Shapes and Lines
Dance has always had artificial boundaries: you aren’t skinny enough, tall enough, short enough, flexible enough, strong enough. So, naturally, people have challenged these boundaries. Can walking in a directed way be considered dancing? What about just moving one part of your body? What about dancing to no music? What about making music with movements of your body? Dancers continue to redefine, both as artists and as athletes at once: training and creating simultaneously; strengthening each time they design. Nonetheless, the physicality of dance can be limiting. If you aren’t able to do the tricks or cannot move your body to create a certain shape, you can be deemed unqualified and rejected. But then, you may ask yourself, what really is the purpose of dance?
The formal purpose of dance is to call both the performer and the audience into one space of movement and visual art, often with music, although it is not required. Author Carolien Hermans focuses on the concept of kinesthetic empathy — the combination of the narrative, the aesthetic of the view, and the synchronized movements — to convey the connection between the audience and the dancer (Hermans, 162). When it comes to forming that emotive connection, the creative options open up. Choreographer Trisha Brown’s piece consisted of people walking across the floor, up walls, and across ceilings in straight lines. Her piece wasn’t technically “difficult” in the traditional sense, but it nevertheless provoked positive reactions and garnered a lot of attention. The movement itself didn’t draw the spectators in, but instead the synchronism and the aesthetic of the piece are what made it appealing.
Disability and dancing, when we root dance at its purpose rather than its traditional rules, are not mutually exclusive. The irony behind the long-held belief that dance and disability aren’t compatible is the reality of what makes dancing so impressive: we as dancers are congratulated and praised for our ability to manipulate our bodies in ways that take practice and strength. Disability can provide another layer of manipulation — ways in which disabled bodies can move, even naturally, that able-bodies cannot. The double standard of praising moving one’s body in unique ways yet not accepting unique bodies themselves comes from the tradition of the specific dance manipulation and the expected skills that take grooming and stretching in specific ways to attain.
Thus, the central question surrounding disability and dance is as follows: shall disabled dancers recreate the same traditional lines and shapes by adjusting the practice, or should they redesign the entire practice and rules of dance? Disabled dancers Kitty Lunn and Alice Sheppard pose different views on this question.
STICKING TO THE LINES: Kitty Lunn leans towards the traditional creation of “lines.” She finds new ways to create the traditional poses and movements, instead of creating new shapes. She modifies from her wheelchair: instead of creating the kick with her legs, she uses her arms; instead of moving her waist, she moves her shoulders. She says, “we are doing the same thing, differently” (Lunn qtd. in Martin, 4). The manipulation of her body is still traditional. The extensions that her right leg développé once drew in the air are now replaced by her right arm. Lunn’s style “is rooted in classical dance technique, and is modified from what she herself learned as a classically trained ballet dancer before her accident” (Martin, 4). She has grown so accustomed to the technicality of dance that she chooses not to stray from it. Ballet, arguably the most nuanced and perfection-driven type of dance, is so deeply rooted in specificity and correctness. She even explains that “it is important not to lose sight of what the dance looks like standing up” (Martin, 3). She bases her creations off of the able-bodied perspective; by envisioning what the dance looks like “standing up,” Lunn designs her movement off of the traditional style of dancing, choosing to modify it rather than create new shapes. Still, perhaps her approach to dance is proof that the visually appealing lines and shapes aren’t exclusively formed by able-bodies.
CREATING NEW SHAPES: There is, however, a completely different way to connect dance and disability. As dance expands and shifts away from this rigid definition of perfection, so many different avenues manifest for creativity. Alice Sheppard designs entirely new shapes and concepts in her dances. She uses ramps to create a swaying movement with her dance partner, incorporating the wheelchairs as part of the dance and as an extension of her bodily capabilities. For her, the manipulation is less about the traditional technique and more about the kinesthetic empathy she creates between her and the audience. She claims, “we are in a conversation that frequently has no words. I cannot see them, but I can feel them” (Sheppard, 2). Her inability to “see” the words in the conversation — a conversation held between the dancer and the audience — epitomizes that her emphasis is not on maintaining the traditional physicality of a dance, but rather is on the emotions the dance evokes. The shapes she creates aren’t straight ballet lines, but rather a swaying motion utilizing a ramp that centers her piece. She invests her dance in her wheelchair, having it be the central cause of the movement: “we and our chairs turn automatically, spinning either out of control into the ground or if we and they are perfectly balanced, turning almost endlessly” (Sheppard, 3). The direct incorporation of the chair into the dance, she explains, forms a connection with the disabled community. She is now, in a way, manipulating her body (the wheelchair being part of this “body”) in ways able-bodied people cannot. Part of the piece includes the strapping into a wheelchair: “of course, nondisabled people appreciate this moment. But what it actually means to see and feel strapping on stage, to hear and recognize the sound of Velcro unfurling is different, more complex, for those of us in the disability community” (Sheppard, 3). This moment is “more complex” for those in the disabled community because it outlines disabled bodies as center stage and in the spotlight. She draws a connection with the community and illuminates a moment only wheelchairs fully relate to and appreciate. She invents entirely new principals for her dