance. Gone are the traditional
approaches to choreography and the conventions of the proscenium stage.
In their place is an improvisational movement form based on the
expressive communication involved when two people begin to share their
weight and physical support. Instead of privileging an ideal type of body
or movement style, Contact Improvisation privileges a willingness to take
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physical and emotional risks, producing a certain psychic disorientation in
which the seemingly stable categories of able and disabled become
dislodged. (84, 85)
Concerning movement, Marcus’s spastic dancing, movement and body (including one
foot which points dramatically in a full extension) do not adhere to the traditional
classical lines, control and conformity that many dancers do. In terms of voice, Marcus’s
singular voice has more character and qualities than most people are used to. One could
also say that Marcus speaks with a vocal difference or that his voice can be quite difficult
to understand, especially to those unfamiliar with his voice. In the latter part of A Walk in
the Park, the text written by Marcus is in the voice of a (presumably) nondisabled woman
who is both fearful of and excited by seeing someone with a Disability. The text reveals a
disabled person who has had firsthand experience with being stared at and examined by
strangers like the woman speaking. The text also reveals disabled people’s experience of
being the recipients of negative and pitying ableist language of the kind commonly
spoken by many nondisabled people. The woman’s monologue seems to be the words
behind what a person might see when he or she stares—fascinated, transfixed, confused,
and trying to make sense of something or someone so seemingly unfamiliar. Marcus’s
text uncovers the ways in which disabled people going about their daily lives
unintentionally become a performance for strangers.
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Integration: Nondisability and Kupers
In the Encyclopedia of American Disability, Rohrer defines Ableism as including
“…an unexamined belief in the normalcy of the Nondisabled, fear and denigration of
disability…” (2). She also notes that “…many Americans have difficulty believing that
Ableism exists, which ironically allows this form of discrimination to exist…” (2).
Throughout A Walk in the Park, Marcus and Kupers examine what Rohrer calls the
“unexamined belief in the normalcy of the Nondisabled” by putting nondisabled “fear
and denigration of disability” front and center under the spotlight for the audience to
observe (2). Kupers and Marcus show Kuper’s nondisabled reactions and his struggle for
connection with a disabled person as a process or a journey towards connection.
Integrations: Dance Theater, Contact Improvisation (CI)
Dancetheater and Contact Improvisation (CI) as art forms can be particularly
well-suited for disabled-nondisabled integrated movement, bodies, voices, as well as for
exploring (nondisabled) fears about Disability. According to the Oxford English
Dictionary of Dance, “tanztheater,” otherwise known as dance theater (or dancetheater),
commands “An aesthetic which proposes that dance does not have to be about
choreography, that dance is theatre, and that theatre is inseparable from real life. Dance,
therefore should be an expression of true emotion” (Craine 1). A Walk in the Park is
improvised and not about set choreography and also heavily engages real life experiences
of people with disabilities as well as life experiences of fear and hesitance that
nondisabled (and sometimes disabled people) might feel around people with visible or
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obvious disabilities. In tanztheater [dancetheater] there’s “no narrative plot; instead,
specific situations, fears, and human conflicts are presented. Audiences are stimulated to
follow a train of thought or to reflect on what the tanztheater piece expresses” (Langer 1).
In keeping with dancetheater’s aesthetics, A Walk in the Park addresses Kupers
character’s fears. Dancetheater frequently employs a range of theatrical elements.
Although this performance happens on a bare stage, A Walk in the Park does incorporate
the elements of sound, voice, singing and in doing so, adds to this piece Marcus’s
distinctive voice—at one point unclear and at another point clearly understood, given
context.
The International Encyclopedia of Dance describes Contact Improvisation which
began circa 1972 as:
primarily a duet form….that emphasizes the qualities of mutual trust and
interdependence by requiring ongoing contact between the two
participants (with little use of the hands and eyes, traditionally the most
basic forms of social contact). It has a relaxed, sustained, athletic quality
and a noncompetitive nature. Although nontheatricality was one of its
founding premises, contact improvisation has become a spectator activity.
(Cohen 446)
In Contact [Improvisation], the experience of internal sensations and the flow of
movement between two bodies is more important than specific shapes and formal
positions. “Unlike many genres of dance that stress the need to control one’s movement
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(with admonitions to pull up, tighten, and place the body), the physical training of
Contact emphasizes the release of the body’s weight into the floor or into a partner’s
body. Dancers learn to move with a consciousness of the physical communication
implicit within the dancing” (Albright 84). Contact Improvisation can most readily be
seen in the final sections of dance partnering in A Walk in the Park, especially in the
close contact dancing section which is juxtaposed with the woman’s Ableist monologue.6
Power: Disabled Power, Nondisabled Fleeing—Aesthetic Nervousness and
Dialogical Openings
In this first section of A Walk in the Park, what draws Kupers and Marcus
together in one pivotal moment and apart in another? In the beginning of the dance,
Kupers encounters Marcus. While both Kupers and Marcus are male, white, and neither
young nor old, their positions onstage—side-by-side and facing front—highlights their
contrasting physicalities, voices, and clothing. Kupers, positioned as non-disabled,
stands on two legs speaking gibberish to himself, when Marcus, enters in his powerchair,
legs out, and making sounds…or is he speaking words? Kupers is dressed in business
attire—shirt, tie and overcoat, while Marcus is outfitted in edgy tight black bodysuit with
arms, feet, bare, and skin exposed through slits in the fabric on his legs and chest.
Kupers and Marcus see each other and move towards each other with the tension
of curiosity. They hesitatingly, then solidly make contact, touching index fingers and
then pausing a moment. Kupers and Marcus have an alternating call-and-response dance
that matches their call-and-response prerecorded vocal, a rendition of the Beatles’ “A
Little Help From My Friends”—one sings a word and does a movement, and then the
74
other sings and moves. Marcus dances in and out of his powerchair (power wheelchair)
and speaks/sings with a vocal difference that can make him difficult to understand,
although the context of the Beatles song makes his words easier to decipher. In a pivotal
moment, Marcus shakes Kupers’ hand vigorously (perhaps spasm-like?). Kupers is still,
while Marcus’s arm and body shake. Marcus’s face looks very intense, his eyes focused
on Kupers (see figure 4). Kupers looking fearful and confused runs away, across the
stage, far away from Marcus. The soundtrack, loud white noise, suggests confusion and
disturbance as Kupers “short-circuits” and pulls away (see figure 4).
Figure 4. Marcus and Kupers shaking hands (top); Kupers pulling away (bottom).
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(Dandelion Dancetheater’s A Walk in the Park).
In this “dialogue” between disabled and nondisabled voices, movement, bodies
and points-of-view, there are places of tension evident in Marcus and Kupers’ first touch
and their intense handshake, tensions that embody Aesthetic Nervousness. Kupers “shortcircuits,” pulls far away from Marcus, fleeing from the situation across the stage. Kupers
crosses the stage confusion and numbness on his face. Although a spectator has no way
of knowing exactly what is going on in Kuper’s character’s mind, I imagine Kupers’
character’s thoughts: Who is that man (in the powerchair)? What happened? Why did he
shake my hand so vigorously and not let go? Why is his face so intense? What does he
want from me?
What makes Kupers’ character disconnect, run? The focus shifts from Marcus’s
underlined difference to Kupers nondisabled fearful reaction to Marcus. By watching this
staged social interaction, the viewer is put in a position to judge or evaluate it. Kupers
and Marcus performance set up a situation where the viewer could be pulled into the
dialogue, trying to answer the questions, A Walk in the Park raises. When Kupers pulls
away from Marcus, a viewer might identify with the non-disabled Kupers, asking
themselves, “Would I pull away too? Why? Is Marcus—this disabled man—scary in
some way?” Or perhaps, a viewer might identify with Marcus, asking, “Why would
someone pull away from me?” The tensions that make Kupers flee demonstrate
Aesthetic Nervousness, the short-circuiting of characters when confronted with
Disability. These moments also unlock dialogical questions that speak to different
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specific and universal viewpoints about difference, fear, what pulls people apart or brings
them back together. Next in A Walk in the Park, Kupers reconnects with Marcus and their
power lies not in opposition or in conflict with one another but in building a deeper and
more joyful connection through Partnering—the dancing which emphasizes how Kupers
and Marcus relate, move and work in connection with each other.
In the beginning of the Partnering segments, Kupers and Marcus brief use of
unison counters the detachment of Aesthetic Nervousness, while potentially helping
viewers to see disabled movement more clearly. Then Kupers and Marcus’s use of
gravity, intimacy, momentum and pleasure invite the audience into their movement
experiences. And finally, in the last segment, Marcus and Kupers use their close Contact
Improvisation-based dancing as a tool to re-frame the rampant dehumanizing negative
Ableism reflected by the woman (character) speaking the script/monologue which
overlays Marcus and Kupers' dancing.
Partnership: Aesthetic Nervousness and Unison
Generally, when something is framed as performance, I view it as performance
even when a performer is doing everyday movements, like stretching or scratching;
however, in this performance, there were brief moments in which I felt like I was
watching disabled movement in everyday life and dropped my awareness of this as a
staged performance. Here I experienced the second part of Aesthetic Nervousness that
addresses a viewer’s disconnection, wherein my ways of viewing performance were
disrupted by confusion over how to view Marcus’s disabled movement on stage.
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Moments of Unison and Kinesthetic bodily movement in the Partnering section brought
me back to the realization, I was watching Marcus as a performer, instead of simply
watching Marcus as a disabled person in everyday life where I might feel compelled to
not look or stare, and not see his movement, at the same time, I would likely be drawn
towards wanting to see his eye-catching movement and presence.
“‘In unison’ means that the dance movement takes place at the same time in the
group…” whether the movements are the same or different (Smith-Autard 47). In this
section of A Walk in the Park, Marcus and Kupers are both side-by-side and facing front,
Marcus seated, Kupers standing. Marcus begins to move—his body leans forward, his
arms cross in the air in front of his body (see figure 5). Kupers quickly catches up to
Marcus, doubling his position; then following Marcus’s next body position, they both,
bend one arm and lift one leg straight out (see figure 5). One of Marcus’s legs often sticks
straight out, with a fully extended pointed toe. Marcus has written “…disability is an art,”
a statement open to many interpretations (Cripple Poetics 120). While this unison
stretches “at the same time” (Smith-Autard 47), it also raises a question for me, “Why
couldn’t I see the art in Marcus’s body until I saw Marcus’s body position reflected or
doubled on Kuper’s non-disabled body?” How would it change if I saw Marcus’s body
shape reflected on a differently disabled dancer? Nonetheless, by centering Marcus’s
(disabled) movement and emphasizing the somewhat unique artfulness in Marcus’s
body/movement through Kuper’s doubling of the movement, this unison works against
Ableism that would put non-disabled movement solely at the center. This unison also
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brings non-disabled and disabled movement together in a dialogue that disrupted my
interrupted ways of viewing, my Aesthetic Nervousness.
Figure 5. Two video stills of Marcus and Kupers moving in unison; Kupers doubling
Marcus’ movements. (Dandelion Dancetheater’s A Walk in the Park).
Reviewer Sima Belmar wrote about Marcus, “Marcus has dystonia, a neurological
movement disorder that twists his body into ‘abnormal’ postures. But what is abnormal
to doctors becomes interesting, unique and beautiful to artists. In the same review,
Marcus, who prefers the term dystonic as a descriptor, said, “I feel that I dance all the
time. When people look at me they see the product of the hospital. I’ve had to learn to
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love my movement” (Belmar 1). Kupers also mentions the “necessity and authenticity”
in Marcus’s movement is something he himself strives for as a dancer (Belmar 1).
Marcus carves out a place in dance and art using his body not as a limited thing, but as
part of his art, redefining his experience and body as artful and as a dancer’s body against
the Ableist scripts that could only see his body as “abnormal” or as “the product of a
hospital” (Belmar 1). Kupers also reveals that observing Marcus move and dance
stretched Kuper’s own movement vocabulary, that is, Marcus got Kupers “to move in
different ways just from copying the way he moves” (Belmar 1).
Partnering: Gravity/Intimacy/Momentum/Pleasure (Empathetic Kinesthetic
Movement)
This Partnering segment seems aimed to draw the viewer into the dance through
an empathetic kinesthetic (or bodily) sense of Marcus’ and Kupers’ movement, as well as
through the positioning of the audience in relation to the dancers. Kupers and Marcus
draw the audience into a movement experience and identification. “Kinesthetic refers to
the ability of the body's sensory organs in the muscles, tendons, and joints to respond to
stimuli while dancing or viewing a dance” (“Dance Arts Toolkit: Glossary” 1). This very
physical dancing section of A Walk in the Park involves a near fall, a full body hug and
Kupers swinging Marcus’s body from side to side, any of which might draw a viewer into
the dance in an empathetic way and cause their body to possibly respond or at least to
identify with the movement experience and the characters’ carried-away sense of joy.
Kupers and Marcus’ use of gravity in this section begins as Kupers stands behind Marcus
who is now out of his powerchair and standing. Kupers arms are wrapped tightly around
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Marcus’s upper body. Then Kupers and Marcus so entwined and carried away by the
dance and the upbeat music lean over together nearing the floor teetering on the edge of
control and stumbling for balance. The dancers at this point present an opportunity for the
audience to be drawn into their kinesthetic experience: into Marcus and Kupers’
momentum as they lean far over, into the gravity that seems to be pulling them over, into
their stumbling for balance and control, and into their joyfully swaying connected bodies.
Here the viewer can witness the strong influence of Contact Improvisation, dance which
embraces physical communication and connection, gravity, momentum, awkward
movement, and often a looser sense of control (Albright 84).
A brief still moment of intimacy punctuates this rollercoaster-like dancing. The
song playing by the Tigerlillies,’ “Lily Marlene,” is upbeat, swaying and waltzy.
Suddenly, Marcus in one quick moment wraps his arms around Kupers upper body and
his legs around Kupers standing legs so that Marcus is off the ground and Kupers is
supporting him—Marcus’s moment of wrapping arms and legs happens right on beat—
just after the lyric, “Boys in the backroom falling in love again” (see figure 6). The music
stops; the dancers stop, their bodies entwined in their spontaneous embrace. The audience
sees Kupers face and Marcus’ back as they embrace. Because the audience is facing the
same direction as Marcus, the audience is put in a place of identification, to sense this
moment, perhaps to feel this moment kinesthetically in one’s body, to be drawn in to
Marcus (and Kupers') experience, as Integrated entwined connected dancers and men.
The lyric “boys in the backroom falling in love again” seems to linger in this arrested
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moment which paired with their physical embrace, suggests intimacy, love, impulse,
friendship, comfort or perhaps something sexual or elicit. What happens in the
backroom? The lyric in conjunction with the close physical contact of the surprise
embrace also gently and momentarily taps into a queer aesthetic.
Figure 6. Marcus and Kupers embracing. Kupers standing; Marcus off ground with his
legs wrapped around Kupers. (Dandelion Dancetheater’s A Walk in the Park).
This tight embrace gives way to the joyful swinging momentum of Marcus’s legs,
in rhythm to the bouncy waltzing music as Kupers swings Marcus side to side (see figure
7). Kupers faces out toward the audience, presentationally, while the audience still faces
the same direction as Marcus, in position to vicariously feel the closeness of Kupers’
embrace, the pleasure of momentum in Marcus’s swinging legs and torso, as well as
being in position to see Kupers’ engaged face. These moments of momentum brings
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viewers in dialogue with Marcus’ and Kupers’ physical intimacy, connection, movement
experiences, and perhaps out of the distancing tensions of Aesthetic Nervousness.
Figure 7. Video stills (left and right photo) of Kupers swinging Marcus from one side to
the other side. (Dandelion Dancetheater’s A Walk in the Park).
Claiming Pleasure, Performing Pleasure
These moments of Gravity, Intimacy and Momentum also speak to pleasure—
integrated pleasure, nondisabled pleasure, disabled pleasure. In Claiming Disability,
Simi Linton, prominent Disability Studies scholar and activist, points out a “broad
conceptual error” concerning people with disabilities and pleasure. Linton writes,
“Disabled people across all disability groups, are thought to have compromised ‘pleasure
systems’ The capacity to engage in pleasurable activity—experiences sought for their
own sake, for the stimulation and enjoyment they provide—is assumed to be out of reach
of the disabled” (111). As examples of this way of thinking, Linton cites that disabled
people seeking pleasurable activities are often thought to be doing so “as mere
compensations for the void created by disability” or else disabled people “seeking
pleasurable experiences are thought to be searching for something to soothe, to comfort,
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or to take their mind off their troubles rather than something to activate the imagination,
heighten awareness, or spur themselves on to social change” (111). This partnering
section contains a physicality, a giddiness, plus a pleasure on Marcus’ and Kupers’
grinning faces and bouncing swaying bodies. Linton writes, “The humanities and the arts
can benefit from an analysis of who in society is believed to be entitled to pleasure and
who is thought to have the capacity to provide pleasure” (112). In the partnering
segments, both Marcus’ and Kupers’ characters engage in what simply looks to be
pleasurable, playful physical dancing designed to draw the audience into their
relationship, elation, and pleasure. Pleasure as a result of good partnering, pleasure for its
own sake, pleasure not despite Disability, but pleasure with all the variety of ways
Marcus and Kupers are, separately and together.
Partnering: Dancing Against/With Ableist Scripts
In the section I call “Dancing Against/With Ableist Scripts,” Marcus and Kupers
dance in a Contact Improv-influenced way, moving into awkward positions, often on the
ground, their bodies communicating or seeming to sense one another. Marcus and Kupers
move more slowly in this section and also have at times a sense of play about them that
comes through in their bodies and movements in parts. A woman’s monologue (scripted
by Marcus) plays in the background. She is observing and commenting negatively and
with fascination on a disabled man, one who resembles Marcus in physicality and voice.
Towards the end of her monologue, she says:
...He was confined to a bed.
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He was confined to a wheelchair.
He was confined to a house.
He was homebound.
He was imprisoned by his body…
He was imprisoned by his house.
He could not drive a car.
He was limited. (A Walk in the Park)
Marcus re-frames Ableism in his arrangement of the text of this monologue—a
succession of Ableist phrases and metaphors. Marcus uses the stereotypical language of
Ableism ad nauseum, to highlight nondisabled-centered language and misconceptions.
The monologue repeats the words “confined” and “imprisoned,” denoting limitation and
separation from society, yet these words also might evoke humor in their rampant
extremity. At the same time many people commonly use these phrases in reference to
Disability and Disabled people. Indeed, some people with disabilities sometimes use
these phrases without a sense of what might be problematic in this language of limitation
and confinement. The things Marcus is supposedly “imprisoned,” “confined,” or “bound”
by—home, house, body are traditionally things that give people much pleasure and
freedom. The too-often heard phrase “confined to a wheelchair” reflects the Ableist
notion that a wheelchair equals confinement and limitation, whereas in Disability Culture
as well as in Disability Studies scholarship, wheelchairs frequently denote mobility and
freedom of movement. To some in the Disability Community, wheelchairs are
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considered to be a part of the body or like a part of the body. Dancer Bruce Curtis writes
in Taken By Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, “I have used a wheelchair for
twenty years now, living, working and playing around the world. My chair has become a
part of my body. It has movements, sounds, and rhythms that describe the texture of the
ground that I am moving across, defining the space that I am passing through” (14).
Definitely not confined to a wheelchair. Even so, the language of repetition and
extremity, that is, the language of Ableism in this monologue, as in life, also could be
said to have its lure. That is, Ableist language does have dramatic qualities in its
extremity, qualities which Marcus arranges for maximum effect. While this monologue
plays, however, Kupers and Marcus’ dancing tells another story.
Marcus—who has been dancing with Kupers on the floor—stands up from the
floor. Marcus reaches his arm up to Kupers who’s standing. The woman’s voice says,
“He was a complete invalid. He couldn’t do a thing for himself.” Kupers covers
Marcus’s eyes. Marcus leans his chest gently into Kuper’s back and Kupers slowly lifts
Marcus (see figure 8). The woman's phrases (previously discussed) roll out in a gossipy
flood; the rhythmic repetition and negativity flow forth with the words, confined,
confined, confined, homebound, imprisoned, punctuated by “He could not drive a car. He
was limited.”
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Figure 8. Kupers lifting Marcus. (Dandelion Dancetheater’s A Walk in the Park).
As a viewer, I ask myself, “Does Marcus match this description?” Marcus is
clearly not “confined” to a bed, house, wheelchair or seem to be imprisoned by his body
or house. He’s on stage dancing, performing with initiation, presence, connection, as is
Kupers. The wild teetering momentum-filled partnering of the earlier section is over, but
a gentleness and grace are apparent when Marcus leans on Kupers—trusts him—and
Kupers lifts him. When a dancer lifts another dancer, this is part of the dance. This is
Partnering. No one wonders why the ballerina who is lifted is so weak and dependent that
she needs to be lifted. No one pities her. No one calls her dependent, or interdependent.
In a dance context, to lift and be lifted is good, expected, beautiful, exciting; whereas in
social situations when the person being lifted is disabled in some way, society generally
holds the Ableist view, that it’s really bad to need to be lifted, to be dependent.
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Then Kupers still holding Marcus shifts Marcus across his hip then lowers Marcus
headfirst slowly down to the ground (see figure 9). A viewer can watch the struggle of
weight, gravity and lifting in Kupers as he shifts then lowers Marcus’s body. One can see
the muscles in Marcus’s back, as Marcus holding onto Kupers legs guides himself down.
Part of the Power of A Walk in the Park lies not only in the way the dance contrasts the
ableist script, but in how Kupers and Marcus' dance/improvisation let the realities of
Disability—the suggestions of vulnerability, interdependence and the much-feared
dependence—gently seep into their dance, as when Kupers lifts Marcus. Here Marcus
and Kupers don’t deny the issues or suggestions of dependence or interdependence. In an
earlier scene, Marcus (disabled) lifts the nondisabled, Kupers onto Marcus’s powerchair
and takes Kupers for a ride (see figure 10).
Figure 9. Kupers lowering Marcus headfirst to the ground in Dandelion Dancetheater's A
Walk in the Park (2006).
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Figure 10. Marcus takes a frightened-looking Kupers for a ride on Marcus' powerchair in
Dandelion Dancetheater's A Walk in the Park.
While I love this reversal of power—that disabled lifts nondisabled and takes him for a
ride, I find myself drawn in to the interdependence and dependence in this lifting scene,
where Kupers lifts Marcus, while the woman speaks the monologue. Lifting can be
mutual, human and artful…awkward and beautiful. All the while, the Ableist script plays.
Marcus and Kupers dance against the Ableism in the script. That is, their dancing
counters or contrasts the words, the thoughts behind the words. Marcus and Kupers also
dance with Ableism meaning that they dance together despite the fact that Ableism exists,
that some viewers may still view these dancers--disabled and nondisabled—as limited, as
less than, as practicing therapy instead of performance that radically challenges and
undermines the status quo. Dancing with Ableism in this case also means that
performing artists, such as Marcus and Kupers use Ableism as part of their art, as Marcus
does in re-writing or re-framing the stereotypical phrases people use against disabled
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people. Marcus and Kupers use Ableism to expose Ableism and to problemetize
Ableism, as well as to reach out to create vibrant improvisational dancetheater work.
At the very end of the woman's Ableist monologue, despite the overwhelming
negativity of her words, she concludes with the words, “And yet, something drew me to
him,” indicating her attraction to the disabled man (someone like Marcus) despite his
perceived strangeness and difference, or despite her seeing him as strange, sad, and
limited. In this part of the text, Marcus recognizes the attraction people may feel at times
toward disabled people despite the negativity of their internalized Ableism, despite the
"heavy weights of excess meaning" attached to disabled people (Kuppers Disability and
Contemporary Performance 5). Marcus recognizes the opening or potential for
connection that these moments of attraction present. The end of the text echoes the
beginning of A Walk in the Park, with the opening of Kupers to Marcus. At the same
time, the audience is watching two men who differ in many (outward) ways connect in
performance. In his autobiographically-based play Storm Reading, Marcus wrote:
When you walk into a room
full of people
and there’s a disabled person in the room
and she scares you
or you want to avoid him
or she mystifies you
or you want to reach out and help
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but don’t know how…
when this happens you are on
the cutting edge of liberation.(as qtd. In Wisehart 129)
The word “liberation” is often used in civil rights movements to indicate the
liberation needed by oppressed people, yet in this case, Marcus uses liberation to indicate
the liberation people need from the negativity and fear that surround Disability and
disabled people. Marcus and Kupers encourage audiences to embark on the hard and
exciting work of moving toward connection with Disability and disabled people, toward
recognition of Nondisability, toward Integration, toward the Power of Disability and
Integration, toward the challenges, joys and knowledge of Partnership and Relationship—
both on stage and off. When someone says the phrase, “It was ‘a walk in the park’,” they
mean, it was easy, and quite possibly pleasurable. In this piece, Partnering is not always
effortless. It’s a process. It’s a part of the relationship—the dialogue. It’s okay for Marcus
and Kupers to let the effort show…and the delight.
Kupers and Marcus integrate Disability and Nondisability in A Walk in the Park,
this danced dialogue between disabled and nondisabled subjectivities that aims to draw
the viewer into nondisabled, disabled and integrated experiences of everyday life, dance,
and relationship, while providing a much-needed critique of Ableism. In terms of Power,
Marcus and Kupers’ performance shows the Power of movement, voice, and subjectivity
that springs from Disability. A Walk in the Park also exposes Nondisability as a
subjectivity, by focusing on nondisabled connection and fear of disabled people’s
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“difference”. A Walk in the Park puts the spotlight on the position of Nondisabled
(through Kuper’s character) thereby exposing nondisabled curiosity, fear, and detachment
in order to, in dialogical moments, open up these (nondisabled) reactions to much needed
critical questioning. A Walk in the Park shows the nondisabled man’s attempts to
connect more comfortably with a disabled man as a process.
Concerning Partnership, Marcus and Kupers in A Walk in the Park draw viewers
in to the disabled character’s (Marcus’) and the nondisabled character’s (Kupers’)
Partnership, through the kinesthetic movement/dance experiences of unison, gravity, and
momentum in the dance, as well through the integrated experiences of pleasure and the
intimate physical communication of Contact Improvisation. Additionally through his
final text, Marcus exposes the repetitive, negative language of Ableism for critique, while
not denying the lure of the ableist language. Kupers and Marcus’ dancing speaks back to
the limiting words of the ableist text and in that the dancing is allowed to tell a different
more human story, using the mediums of Contact Improvisation and Dancetheater.
One could argue that A Walk in the Park is simply about a nondisabled guy who
meets a disabled guy. I argue that A Walk in the Park gives viewers an opportunity to
explore, perhaps laugh at, perhaps resonate with Kupers’ encounter with disabled
difference in the form of Marcus or perhaps relate to Marcus encountering the same old
stereotypical fear of difference and fascination with difference. As a performance that
reflects and attempts to reflect aspects of the social world, A Walk in the Park is one of
many performances vitally attempting to break down and deconstruct the Ableism in
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performance and everyday life.
In terms of disabled-nondisabled integrated performances, in the past 30 years,
more and more dance and performance groups have sprung up which include mainly
dancers with physical disabilities, and of those, mainly dancers whose bodies can still
conform to many classical standards of control. When dancers with vocal differences,
spasms and asymmetrical bodies take the stage, such as Marcus, they take Integration two
steps further. In terms of meaningful inclusion of people with disabilities in performance,
the field is still wide open, and I thrill to see what new questions, embodiments, voices,
points-of-view and explorations will come and are coming from greater inclusions and
how these performances will and do challenge and excite the field of performance as a
whole.
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Chapter 4
OLIMPIAS’ “JOURNEY”: ACCESSING MEMORIALIZATION, PRESENCE,
POWER AND COMMUNITY IN DISABILITY CULTURE PERFORMANCE
Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
A Participatory Score
A nourishing re-imagining of memorialisation.
The score focuses on the Peter Eisenman memorial in Germany, and the
lawsuits that surrounded it: the disabled people of Germany sued for
disability access to the site, and lost.
~The Olimpias’ email invitation to Journey to the
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, March 2010
(Kuppers “Two Olimpias Events”)
Petra Kuppers and Neil Marcus of The Olimpias designed Journey to the
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin [Journey], a participatory performance score, partly in
response to the inaccessibility of Peter Eisenman’s 2005 Holocaust Memorial in Berlin,
the lawsuits mounted by Germans with disabilities, and the result of their lawsuits. The
disabled Germans lost their case and the memorial remains inaccessible to many with
(physical) disabilities. Kuppers and Marcus, both disabled and both wheelchair users,
and also German and Jewish American respectively (both living in the United States),
visited the memorial the previous year and found it to be inaccessible as well. Journey
engages Integration(s) through “radical access,” engages Power Dynamics through
participants’ roles (person in a line, gatekeeper, judge), as well as through a performance
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score, which is a combination of closed [structured] and suggestively open to
participants’ interpretations. Journey also engages Partnership through close proximity
and touch, which potentially allows further engagements and associations—Holocaustrelated or not—for the participants/co-creators. The Olimpias’ Journey is a subtly activist
participatory performance that problemetizes and responds to the lack of Disability
access at Eisenman’s Holocaust Memorial in Berlin by “re-imagining memorialization”
in ways that speak to Integration(s), Power, and Touch/Partnership (relationship, human
connection, intimacy).
In a poem Marcus sent in response to Journey, he writes:
This was our holiday time. A week in the cultural capital of Germany. Two
disabled travelers one German one jew.i remember when petra told me the
whole generation of disabled people above her had been exterminated. Yes this
was why the power of a civil rights movement had been slower to frutate in
Europe” (“very private” 1).7
In thinking of how to respond to the inaccessibility at the memorial, Marcus relates, “We
visited Berlin invited by a group of Butoh artists who were interested in disability. We
talked about doing and action at the Holocaust Memorial. I felt the tension of all wars,”
says Marcus in the introduction to “Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin: A
Social Sculpture,” a short film Kuppers and Marcus made about Journey.
From 2009-2011, Kuppers and Marcus brought Journey to other locations,
including University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Stanford University, Montreal,
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Australia, New Zealand Utrecht, Gothenburg (Sweden) and to the Society for Disability
Studies conference in San Jose (Olimpias Official Website). I participated in two
performances of Journey on the evening of March 19, 2010 in Berkeley, California, at the
Subterranean Arthouse, two blocks from the University of California, Berkeley campus.8
That evening Journey was presented as part of UC Berkeley’s Cultural Studies
Association Conference.
I refer to performers in Journey alternately as participants or co-creators. For the
performances I participated in, I thought of myself as a participant, as this was what term
I heard Kuppers use in talking about the score. Subsequently, I heard Kuppers also use
the term “co-creators” for the participants. I’m partial to the term “co-creators” in that it
is a more active and empowered one and encourages participants to recognize and value
one’s experience and agency as someone who helps create the performance/experiences
and helps create the meanings in/of each performance, however I alternately use the
terms “participant,” “co-creator,” and “performer” to refer to those who joined The
Olimpias on this journey.
Kuppers and Marcus are writers, artists, performers who are actively engaged in
Disability Culture and performance research. Their work and engagements help
contribute to a vibrant Disability Culture, community performance, the arts, writing and
scholarship. Neil Marcus [also see Chapter Three], earned his own entry in the new threevolume Encyclopedia of American Disability History that pays tribute to Marcus’ plays,
poetry, and place in Disability arts and culture and beyond (Cripple Poetics 120).
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Marcus’ recently re-published collection of his Disability-themed ‘zines from the 1980’s,
Special Effects: Advances in Neurology (2011), attest to his early understandings of the
creative and revolutionary potentials of Disability.
Petra Kuppers, founder and artistic director of The Olimpias, is a “disability
culture activist,” community artist, and scholar who has “written extensively on disability
and dance, community performance, embodied poetics, and contemporary performance
aesthetics” (Kuppers Madrona Official Website 1). Bree Hadley of the Performance
Studies Department at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, calls Kuppers ,
“One of the most dynamic thinkers in the field of disability culture, disability arts, and
community performance.” (as qtd. in Kuppers Disability Culture and Community
Performance, back cover). Hadley explains, “Kuppers positions disability culture as a
continual process of negotiation in which people experiment with new ways of relating to
the languages, cultures, and histories that frame their experiences” (as qtd. in Kuppers
Disability Culture, back cover). Kuppers most recent book, Disability Culture and
Community Performance: Find a Strange and Twisted Shape (2011) delves into work she
has led and created with the Olimpias. Kuppers’ other books include Disability and
Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge (2003), The Scar of Visibility: Medical
Performance (2007), and Community Performance: An Introduction (2009). Kuppers
also co-edited The Community Performance Reader (2007) with Gwen Robertson. In
2008, Marcus and Kuppers with photographer Lisa Steichmann released Cripple Poetics
a poetry book tracing Marcus and Kuppers’ courtship, as well as including thoughts,
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sensations and situations around Disability Culture, performance, language, and
embodiment. Kuppers teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, as well as at
Goddard College in Port Townsend, Washington. Kuppers travels frequently, often with
Marcus, on fellowship, writing, researching, teaching, and conducting workshops at a
variety of venues from community spaces to colleges. Kuppers research interests have
brought her to across the U.S., Glasgow, the U.K., Europe, New Zealand, and Australia
(Kuppers Madrona Official Website 1).
The Olimpias’ official website describes The Olimpias as “an artists' collective
and a performance research series” (Olimpias Official Website). This collective includes
community artists, dancers, filmmakers, writers, performers, visual artist, filmmakers—
both disabled and not. The Olimpias official website states that the Olimpias “artists
explore art/life, cross-genre participatory practices, arts for social change and disability
culture work” (Olimpias Website). Kuppers’ community work, performance, video, and
research with the Olimpias includes creative work with people in hospices and with
mental health survivors, as well as projects. The Anarcha Project engaged community
through re-visiting slavery medicine, history (known and unknown), memorialization,
and meanings in the past and present. The Tiresias Project (2007/2008) “allowed
participants to reflect on bodies, myths, transformations, disability and disability culture”
through performance, meetings, writing, photographs, a “videodancepoem” created and
shared beyond the group (Kuppers, Disability Culture and Community Performance 210).
In the Olimpias’ Burning Project (2008-10), Kuppers led participants to stretch across
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disciplines largely non-narratively in writing, workshops and performance around the
subject of cancer, cells, environment. Movement, dance, presence, and dialogue with and
between bodies/people are some of the layers that weave through the work.
In “Contact/Disability Performance. An Essay Constructed Between Petra
Kuppers and Neil Marcus,” Kuppers addresses the dance and embodied connection
within her work and how they relate to the cultural work the Olimpias engage. Kuppers
writes:
I have danced all my life, although my stamina and reach ebb and flow
with time. I dance with other disabled people, moving quickly past scripts
for managing non-disabled expectations. In the Olimpias Performance
Research Series, we work on expressions outside ‘mixed ability’. Nondisabled people dance in the Olimpias as allies, celebrating the creative
expression of disability culture, which extends beyond the limits of
specific impairments. […] My creative aim has never been to integrate
disabled dancers into non-disabled dance practices or even to change nondisabled dance practices into accessible formats. I am intellectually
interested in those projects too, and deeply supportive of all expressions
that broaden human art practice. But my own artwork and the work I host
as a community artist takes the necessary time and the necessary space to
focus on the specific bodily and sensorial creative expressions of people
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whose bodies, senses or minds have been medically labeled as
pathological. (“Contact/Disability” 147)
Kuppers’ statement also reveals her commitments to keeping the work Disability Culturecentered at the same time The Olimpias invites nondisabled people to join in the
Olimpias work in an interdisciplinary manner. Furthermore, while Olimpias’ work, such
as Journey, certainly engages Disability contexts, Olimpias’ work reaches into and across
a wide range of cultural contexts. Journey “takes the necessary time and space” to
explore in the context of history, present and presence.
As I begin to describe the score of Journey, I admit some ambivalence to
describing Journey in detail in that part of the dynamic energy and experience of Journey
lies not only in the cultural and personal contexts and interpretations the participants
bring to the piece, but lies in the suspense, that is, the not knowing what will happen next.
To describe the score is to remove part of the tension of not knowing and the possible
surprises that might occur were one in a performance, but my hope is that this uncovering
may yield an analysis that promotes engagement and dialogue to arise. Journey’s power
is partly in the not knowing and partly in what people create together given this score. If
the reader wishes to read the descriptions of the performance as if one was present in the
room, one may perhaps feel a little of the experience of Journey. Journey can be divided
into five sections as follows:
Journey: 1. Introduction Circle; 2. Line and Gate; 3. Dancing and Judgment; 4.
Braids—Signs of Life; 5. Sharing Circle
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1. Introduction Circle
In the beginning or Introduction section of Journey, Kuppers and Marcus invite
the participants into a circle for an introduction to the score and its origins. Participants
face a slide of a section of the Eisenman’s Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, officially
called, “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.” The slide shows a landscape of
multiples and multiples of large rectangular blocks of slightly varying sizes, each lying
side by side, altering the landscape with their geometry (see figure 11). Each gray
rectangular shape could be said to look coffin-like or tomb-like. Kuppers with Marcus
recall their experience at the memorial, the uneven ground at the memorial and the fact
that they could not experience much of the vast memorial, in that it was unsuitable for
access for people in wheelchairs or people who could not navigate uneven ground.
Kuppers and Marcus share that in trying to find a suitable way to respond, they designed
this piece. At the end of the introductory circle, Kuppers asks each participant in Journey
one by one if they are okay being touched and each person responds. All photos in
Chapter 4 document a performance of Journey at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
The photos do not show the performers in the performance I describe in Berkeley but
give a sense of Journey.
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Figure 11. Seated in front of a slide of Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of
Europe (2005), Kuppers introduces the Olimpias’ Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in
Berlin (2010). Photo by Tim Householder.
2. The Line and The Gate
When the action of the score begins, Kuppers asks permission again to touch each
participant and places each participant in a line one-by-one (see figure 12), one behind
another, in very close physical proximity, all facing Marcus who sits in his powerchair
about 6-8’ distance, facing the group. Two people at the front of the line break off
slightly to the sides of the line to form a sort of “Gate” wherein the two people who form
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the gate proceed to supportively and attentively touch each person who comes through
the line one by one.
Figure 12. The Line and the Gate in Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Photo
by Tim Householder.
3. Dancing/Moving with Marcus and Marcus’ Decision/Judgment: Left or Right?
Kuppers then leads each person one-by-one to Marcus who engages each in an
improvised movement conversation, dance, or exploration that might look like a short
improvisation or a contact improvisation (see figure 13). Then after each “dance,”
Kuppers asks Marcus, “Which direction?” and Marcus speaks his answer—“left” or
“right.” Kuppers then directs each person to one of two areas of the room.
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Figure 13. Marcus improvising/dancing with participant in Journey to the Holocaust
Memorial in Berlin. Photo by Tim Householder.
4. Braids: Signs of Life—Breath and Heartbeats
Kuppers gently guides the first person in each of the two areas to lie down on
their back (or another comfortable position). When the next participant arrives in that
area, Kuppers after asking participants’ permission, directs the participant to place their
head on the stomach of the person lying down. Kuppers invites that person listen to the
stomach and breathing of the person underneath. Then Kuppers asks the person
underneath who has someone’s ear on their stomach to place their hand on the listener’s
upper chest and try to feel that person’s heartbeat. People lay like this until Kuppers
places each participant on another participant in a layered fashion, loosely resembling a
braid—all connected alternately listening to hearts and stomachs/breathing (see figure
14).
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Figure 14 Photos (left and right) of participants in the Braids of Life section of Journey to
the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Photos by Tim Householder.
5. Sharing Circle: Accessing Experience and Voice
When this part of the performance or ritual, as one might call it, comes to a close,
Kuppers and Marcus invite the participants (who are now in two separate braids) to join
the ending circle together wherein Kuppers and Marcus invite the participants or cocreators to share, if they so desire, any response—sensations, thoughts, memories and
experiences—they may have had in Journey. Journey proceeds at a slow, attentive,
sensing pace and lasts approximately forty-five minutes to an hour.
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Re-imagining Memorialization: Eisenman’s Memorial vs. Olimpias’ Journey
The Olimpias invitation to this performance describes Journey as “A nourishing
re-imagining of memorialization.”9 (Kuppers “Two Olimpias events, March 19 and 20th”
1). One might ask the question, “Why ‘re-imagine memorialization’?” Isn’t
memorialization fine the way it is? For example, aren’t (Holocaust) memorializations by
statues, spoken testimonies and witnessing sufficient? Memorialization in Eisenman’s
memorial is problematic in that it’s largely not accessible to people with disabilities.
Ironically, although the Eisenman’s memorial is in Berlin, if he were to build his
memorial in the U.S. (where Eisenman, Kuppers and Marcus reside), he would have to
build the memorial in accordance with Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility
standards. The exclusion of people with disabilities at the memorial could be said to
reflect the exclusions of disabled people in Holocaust history itself, not to mention
history at large. In the poem Neil Marcus sent me in response to Journey, he writes,
“I am disabled but this memorial was given permission to be built without access
And no one talks about disability and holocoust [sic]” (“very private” 1). Both Marcus
and I, have had the experience that people do not talk much or in meaningful ways about
Disability and the Holocaust. I have attended many Holocaust memorializations in the
form of Holocaust Remembrance programs and found that in my communities, Disability
is rarely if ever mentioned in relationship to the Holocaust and if ever, only marginally.
The exclusions of disabled people in Holocaust memorialization reflect the exclusions of
disabled people in Holocaust history as well.
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What is the importance of Disability in relation to the Holocaust? People with
disabilities were one population subject to the Holocaust’s genocidal policies.
Importantly, because people with disabilities were the first group who was murdered
during the Holocaust due to eugenic thinking and policies, this frequently overlooked
history holds the keys to understanding the beginnings of genocidal thought and action
during the Holocaust. How do people compound the exclusions further by not learning
the lessons inherent in our histories, and repeating the exclusions and harmful policies in
the current time? While this memorial is deemed a Jewish memorial, does the exclusion
of Jewish people with disabilities, send the message that Jewish people with disabilities
are not worthy of being memorialized or of memorializing? Are disabled people—not
worthy of being part of the memorialization or only in a peripheral way? In his poem,
Marcus writes, in one short stanza that stands alone:
“I understand the words never ‘forget, but it seems a big shorthand for a mass of
confusion” (“very private”).
What is the message when people building memorials ‘forget,’ exclude and marginalize
populations who were subject to genocide, as well, although the means and numbers of
the murders/genocides vary? What do the words “Never forget,” the rallying cry of
Holocaust memorialization, mean?
For Marcus, the Eisenman memorial is inaccessible physically, but it is also
inaccessible in other ways to him, such as through the memorial’s abstraction, its lack of
humanness, and its strong emphasis on death and tragedy. In describing his reaction to
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Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, in the Olimpias film, “Journey to
the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin: A Social Sculpture,” Marcus writes/says, “I am
Jewish. My partner is German. This black stone, row after row, brings me no peace. I
don’t comprehend it. I am speechless.” In considering how to react to the physically
inaccessible memorial, Kuppers explains, “We needed to create a new sculpture. A
memorial of life. An accessible place of commemoration and assembly. A practice of
peace” (“Journey: Social Sculpture”). In comparing these two takes on memorialization, I
retain an awareness of their different mediums or genres—Eisenman’s is sculpture and
architecture, The Olimpias Journey is community performance. While the forms are
vastly different, the aesthetics and values that seem to come from each form vary. Walker
Art Center curator Joan Rothfuss explains, “while the term [social sculpture]
encompassed many things for Beuys, it might broadly be defined as a conscious act of
shaping, of bringing some aspect of the environment—whether the political system, the
economy, or a classroom—from a chaotic state into a state of form or structure” (“Walker
Art Center/Beuys Hyperessay/Creativity”). In this quote, I find myself thinking that
structure and form, that is, shaping chaos into order could be a harmful form of control,
yet Beuys’ social sculpture, according to Rothfuss, “should be accomplished
cooperatively, creatively and across disciplines….for Beuys, the need to change, or
literally re-form, was urgent” (“Beuys Hyperessay”). This definition of social sculpture
highlights what is inherent in both performance such as Journey and architecture—the
shaping into “form or structure,” yet what values and aesthetics do the Olimpias and
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Eisenman present in their sculptures—architectural and social—and in what ways to they
contrast in terms of their approaches to Integration, Power and (human) Relationship? In
response to an inaccessible form of memorialization, Kuppers and Marcus designed
Journey to be a more accessible form of art, a social sculpture, a ritual, a performance.
The “need to change, or literally, re-form” is urgent (“Beuys Hyperessay”).
The Score of Journey —A Combination of Closed and Open
A score is a map or design for a performance or a number of performances.
Journey, like many scores, is a combination of open and closed; “A closed score controls
the action; an open score allows for a variety of options” (Halprin, Halprin and Burns, as
qtd. in Schechner 234). The combination of closed and openness in Journey seems to
create much of the experience of the participants. Kuppers and Marcus’ score is closed in
that there is a clear structure and Kuppers and, at times, Marcus direct the participants
within the form. That is, a participant almost always knows where they should physically
be in the performance and what they should be doing, making this a closed score.
Journey, as a score, however, is also open in that the structure of the score is also highly
suggestive and opens up many layers and contexts, allowing a participant to connect in an
open and unchoreographed way with the multiple contexts. This is especially true, given
the slow pace of the score and the Kuppers directions at times to be aware of sensation
and connection between participants. One of the main features of Journey is the
layeredness that emerges from the openness of the score mixed with a strong and highly
suggestive structure which suggests layers of time, place, ordinary, extraordinary,
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intimacy, war, judgment, the everyday, to name just a few. Kuppers and Marcus
combination of closed and openness in Journey encourages multiple contexts and layers
to open to participant/co-creators.
In addition to the multiple contexts and layers, each performance shifts depending
on who is present in the performances, especially given the Holocaust theme (however
peripherally) as context. That is, people’s presences, bodies, movement, relationships,
and experiences change the dynamics and meanings of each performance. Each of the
March 19th, 2010 performances, I attended had twelve to sixteen participants, disabled
and nondisabled, male and female who ranged in age from about 20 years old to over 60
years old. The participants included people with visible disabilities, wheelchair users,
people with prostheses, people with non-visible disabilities (including anxiety,
depression, chronic pain, Lyme disease and multiple sclerosis), burn survivors, and a
dystonic person with a vocal difference. There was a range of other identities including
white, Asian American, Latina, queer, Jewish, Christian, and German. Performers and
non-performers. Some identities also remain unknown to me.
Echoes of Holocaust History in the Present
Journey does not directly reference Holocaust history per se in relation to people
with disabilities. Kuppers and Marcus do not give participants any information as to the
brutal history of disabled people during the Holocaust and the genocidal aims of Nazis
(including doctors) during the Holocaust. Instead, Journey aims to memorialize by
provide a “nourishing” experience, one that affirms life and human connection, while
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allowing participant’s associations, Holocaust-related or otherwise. I, however, do feel it
necessary to share this history of people with disabilities during the Holocaust to
recognize disabled people’s critical and pivotal place as the first to be subjected to the
Nazi regime’s genocidal plans. In Suzanne E. Evans’ aptly-titled Forgotten Crimes: The
Holocaust and People with Disabilities, Evans speaks to these “forgotten crimes”
gathering facts about the “extermination,” torture (including doctor-led experiments), and
forced sterilization of people with disabilities in Germany, Prussian provinces, Poland,
and the former Soviet Union (15-18).10 Evans cites that between 5,000 and 25,000
children with disabilities were murdered (16). Evans writes, “The first category of people
the Nazis began exterminating as part of their quest to build a master “Aryan” race was
the so-called Ausschinkinderer, the ‘garbage children’ or the ‘committee children’ who
had been born with supposedly hereditary disabilities” (15). Evans also cites that “at least
275,000 Germans with disabilities” were murdered between 1940 and 1941 in Berlin, no
less, “As part of the Nazi regime’s ‘Aktion T4’euthanasia program” (16). The total
number of people with disabilities murdered by the Nazi regime is believed to be “as
many as 750,000 by 1945” (Evans 18). Evans’ does not view these incidents as isolated
or as only reflective of the actions of the Nazi regime arguing that remembering this
history, “the mass slaughter of people with disabilities during the Holocaust” is “crucial”
to understanding the marginalization of disabled people in current times and the
“attitudes and moral failures that allowed the Holocaust to happen” (20). Bengt
Lindqvist, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Disability 1994-2002, succinctly
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concurs, writing “While the actions of Hitler’s Germany represent the most structured
and far-reaching attempt to eradicate the class of people with disabilities, it reflects the
treatment of disabled people throughout history….[people] long segregated and
marginalized” by society (9). Lindqvist also names the attitudinal societal barriers
(discrimination) that lurk behind unwelcoming so-called “physical” barriers or lack of
access to spaces, access and opportunity (9). The echoes of denied access and devaluing
of people with disabilities, these scholars argue, occur not as isolated incidents but as
systematic oppressions related to present oppressions. Holocaust history echoes in
throughout Journey. Which people have a right to be here? Who do we include and
welcome? Who has the power to decide? How do we connect with each other?
After I finish typing the page of statistics—about the murders and murderous
policies people and doctors inflicted on people with disabilities and illness and supposed
illness, I wonder, “Does this tell you anything about the lives, the families, the friends,
the passions of these children and adults with disabilities who were murdered and subject
to genocide? Do I only remember the losses without remembering whom or what was
lost? How do we remember and honor people and remember a history when so few
survived to tell it, when families were discouraged from telling these stories. Do we
remember the losses or the lives too and how should we do so?”
Loaded Locations: Berlin, California, Berkeley
The Olimpias performances also connect with the history of people with
disabilities during the Holocaust in terms of location. For example, Berlin is ironically
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both the site of the Holocaust Memorial (which, as stated, excludes many people with
disabilities), as well as the site of the murders of “at least 275,000 Germans with
disabilities” during the Holocaust (Evans 18). In terms of the Memorial’s relation to the
Holocaust at large, reviewer Ouroussoff writes, “The location could not be more apt.
During the war, this was the administrative locus of Hitler’s killing machine. His
chancellery building, designed by Albert Speer and since demolished, was a few hundred
yards away just to south; his bunker lies beneath a parking lot” (1). Additionally,
Journey occurred in California, infamously one of the homes to leaders of the eugenics
movement whose promotion of “racial hygiene” was part of the basis for discriminatory
genocidal policies in Nazi Germany. Furthermore, the Olimpias performances of Journey
occur in just a couple of blocks from University of California, Berkeley, home of the
Disability Rights Movement and Disability activism, as well as being a location with a
rich a Disability Culture and presence.
Journey can be located in the intersection of Community Performance and
Disability Culture. The foci of Journey indicate Disability Cultural values and aesthetics
as well as Community Performance values/aesthetics—accessibility, questioning power
and claiming power, making connections, making meaning, (Disability) activism,
creating and re-claiming (Disability) history, claiming “voice,” including physical
communication, engaging in meaningful dialogue, and creating Disability Culture
performance and social spaces (Kuppers/Robertson 2, Gill 269 as qtd. in Kuppers
“Disability Culture”).
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Access in Theory and Practice
Kupper’s “Radical Access” which she and Marcus employ in Journey and
Galloway, Nudd, and Sandahl’s “Ethic of Accommodation” are two approaches to
accessibility in performance that share some core beliefs/values/aesthetics at the juncture
where Disability meets community performance. Both approaches and their
accompanying aesthetics grapple with questions of how to include, accommodate, and
welcome people. In the essay “‘Actual Lives’ and the Ethic of Accommodation,”
performance practitioners, Galloway, Nudd, and Sandahl, propose an “Ethic of
Accommodation,” which stems from their experiences as practitioners who have
experienced exclusion, as well as from their experiences honing and shaping inclusive
performance and practices, particularly through their experience in workshops and
production of “Actual Lives,” a traveling show that included many people with
disabilities, sensory impairments/differences, and other differences. In speaking of their
personal experiences with exclusion, Galloway, Nudd, and Sandahl write, “We have all
been affected by traditional practices of theatre that still ensure that the disabled, queer,
female, non-white bodies remain a rarity on stage, except in roles that reinforce the most
demeaning stereotypes” (228). They also speak to performance spaces that exclude
people, such as the many theaters that consider accommodations for people with
disabilities “a thorn in the side,” and only “make their audience spaces minimally
accessible” (229). In contrast to largely exclusionary practices, the “Ethic of
Accommodation” they describe is “intimately tied to disability politics which seeks to
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accommodate difference rather than ‘tolerate’ it or smooth out our rough edges”
(Galloway, Nudd, Sandahl 228). Galloway, Nudd and Sandahl assert that, “Genuine
inclusiveness requires a willingness to make changes to core beliefs, practices and
aesthetics” (228). One of the changes they propose in working with diverse performers
with a wide range of disabilities and differences, include making “structural changes
toward flexibility and openness” (228).
Kuppers and Marcus who practice what Kuppers terms “radical access” display
an attitude and “willingness to make changes to core beliefs, practices and aesthetics”
reflected in their wide-ranging approach to access in Journey (228). With the Olimpias,
access is no afterthought or add-on but is built into the features of a workshop or
performance. While many people still think of accessibility narrowly, in terms of
wheelchair accessibility, Kuppers and Marcus design for access on many levels. In
Community Performance: An Introduction, Kuppers points out a wide range of ways to
approach access—in relation to the community at large, as well as specifically in relation
to people with disabilities. What assumptions do leaders of groups make in terms of
access—time, transportation, cost, ability to work in groups of certain sizes or with
certain material (Kuppers, Community Performance: An Introduction 70). Kuppers also
speaks of access in terms of working with people with mental health issues, sensory
impairments and differences, cognitive and intellectual differences/disabilities, in terms
of mobility, age, language, culture, getting cultural permission, etc. (Kuppers,
Community Performance 70-89).The piece of advice she begins her discussion of access
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with is, “The single most useful piece of information about good ways of ensuring access
is ‘when in doubt, ask’ ” In this advice, Kuppers encourages the agency of the
participants, as well as the dialogue with the participants (Community Performance 70).In
Journey, Kuppers and Marcus further access for participant/co-creators through using
flexible performance practices in terms of physical access, “emotional access,” as well as
access to the “voices” of a community.
As an aspect of Kuppers’ practice of “radical access,” the Olimpias depart from
more traditional rehearsal and performance practices concerning physical access in that
participants come to workshops or performances as “self contained” experiences, i.e.
without the typical rehearsals to lead up to performance (Disability Culture and
Community Performance 123). Kuppers states, “This allows for much freer engagement,
and a wider draw of people, forming communities rather than ensembles” (123) While
community performance and other performance may certainly at times occur without
rehearsals, Olimpias do so largely to create greater access for people with disabilities,
illness, pain, fatigue and other differences. Speaking to what distinguishes Olimpias
practices from Physically Integrated Dance practices, Kuppers writes, “We use a different
path from our colleagues in professional physically integrated dance and theatre, (like the
US’s Axis or the UK’s CandoCo where ability and technique skills are developed, and
traditional performance paradigms of stamina and punctuality need to shape the work”
(123). Kuppers asserts the “deep insight and creative ability” of Olimpias artists and she
acknowledges that while some of the artists she works with “might not be able to attend
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rehearsals regularly, and extensively” or guarantee their presence at a particular
performance, Kuppers sees “this difference” (what others may call a “limitation”) as a
“virtue” that leads the Olimpias to question, challenge, and stretch “the format of art and
other paradigms” (123). So instead of the strict time-based rehearsal and commitment
seen in traditional rehearsal for performance, a participant in Journey can just show up
for a performance/workshop without making further commitments to an ongoing
rehearsal schedule. This flexibility as practice, allows for greater inclusion of people with
disabilities and differences.
Physical Access in Journey
In terms of physical accessibility, the Olimpias’ Kuppers and Marcus choose
spaces that are wheelchair accessible, yes, or else they and others would not be able to get
in the door easily, yet they also show flexibility and about certain types of access and try
to find workable solutions to imperfect access, as many people with disabilities do. For
example, Subterranean Arthouse is an accessible space without an accessible bathroom
attached, however, Marcus or Kuppers can show a person to a nearby accessible
restroom. In terms of physical access to movement, Kuppers and Marcus’s score involves
pedestrian or everyday movements— walking or moving forward, lying down, getting
up—and as such is fairly accessible to people with many different embodiments.
Kuppers, as a guide, seems to adjust for anyone’s needs, such as accommodating
participants who could stand for only limited periods of time by inviting them to the front
of the line so they would not have to stand for long. If a participant needed assistance,
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such as assistance lying down or sitting up, Kuppers was attentive and a participant lent a
hand on their own or when asked by Kuppers.
An oft-overlooked feature of physical access is economically accessibility—if
you don’t have the money, you can’t join. Journey, being free, was economically
accessible, or one had the option, without pressure, to donate an amount to support the
venue if they wished. Journey was very close to accessible bus and commuter trains so
was fairly accessible in terms of transportation. Journey can be performed with little to
no speech if necessary, which makes the performance accessible to those with sensory
differences, such as deafness, speech differences, or to those who do not speak English.
Also because the pace of Journey is very slow and attentive, participants were not rushed
or pressured to “keep up.” While every performance cannot be accessible fully to
everyone’s needs, Olimpias’ practices and design of Journey encourage wide
participation. Olimpias’ practices also create the aesthetics of Journey. For example, the
slow, attentive pace in Journey creates opportunities for prolonged physical contact
between participants and opportunities for participants to turn attention to thought,
sensation, the present moment—features and aesthetics of the performance.
Creating Emotional Access: Holocaust and (Physical) Touch
By “emotional access,” I refer to Kuppers and Marcus’ practice in Journey of
making challenging, “heavy” or intimate (i.e. emotional) subjects more comfortable, safer
and more emotionally (or psychologically) accessible, particularly with reference to the
Holocaust and physical Touch, both of which might require a participant/co-creator great
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sensitivity when engaging with these. Although Journey is a response to the Holocaust
Memorial in Berlin and could be read to be about the memorial rather that about the
Holocaust itself (or in any number of other ways), the immensely heavy subject and the
word Holocaust still might be too heavy for people to want to engage in, even
peripherally, especially in a “participatory” performance where no one knows exactly
what will happen. Additionally, Journey involves a large amount of Touch (not
particularly to intimate parts) often between strangers. How do Kuppers and Marcus
create emotional (as well as physical) access around the Holocaust and Touch?
First, in openly stating the subject matter—a response to the Holocaust
Memorial—in the invitations to join, would-be participants could opt out if they deem the
subject to be too “heavy” from the outset. In my research, I noted an earlier invitation to
Journey in Michigan included the phrase “not a downer at all,” and subsequent
performance invitations used language that seemed to seek to create some ease and
comfort around the Holocaust as part of the theme of the performance (Kuppers Olimpias
Official Website). Finally, through the openness of Journey’s score, Kuppers and Marcus
support “emotional access” in that a participant can connect to Journey on various
levels—heavier (more serious and Holocaust-related) or lighter. For example, given the
possible Holocaust context, participants waiting in The Line could associate this with
standing in line at Auschwitz waiting to be patted down and searched, although this
patting down is a gentle attentive touch. Alternately, those waiting in line might just be in
the present time or could connect this waiting with very mundane everyday waiting, like
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in line at an airport. The score is clearly open to many interpretations and participants can
connect in lighter ways in Journey. So through openness about the subject matter in the
invitation, through “nourishing” and positive language, and through an open score,
Kuppers and Marcus try to create “emotional access” around the subject of the Holocaust.
Concerning emotional safety or comfort around Touch and physical proximity
between participants throughout Journey, Kuppers creates a sense of safety and trust by
incorporating consent as an aesthetic into Journey, asking permissions before Touch or
close proximity may occur. For example, at the beginning of Journey, Kuppers using a
gentle and sensitive tone of voice asks participants one-by-one if they are okay being
touched and listens attentively for the answer. Later when people are lying down together
in an overlapping braid-like fashion, Kuppers asks if it's okay if this person puts his head
on your stomach or if that person puts her hand on your heart to feel your heartbeat.
Kuppers creates comfort and emotional safety through listening, asking permission
directly, individually, soothingly, and through a sense of allowing, which could allow
someone to say for example, "No, I'm not very comfortable being touched." This
aesthetic of incorporating consent concerning touch in performance could also be
considered an ethical aesthetic as well, to ask permission to touch.
Accessing “Voice,” Experience, Self, and Community
Kuppers and Marcus engage another part of access—accessing “voice” and
experience. In the sharing circle at the end of Journey, Kuppers and Marcus invite
participants to share their individual experiences, responses, resonances, sensations, and
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reflections during Journey. Kuppers also offers participants the option to share their
response through movement. As a participant, one gets access to one’s own
voice/voicing, to the listening of the group, and to other participants’ diverse experiences.
While sharing often happens among friends after a performance, Marcus and Kuppers
build access to others’ experience and reflection into Journey—glimpses into others’
sensations, histories, memories, identities, imaginations, and connections. In this open
circle of sharing, listening, and connecting, Kuppers and Marcus offer an intimate social
and cultural space, serving as a community builder between co-creators.
Participants/Co-Creators: Performing Power, Accessing Touch
In these last sections, I address Power Dynamics and Touch/relationship as these
concepts weave through responses of three Journey participants—Amber DiPietra,
Harold Burns, and myself. Each co-creator of Journey finds her or his own resonances.
Journey sparks participants’ resonances through Journey’s structure (The Line, The
Gate), the roles (as person in The Line, at ‘The Gate people,’ or interacting/reacting with
Marcus as ‘Dancer/Judge’), the power associated with each role, and/or through Touch
between participants. Co-creators find resonances through contexts, Holocaust-related or
not, they may associate with Journey. A few days after I participated in Journey in
Berkeley, I solicited responses of a few of the participants I had met that evening or on a
previous occasion. I asked participants via email for any experience or reflection they
wished to share. In a very open and general way, I shared themes, particularly Power
Dynamics and Touch, that I saw activated by Journey, but encouraged any response. I
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look at three participants’ written responses, as well as quoting from Marcus’ poem
which he sent in response to my query.
DiPietra: Power of Processing and Touch as “An Inversion of Being Processed”
Amber DiPietra, one of the participants/co-creators who responded to my email,
is a writer who also works as a disability resource counselor in San Francisco. DiPietra is
also a wheelchair user; she chose to participate in Journey standing, i.e. without her
wheelchair. DiPietra writes:
I have to say I did not have much of a connection to the Holocaust aspect.
It is certainly something I think about in my life, but the experience had a
very present and personal meaning for me that I was not connecting to the
cultural and historical events. (“Re: Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in
Berlin” 1)
DiPietra’s comments indicate that Journey provides different ways to connect, not
necessarily through the Holocaust or the memorial as topic. She connects instead
personally to the present, the immediacy of Journey which emphasizes presence, an
awareness of surroundings, and the present moment, through physical touch, physical
proximity, and by Kuppers and Marcus encouragement at times to be attuned to one’s
own bodily sensations and connection to other participants.
In Journey, DiPietra began standing in The Line with other participants, then went
to The Gate where the two “gate people” touched her (body). DiPietra writes concerning
the beginning of Journey, “I did immediately feel processed. I fell into line. I followed
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directions. I gave up info about myself…” (DiPietra “Re: Journey” 1). DiPietra then
shares her initial associations with being touched in The Line:
The disabled body gets processed at the drs. office or social security office
etc. I am disabled and I also work in social services so I do some of the
processing. Shuttling people through routes procedures to garner
services/exams/etc It often involves the patient/client giving over much of
themselves in terms of identifying info: name, age, SSN, etc. (DiPietra
“Re: Journey” 1)
When DiPietra speaks of "being processed," her comments reveal how her
experiences in The Line and at The Gate in Journey spark associations to her experiences
in life both as a disabled person herself and as a worker who assists disabled people in
navigating social services. DiPietra relates to this processing, in relation to the processing
by medical and social service systems that disabled people have to go through. DiPietra
through her work in social services also processes other (disabled) people. When
DiPietra's writes, "It often involves the patient/client giving over much of themselves in
terms of identifying info: name, age, SSN, etc.," I find her phrase "giving over much of
themselves" to be a telling/intriguing one in that DiPietra seems to say that disabled
people do not just give up their personal information but "much of themselves"—a not
very powerful position to be in (“Re: Journey” 1). Although non-disabled people too
must give up personal information, disabled people in general are more likely to have to
give information much more often, that is, give up themselves to strangers. DiPietra’s
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comments relate the disempowering nature of medical and social systems “processing” of
(disabled) people.
DiPietra then describes something very different or opposite that occurs, what she
refers to as "an inversion of being processed." DiPietra experiences this “inversion”
through touch and connection with another participant (“Re: Journey” 1). While a person
"being processed" indicates being like a product, an inanimate object, de-humanized,
made into numbers (SSN, birth date, diagnosis date), interacted with mechanically, this
"inversion of being processed" that DiPietra cites, transpires through human touch,
contact, breath, proximity, relationship, perhaps community. Describing the Braid section
where participants lie overlapping upon each other, DiPietra writes, "I felt like a useful
tool, as a body among bodies—refortifying myself. As in when I laid down and
someone’s head was put on my stomach” (“Re: Journey” 1). DiPietra still uses the
mechanistic in her language, describing herself as a “tool,” yet here she feels like a useful
tool in that she is in relationship with another’s body/being in a way that feeds her,
"refortifies" her, and serves a purpose—both social and performative. This intimacy
exists in relationship, as a caring performative collaboration DiPietra indicates when she
recalls:
All the breath work in yoga never makes me so successful as even in and
out deep breathing as that time period did. I was a little self-conscious—
this person’s head was in intimate contact with my belly and breath. And
then I realized here was an opportunity to breath “well” for both of us, it
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would make both of us more comfortable and add to the somatic
choreography of the piece. (“Re: Journey” 1)
DiPietra’s relationship with a participant in these moments affect DiPietra bodily in that
she felt she could actually breathe better in relation with this other person. While DiPietra
mentions Disability in talking about the processing in the beginning of Journey, she
ultimately declares this experience to be “beyond identity and toward intimacy—a kind
of undoing or reinvigorating of some of the aforementioned processing that must be done
to the disabled body” (“Re: Journey” 1).
DiPietra's responses, sparked by being “processed” or touched in The Line in
Journey, show a complex engagement with Power Dynamics that she associates with her
life, work and the present. Power Dynamics swing from the less powerful position of
being processed (as a disabled person) to a more powerful position, being the processor
of disabled people in helping them get processed by medical and social systems. Finally,
DiPietra experiences an even more powerful place in which all the “processing” is
“inverted” through Touch, attention, calming breathing and connection with another
participant. Dehumanizing systems contrast with humanizing Touch and Relationship.
Burns: “Middleman” in Historical and Present Drama
In Olimpias project, Kuppers writes, “people do not ‘own’ medical diagnosis.
They do not step onto a stage and proclaim their medically given label. Instead, we twist
and turn around and under words…” (Kuppers Disability Culture and Community
Performance 131) Burns is bipedal and did not have a physical disability that I could see,
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but I did not know his relationship to disability. When I asked participants about how
they wanted to be identified in this chapter, Burns shared that he is a “queer dancer and
experimental performer” who identifies as a “queer white (irish/italian) male, an activist,
educator, performer and gardener” (“A Thesis Question: Identity” 1). In terms of his
relationship with Disability, Burns shared that he is “an attendant/support staff and
[identifies] as someone who lives with joint pain (from Lyme disease and overuse)”
(“Identity” 1). Burns elaborated, “I recognize myself as someone with ‘hidden’
disabilities and someone who walks through the world with ingrained and assigned
privilege (race, class, gender)” (“Identity” 1). So although I intended originally to gather
responses from participants with and without disabilities, I ended up with two responses
from participants with visible disabilities (DiPietra and Marcus) and two with hidden
disabilities (Burns and I), each with their own particular relationships to the performance.
Unlike DiPietra, Burns clearly felt a resonance to Holocaust history or Holocaust
as theme or context for Journey. Burns performed as a “Gate person,” who was instructed
by Kuppers to gently and supportively touch each participant in The Line. Burns, as a
‘Gate person’ is in less power than Kuppers, at the same time Burns as ‘the Gate person’
is in a position of more power than the people in The Line he touches who do not know
exactly why and have agreed to be touched without any sense of the outcome or direction
of the score. In this role, Burns finds himself empathizing and imagining himself in the
in-between role of a working “middleman”:
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My 'role' as gate in the Journey score is complex and multi-layered. I see
the reality of my immigrant history being played out as well as my
intimate physical history. Historically my people Irish, Italian (coalminers
and metal workers respectively) have been middle men in the historic
dramas they live out. As a 'gate' person I am again a 'middle man' in the
sense that I have been given a task that I must complete over and above
the deepest desires of the participants. I think of the German workers
caught up in the irrational exuberance of Nazism, the possibilities they
must have imagined for being proud of themselves and 'improving their
class.(“Re: Olimpias Journey thoughts” 1)
Burns feels like a "middleman," relating his in-between power position in
Journey, to the positioning of his family’s immigrant working history that he links to
working “middlemen” during the Holocaust. In the above passage, Burns, sparked by his
“task” or role in Journey, reaches into empathy and understanding for workers during the
Holocaust, at the same time he clearly recognizes “the irrational exuberance of Nazism”
(“Re: Olimpias Journey Thoughts” 1). Reading Burns comments, I am aware that at the
same time he can imagine the workers’ point of view, Burns, as a person who is both
queer and with strong relations to Disability would have been subject to persecution
during the Holocaust. Burns views and imaginings, leaning towards empathy or
understanding of those “caught up” in Nazism tread into a taboo area of exploring the
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possible/imagined realities of everyday workers during the Holocaust, some of whom
(may have) allowed the Holocaust to happen.
Burns relates the middleman position with lack of power, noting, “As US citizens
we often wish and imagine ourselves as the grand protagonists in a historical drama, but
often as individuals we are merely pawns helping other pawns negotiate and reconcile
themselves with systemic injustice (think social workers, care workers, etc)” (Burns “Re:
Olimpias” 1). Burns’ comments intersect with DiPietra, who is also “middle man” or
rather “middle person” in her role of social work (between client and system).
Amir: Integrating History, Identities; Passing; Touch & Double Consciousness
While DiPietra described her experience in Journey as “beyond identity and
toward intimacy,” I, on the other hand, was very aware of identity during Journey. I felt a
sense of my present excitement about the rich mix of people together in this diverse
group including people with a range of different disabilities and embodiments, plus
people different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. On the other hand, as I looked at this
rich array of participants with their rich range of embodiments and movement, I became
acutely aware of how the people in this room would likely have been viewed in history,
particularly through the eyes of the Nazi regime which sought to eliminate disabled and
non-white people, bodies. I was aware of my own identities, particularly, my Jewishness
and my connection to Disability, to Disabled. I then quickly thought of my (perhaps)
ability to pass as non-Jewish, as well as my ability to “pass” as nondisabled. After all, I
easily do this in my everyday life. For many, the ability to “pass,” to hide one’s identity,
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to hide oneself during the Nazi era was a critical survival skill. As someone who in
present day California, must choose when to “come out” or when to remain silent, hidden
(a.k.a. to “pass”) around Disability, sexuality, Jewishness; I still am troubled by questions
about the advantages and risks of “passing” vs. coming out, mainly concerning Disability
which carries the heaviest stigma of my identities, as well as being the least understood in
my experience in terms of social, political, and historic significance.
In creating a performance that welcomes disabled and nondisabled people into the
act or ritual of memorializing, Kuppers and Marcus knit history back together. That is,
they re-integrate Disability back into Holocaust history and memorialization. During
Journey, I felt the two parts of me—Jewish and the disabled—being knit back together.
Nazis (Nazi eugenic thought) stamped both disabled people and Jewish people
biologically inferior. Why is it that in my Jewish upbringing, Disability in relation to the
Holocaust was and still is rarely, if ever, mentioned? When Disability or disabled people
were mentioned, did I pick up on the tacit assumption that disabled life was less worthy,
disabled people less alive? Or did I assume this because Disability was so rarely
mentioned? My experiences in Journey integrated two vital parts of my present
identity—Jewish and disabled—Jewish, an identity or culture I was born into, and
disabled, a newer culture for me and a social, political and cultural identity I struggle to
embrace in a world which for the most part looks medically and pityingly upon
“disabled.” In Disability Cultural circles, I feel and embrace the power of Disability in so
many forms—through the scholars, the performers, the artists, the historians, the activists,
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the writers and the everyday people I encounter. In Journey, I felt like I was part of a
powerful Disability performance, ritual, community—something edgy and sacred. I’m
comfortable with a Jewish identity in Disability Cultural circles, but do I feel comfortable
with a Disabled identity in Jewish circles? How do I feel at Holocaust commemoration
after Holocaust commemoration when no speaker mentions disabled people as part of this
history, my history, our history? How should I become more active in bringing this to
people’s attention? How can I shift from more passive to more active in my
communities? How to critique around such a sensitive topic—Holocaust memorials?
At times throughout Journey, I had this double consciousness of intimacy mixed
with a sinister context of “intimacy” during the Holocaust. For example, in the Braid
segment, I lay on my back feeling and listening to participants’ signs of life—-breathing
and heartbeat. I felt the aliveness of us. I lay there and wondered if overlapping bodies
symbolize love, intimacy, and much needed human connection...or if overlapping bodies,
layers of bodies, loudly echo the Holocaust. Holding both of these consciousnesses in me
felt disturbing and taboo, yet is it taboo to imagine the opposite of the Holocaust? Loving
interactions, freedom, respect for difference, and finding places of commonality and
connection? Is this an opposite? Or a parallel? I wondered what intimacy might come in
dire situations when strangers are forced together, are trying to survive together? I felt
the discomfort and comfort of the intimacy of strangers.
Marcus as Judge: An “Inherent Re-Interpretation of Power”
Burns, as well as I, was struck by the section in Journey wherein Marcus occupies
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a central position of power as ‘The Judge.’ Burns shares his experience as someone who
has known Marcus, worked with Marcus and watched carefully how people have
interacted with Neil:
I also have lots to say about the experience of Neil [Marcus] as 'judge'.
Over more than 8 months knowing and working with Neil [Marcus], I
have seen a great number of people interact with him with various levels
of success and a great variety of experiences. Generally speaking,
those who do not know Neil are either curious, judgmental,
confused/frustrated, or helpful/controlling. (“Re: Olimpias” 1)
Burns’ words speak to how people at times view people with disabilities and
differences—vocal differences, bodies that move around more than expected or
differently than expected. Noticeably disabled people arouse curiosity, judgment,
confusion, frustration, and people trying to be helpful or controlling. Marcus himself is
aware that many people are drawn to look at him even if they are unsure of how to
interact with him. In Marcus’ autobiographically-based play Storm Reading (1989),
Marcus’ character says directly to his audience, “People are watching me. People are
watching me all the time. They’re watching me even when they’re pretending not to
watch me. They’re watching to see how well I do this thing called human” (Storm
Reading). Marcus is aware that in social situations, people may call his very humanness
into question. Disability Studies theorist, Brenda Jo Brueggemann illustrates how
Marcus’ words uncover a “central issue for disabled people”—that is, their contentious
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“position in relation to ‘human’” (20). Brueggemann writes:
Occupying a place of opposition, designated as outside limits of ‘normal,’
disability highlights the boundaries of the ‘human condition’ Thus, disability is
multifariously represented in our culture as supernormal, subnormal, and
abnormal. It is portrayed as essentially human; yet it is also portrayed as
essentially not human. (20)
During the Holocaust as well as now, many people’s humanness is still called into
question—both in extreme situations and in everyday interactions. In Journey, instead of
disabled people being subject to the eugenics, prejudices, and tyranny of people in power,
disabled people do belong and do occupy positions of power. While many people with
disabilities—especially more noticeable ones—must assert their rights, humanity and
power, in a world that largely does not consider Disability, Marcus in Journey occupies a
position of Power. Notably, Marcus sits at the center of Journey deciding what direction
each person will go, symbolically deciding people’s fate. Burns writes:
Beyond the juxtaposition of placing someone from (near the bottom of the
social hierarchy at the top in the context of performance, I think there is
also something important about putting someone in authority whom a
great many people do not understand (when he communicates), a person
who most people bend down to speak to and struggle with great
persistence to understand (and most people feel compelled to figure out
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what Neil is saying). This choice is an inherent reinterpretation of power.
(Burns “Re: Olimpias Journey” 1)
In the context of Journey, Marcus sits in the center of the scene, as a judge, in the
powerful position to decide people’s “fate,” be it the good fate of a pleasurable and
“fortifying” encounter as DiPietra experienced or an imagined fate echoing the
Holocaust. Or one could view Marcus as making an unimportant decision, simply left or
right. Journey leaves the decision of meaning up to the co-creator. Unlike at the
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin where other people make decisions that allow or restrict
access, in Journey, Marcus, a dancer who uses a powerchair and has an unusual voice and
a body with its own logic, Marcus, a man who lives his life as art, decides which
direction people go. Marcus, who is white and male but is also Jewish and disabled,
decides access. I found the image of Marcus as ‘judge’ to be very powerful, partly in
Marcus’ contrast to images held up as supposedly ideal people or bodies during the Nazi
regime or even now. I also wondered for a moment what World War II in Europe would
have been had someone like Marcus been in power. What world would Marcus and/or
Kuppers create?
Marcus uses his power not just to divide a group, or to determine where people
go, or to judge them, but Marcus uses his voice to do so. His voice speaks his decision.
How often do people see and hear people with vocal differences in positions of power?
Before the judgment section, each co-creator gets to touch/connect and move with
Marcus mutually. Participants are invited into one of Marcus’ preferred forms of
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communication, one that levels the playing field. One could also argue that a participant
communicating with Marcus through physical movement, dance, improvisation might put
Marcus at an advantage, yet communication of this type is not competitive but is used to,
well, to explore, to speak without words, but with bodies and attention—to connect.
In conclusion, creating access, as noted, makes Integrations more possible. The
Olimpias’ Marcus and Kuppers, sparked by lack of access at the Holocaust Memorial in
Berlin, brought and bring together members of various communities to participate and
co-create the Disability Culture community performance, Journey. Marcus and Kuppers
designed Journey with attention to access—physical, “emotional” and otherwise—
retaining flexibility, as to adjust or improvise where necessary to suit participants’ needs.
Through the structure of Journey, Kuppers and Marcus offer opportunities to access,
experience, and embody Power Dynamics and shifts in power that, in the case of the
participants I spoke to, echoed into their life experiences and imaginations. The feedback
of participants/co-creators DiPietra, Burns, Marcus, and I, show a deep and varied
engagement with Power Dynamics of the past and present, revealing engagements with
complex power dynamics in relation to our work, our everyday lives, in relation to
Disability, to family/cultural history and identity. As co-creators, wecshow Touch and
Relationship as multifaceted vehicles that bring us closer to the work of Holocaust
history and accessible memorialization, to imagination, to the realization of Power
Dynamics in our own lives. Touch in relationship with others in Journey, might, bring us
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closer to our own bodies and senses, closer to other participants, closer to the small but
vital signs of life, closer to community. I find myself responding poetically:
a stranger’s hand on your heart
the sounds of breathing as your ear
touches a warm filling and falling belly.
embracing the layers and contradictions
or being disturbed by them.
In my mind: a woman in a tie, my family, 1933
leans back against the wall
her face beckons me from the photograph.
I don’t know you, but I am with you
You don’t know me but you let me be with you
I see your life for the first time,
not just your fate and struggle.
By creating a space, the formal sharing circle at the end of Journey, Kuppers and Marcus
enlarge the experience in allowing participant/co-creators access to others’ experiences,
sensations, imaginations, histories—others’ journeys, as it were, through Journey. Jean
Genet said, “Use menace. Use Prayer” (as qtd. in P. Smith 70). In the shadow of
menace—be it the Holocaust or anywhere on the continuum of injustice—Journey speaks
a prayer to who and what was lost. Journey speaks an activism, a hope for a better now, a
better future. Journey cuts through time and imagination to connect co-creators to lives—
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gone and still here, to signs of life, to human connection, to the cultures and communities
that sustain us and that we sustain. Journey invites. Journey challenges.
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Chapter 5
CONCLUSION
In the analysis of works by AXIS, Dandelion Dancetheater and the Olimpias, this
thesis shows a glimpse of how each group engages in differing and intersecting dialogue
on Integrations(s), Power and Partnership/Relationship. Although this is not a
comparative study, in this conclusion, I place some of my findings and observations of
how these groups engage these concepts side-by-side. In terms of Integration, AXIS,
using Jerry Smith’s photograph to represent themselves, show Physically Integrated
Dance as integrating their range of diverse beautiful dancer’s bodies, focusing on wheels,
feet, and prostheses in a professional, artful, stylish vision of the lower legs, and
wheels—the symbols of movement. The dancers’ stylish clothes mixed with the
alternation of different forms of mobility also serve to disrupt a disabled-nondisabled
binary reading, as well as disrupting a medical reading of Disability, and replacing it with
an artful, performative reading. Dandelion Dancetheater meanwhile, opens up disabled
diversity working in genres of dancetheater and contact improvisation which allow for
Marcus’s embodiment and voice to be integral vibrant part of the art in the piece, while
dancetheater becomes a prime place for Kuper’s character’s exploration of Nondisabled
fear and discomfort. The Olimpias’ Kuppers and Marcus practice “radical access” in
designing the Disability Culture community performance, Journey, to be more accessible
to a wide range of people with and without disabilities and other differences. Olimpias
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design for physical and “emotional” access, as well as access to the “voices” and
responses of participants.
I demonstrated how AXIS, Dandelion Dancetheater and the Olimpias show and
embody disabled and integrated Power and engage Power Dynamics. AXIS shows the
physical and emotional power of a disabled character to disturb nondisabled characters
within Faulkner’s Decorum, which does not address Disability directly. Dandelion
Dancetheater’s A Walk in the Park, in addressing Disability, Nondisability and Ableism
directly, shows the power of Marcus’ disabled character/person to arouse (irrational) fear
and disturbance just by Marcus’ mere (disabled) presence. A participant in the Olimpias’
Journey could witness the Power of Disability in Kuppers’ Marcus, leadership in central
roles as Guide and Dancer/Judge, as well as in their design that centers Disability,
(disabled) access, (disabled) history, and Disability Culture. Participants can experience
and engage a range of Power Dynamics though Journey’s score, structure, roles and
contexts. These AXIS, Dandelion Dancetheater, and Olimpias performances provide
audiences and participants the opportunities to engage in Power Dynamics surrounding
Disability, Nondisability, Ableism and more accessible practices.
In varying and overlapping ways, each group engages Partnership and
Relationship, at times, reflecting everyday life situations. In both AXIS and Dandelion
Dancetheater performances, audiences see a nondisabled dancer lift a disabled dancer.
With AXIS’ Decorum, the lift is a beautiful, graceful, well-choreographed mutual
embrace. In A Walk in the Park, the lift is improvised, slightly awkward-looking, but
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somehow no less beautiful. I analyzed how these lifts figuratively and literally speak back
to and counter ableist scripts. AXIS and Dandelion Dancetheater also show the artistry
and Power of disabled performer’s movement—seen on both disabled performers and in
Partnership on nondisabled performers’ bodies. The lifting that partners do (on stage or in
everyday life), shows vulnerability, trust, skill and communication. Figuratively and
literally, in life, people lift other people, both partners using their focus, communication
and attention to do so. Dance can highlight the humanity, specificity, universality, and
(potential) beauty of these actions—both onstage and off.
Concerning Partnership, in Journey, Kuppers and Marcus ask participants/creators
to give their attention to one another in the slow ritual-like score that calls attention to
human connection, communication, and “just being with”—feeling and listening to
others’ bodies and voices. Partnership can also be as rowdy as Marcus and Kuper’s full
physical momentum-filled body swinging. In this study, I have shown, a peek at what
AXIS, Dandelion Dancetheater and Olimpias contribute to a wide-ranging engagement of
in the performative dialogue on Integration(s)—human and artistic—, Power and
Partnership/Relationship. This dialogue speaks back to Ableism by creating and
modeling more accessible performance practices.
As I conduct my research, studying performance companies that integrate
disabled and nondisabled performers, and as I engage in discourse with people from the
dance/performance communities and Disability communities who share my interests in
more inclusive performance practices, I find it easy to begin to erroneously assume that
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these groups I’ve studied, watched, at times, met and been involved with are the “norm”
or at least on the fringe or margin of the “norm,” so to speak, yet they are not, at least not
in my neighborhood. While emails come into my email box and invitations from people
on Facebook invite me to performances that radically or gently challenge the status quo
in terms of inclusive practices concerning people with and without disabilities (and other
integrations—culture, race, sexual orientation), for most people in and outside the United
States, exposure to groups such as these and their performances (in person) can be
extremely limited. These invitations to disabled and nondisabled integrated performances
come to me from across the United States, sometimes, other countries, such as England,
yet mostly from New York or the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as from a precious few
scattered areas dotting the country. Currently living in Sacramento, California, I, like
people in most of the regions in the United States, must travel to other areas to seek out
performances that present Disability and Disabled-Nondisabled Integration as an art that
challenges Ableism while expanding or changing performance forms and genres to suit
the Integrations. Having the economic means and transportation, I also recognize my
privilege to be able to see and experience these performances. Some performances such
as Dandelion Dancetheater’s A Walk in the Park, AXIS excerpts, Olimpias videos, and
others can be watched online on YouTube or on websites for those who have access to
the Internet (something that cannot be assumed) and for those that are “in the know.”
These performances critique Ableism in various ways (and at times perhaps
support Ableism?), yet without an awareness of Disability Studies and Disability Cultural
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perspectives, would a viewer be able to recognize how these performances critique
Ableism or will those viewers only be able to watch these performances through Ableist
lenses, which might prevent a viewer from being able to see the power in the art of
Integration or of the art of Disability? The first time I saw a production of Faulkner’s
Decorum (2005) as part of AXIS’ Home Season, as the piece ended and the curtain went
down, and I was thinking “Wow!” I was surprised to hear a woman’s voice near me ask
someone, “Was that beautiful or was that pitiful?” The voice clearly expressed
amazement for the beauty of the dancing in the piece, yet why did she choose to use the
word “pitiful”? I had not seen anything in this performance that would have brought the
word “pitiful” to my mind, at all. When people continue—consciously or not—to frame
Disability in Ableist ways that associate Disability with pity, how does this keep people
from being able to see beauty, art, possibility, and humanity? How does it throw people
into confusion over what one has seen, in trying to balance what one has seen—beautiful
dancing—with an Ableist view that undercuts and contrasts the beauty with pity? How
does Ableism prevent people from seeing what is in front of them?
I began this study by framing this dialogue around Integration, Power and
Partnership. In listening to the conversations taking place (or not) in Disability Studies,
Physically Integrated Dance, Disability Culture, and in dance and performance
communities…and beyond, I hear questions about Integration, Power and Partnership
that weave through this study. Who is integrated? Or not? Who is invited? Who can call
themselves a dancer? Who defines dance and dancer? Or performer? What is the relation
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between everyday life and performance for disabled people, for nondisabled people?
Concerning Power, when do disabled and nondisabled performers, characters or
aesthetics sit in opposition or clash? How do disabled and integrated performers assert
themselves despite Ableism? And how do disabled and nondisabled performers come
together in Partnership and Relationship—powerfully, connectedly, in dance, in physical
touch, in affirmation of life, in complexity, in layered contexts, and in community? In this
study, I have shown how AXIS, Dandelion Dancetheater, and the Olimpias, in the
sections of pieces I have chosen, answer these vital questions. Yet these questions remain
to be answered more fully by these groups and others. Each practitioner and the wider
groups who are concerned with these questions, delve deeply into their own intersecting
questions, working to expand fields and create new practices that fit them and the people
they work with.
Integrations want more Integrations. AXIS, DDT, and the Olimpias and the
genres they employ—Physically Integrated Dance, Dance Theater, Contact Improvisation
and Disability Culture community performance—point and suggest ways to further
Integrations, expansions and directions in terms of who and what is included and how.
Although the sampling of performances I analyze is quite small, a limit of this study
ironically lies in the lack of Integration in terms of performers with different types of
disabilities, as well as a lack of people of color in prominent roles in these performances.
In narrowing down the performances to analyze, I chose the performances I had seen that
excited and spoke most to me in terms of their Integrations and in terms of challenging
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and presenting something I had not seen before. I also felt drawn to pieces that had
resonance in both performance and everyday life. In narrowing my scope, I had to cut
some well-loved and diverse sections in the interest of space, pieces that I intend to
analyze in the future. In choosing what to analyze, however, I felt and feel that this field
is actually wide open. While there is growing scholarship and attention to Integrated and
Disability Culture work coming from Disability communities and at times, from dance
communities and the mainstream, much of the disabled-nondisabled integrated work
remains un- or under-theorized, and under-recognized. I have also analyzed this work
from my perspective in part, needing to choose which integrations to address, while I
have overlooked much. In taking an audience perspective primarily, I largely did not seek
out responses from the makers and performers in the AXIS and Dandelion Dancetheater
pieces. I overlooked the rich theories that Kuppers and or Marcus engage that stem from
Butoh practices or from theorists such as Deleuze and Guattari, Artaud, and others.
I began this study with President Obama’s inclusion of the words “disabled and
not disabled” as integral parts of the face of America. While this semantic inclusion is
meaningful, when the proverbial “axe” comes down—and in this destroyed economy of
2011, the “axe” is coming down fast—which people get chopped first? Disabled people
do not just want to be included in lists or on lips but want to be able to lead and to live
our vital lives. While these may just seem like moments of performance, they echo into
the world in varying degrees. AXIS close-up of feet, wheels and prostheses, does not just
describe AXIS but reflects the human diversity of bodies and movement. When a viewer
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thinks the vision of a disabled person being lifted must symbolize pity, how does this
dehumanize a person or performer? How in this culture do we press Ableism, fear and
unwanted pity upon disabled people and performers? When pleasure must be seen as
therapeutic because it involves a disabled person, how do we limit them/us and how do
we limit ourselves by not being able to see pleasure in others? Humanity in others? When
we create spaces that exclude people or are ourselves excluded from spaces, how do we
respond? What sorts of change need to happen in our worlds and how can performance
speak to these changes or create change in the social and performative world?
Recommendations and Directions for the Present and Future
In writing this thesis, I conclude that the works of AXIS, Dandelion Dancetheater,
and the Olimpias, as well as other cutting edge works by performance groups creating
and enlarging dialogue around Integrated and Disability Culture performance, need to
gain much wider audience. Specifically, cutting edge works like these should be written
more widely about, especially by the people who connect strongly with this work. Each
of these groups comes with their own vision, values, experience and passion which form
who they are and what directions they go. It is easy to try and compare these works and
groups to see who does it “best.” Rather, I prefer to see these groups as part of a
community who are adding vital voices to the dialogue and choosing to work in the ways
which suit them best. I thrill to see more work that offers unique perspectives on
integrated work, Power and Partnership; to see more work coming from performers with
cognitive disabilities, neurodiverse (autistic and Asperger’s) performers, “mad”
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performers (with psychological disabilities), and others. Some of this work is already out
there. I thrill to create my own work, writing and collaborations, in and across my
communities. Performing artists and community practitioners could learn from what
these works model and show—powerful integrations, artistry and visions that, at times,
engage multiple disciplines. The effects of integrated work warrant further study, in terms
of the social, political, somatic, performative, and attitudinal effects of the work which
could be measured quantitatively as well as qualitatively. Some performances are
breaking into the mainstream, in a way, such as AXIS’ recent 2011 performance—a duet
between dancers Rodney Bell, a wheelchair-using dancer, and Sonsheree Giles, a
nondisabled dancer—on the hit show So You Think You Can Dance. Internationally, a
number of performance groups artfully engage disability and disabled-nondisabled
integration. I think the best argument for getting these works the attention they warrant is
the work itself.
What sparks the internal and external changes and awareness that need to happen
around Disability, Nondisability and Integration? What role does performance and
integrated work play in these changes? How did the San Francisco/Berkeley/Oakland
become a hotbed for this work and how can other communities with very different
histories support and create an atmosphere for this work? What role does the online world
of social networking, blogging, YouTube and other sites have in creating audience for
this work? What role do universities and colleges have in supporting integrated work and
providing access to training in dance, theater and performance, and how might wider
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well-thought inclusions of disabled people alter these departments for the better?
Integration is a process—challenging, messy and, if done right, ultimately rewarding, but
like true dialogue or improvisation, it is always shifting and changing. There is no easy
happy ending that sums everything up into a nice tidy package, rather, there is the
process, the diving in, the gaffes and the gifts in integrated work, mixed with the
moments of great connection and great pleasure.
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APPENDIX
“Very Private” (Marcus’ Poem)
Neil Marcus, Olimpias co-creator of Journey to the Holocaust Memorial in
Berlin, sent this poem in response to my request for feedback on Journey. In Chapter 4, I
address excerpts from Marcus’ poem entitled “ssjews”. Here, as per Petra Kuppers’
request, I include Marcus’ poem in its entirety, as the poem was meant to be read in full.
(Note: I have kept Marcus original spellings, capitalization and spacings to retain the
style of Marcus’ emails, a style partly formed by being dystonic which makes his typing
more difficult than most people’s and more prone to “accidents” that lend to the flavor of
his work, and are typical of some other writers with disabilities who have similar issues
and embodiments or use assistive technologies such as voice activation programs that
may make their writing “less than perfect”-looking. I think on one hand, these differences
in the writing style make me look for the meanings of the words over the style. On the
other hand, the unexpected differences in the writing style make me see anew what would
otherwise be ordinary. For example, in the third stanza, did Marcus really mean to write,
“I asked if jaws live here”? Reading this, I imagine a killer shark. Or is it a typo and did
Marcus mean to write, “I asked if jews live here”? To this question, “They annngrrily
responded./no ! Of couse not” (Marcus “very private”). So are the responders angrily
denying the existence of something vicious like the man-eating killer shark in “jaws” (the
movie) or are they denying possibility of the existence of “jews” living in this area or on
this site. Marcus’ spelling or misspelling allows more than one possibility to exist and
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allows questions as to his meaning to be part of the meaning or a line. For me, the
“mistakes” in Marcus’s writing also bring me closer to the physicality of Marcus’ fingers.
ssJews
This was our holiday time. A week in the cultural capital of Germany. Two disabled
travelers one German one jew.i remember when petra told me the whole generation of
disabled people above her had been exterminated. Yes this was why the power of a
civil rights movement had been slower to frutate in Europe.
When Petra told me of her idea to stage a performance at the holocaust memorial
I really didn’t understand what statement I would feel right making in public.
Id never been to Berlin before
I barely understand my own jewishness [is that a word?]
I am disabled but this memorial was given permission to be built without access
And no one talks about disability and holocaust
I am confused about what attitude to carry
Pride? Anger? Belligerence
When I asked if jaws live here. They annngrrily responded.
no ! Of couse not
I felt really stupid.and I was hiding feelings tho I don’t kno what..
Trains were everywhere .modern,lush.not cattlecars.
Here was acre of black marble blocks,looked like gravesite mauseliums.
Thousands of them. Row after row after row. Looked like under each of them a murdered
Jew.
[is that ok to say even]
This was a memorial?
I understand the words never ‘forget’, but it seems a big shorthand for a mass of
confusion.
We stayed near a street called Paul Robeson strasse. That was very clear and
straightforward. a memorial? A clear statement of events in the us a point of
remembrance..
.
I saw tourists arriving in busses
They seemed excited to be there.
What kind of accents did they have?
were they? Jewish?
148
It was a rare hot day in Berlin.
Heat reflecting and absorbing in this solar sinkhole. No shade no comfort.
No explanation.. No comfort. My imagination full of worst possible images was all I had
to guide me.
Din a 13. A disabled dance troupe we met up with.
Raymond hogard. A world famous choreographer whose work to me
[Photo goes here]
I want to laugh
I want to cry
I want to sing
I want to dance
my brother went with us to the memorial
he lives in berlin
this was his response
is this the memory I am to claim
is this the response
where am I
why are people laughing
why guitar songs from spain
where are they going in my subconscious
a French woodcutter
a nazi motorcade
a glass of milk
a large pipe
this is not real
ss shooting up the cellar
its not understandable to me
cheery people at an outing on a Friday
to see Tarentinos’ inglorious Bastards.
My heart has been opened by another imagination.
District 9
A time.a place of violence and horror
Where a man turning alien finds his Humanity
And OUR lost humanity is the horror.
149
In a parklike setting across the street was rhe memorial for gay people killed in the
holocoust. We come up to a sealed cement room in the park. Through a glass window we
peer inside. There is a film running of 2 young men kissing and holding eachother in that
park.
Walking on petra begins to smile. There are trees growing in the middle of man made
walkways. That cant be an accident.its not just random. Its Art. It works.
(Marcus “very private”)
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NOTES
1. While I wish this were “definitely” true, I have found that while Disability Studies is
growing field with growing influence, in my experience, such as at my college which
offers no Disability Studies courses, disability is not really treated as an essential
category.
2. Wheelchair Dancer prefers to write anonymously under a pseudonym, yet she is
someone I am acquainted with and know to be deeply involved in this field. Simi Linton,
a seminal voice in Disability Studies scholarship, includes links to Wheelchair Dancer on
her website. While people with disabilities certainly are involved in all sorts of scholarly
pursuits and publication, dialogue both formal and more casual about PID also transpires
in active online communities. In using Wheelchair Dancer here, I honor this tradition and
the more accessible form of blogging that also encourages discussion and
response/comment from the public. Wheelchair Dancer’s comments come from her deep
involvement in PID, as both a dancer and writer.
3. Dandelion Dancetheater and other groups’ aesthetics may also seem to clash with those
of Physically Integrated Dance companies, such as when a performer who does not
require a wheelchair chooses to dance extensively in one which may suggest that a
wheelchair is a toy or tool and not an integral part of a (disabled) wheelchair user’s body
and movement.
4. Dr. Telory Davies in Performing Disability: Staging the Actual (VDM Press, 2009), as
well as other Disability Studies, Theater/Dance, and Performance Studies scholars I note
151
throughout this study, explore the effects of “actual” disabled people in performance, as
opposed to the status quo of having nondisabled people play disabled in performance,
while directors and casting people largely overlook disabled performers to play even
disabled roles, let alone a role where disability is not specified.
5. The focus on disabled and nondisabled integration could also be said to cover over
other aspects of diversity—such as culture, ethnicity. The dancers in this photo include
Americans, British, Maori from New Zealand, Afro-Caribbean, white, straight and queer,
and other identities unknown to me. Some writers and/or performers have written about
the ways in which disability can trump or cover over other aspects of diversity (See Lynn
Manning, Chris Bell and Wheelchair Dancer). AXIS uses other photos that show other
aspects of the diversity of its dancers.
6. Although I don’t address this in this chapter, I wonder about how Contact
Improvisation and performance aesthetics may clash. Specifically how CI when
performed might lose the close connections and communication that may be more likely
when there is no audience expecting a finished performance. I especially wonder in this
performance if Kupers’ speed and sense of what may be entertaining/impressive to
audience might at times, override Marcus’ slower connecting attentive pace, and would a
slower connecting pace be as entertaining to audience?
7. See Appendix for Marcus’ entire poem. While Marcus gave me permission to use his
poem how I wished in this thesis, Kuppers thought the poem should be seen as a poem
not separated or seen as Marcus speaking literally. Although, he seems to be, I cannot
152
assume that Marcus is the narrator of the poem exactly either. I have chosen to break this
poem up, weaving Marcus’ voice—literal or creative into this chapter, however, please
see Marcus’ entire poem in the Appendix. Also, I have left Marcus’ singular spelling,
punctuation and spacing intact as part of the voice of the poem.
8. Subsequent to the two performances in Berkeley, I took part in the Society for
Disability Studies performance of Journey in San Jose in June 2011, as well as in a
variation on Journey entitled “A Social Sculpture” at the West Coast Contact Improv
Festival in Berkeley. This latter performance in July 2011, performed without any
mention of the Holocaust and without the opening and closing circles, was contextualized
very differently. In this chapter, I only address the Berkeley March 2010 performances.
9. Kuppers’ uses the English spelling of memorialisation over the American,
“memorialization.”
10. Evans cites heavily from Henry Friedlander’s book The Origins of Nazi Genocide:
From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, 1995) and from other sources, such
as Michael Burleigh’s Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany, 1900-1945
(Cambridge, Mass., 1994)].
153
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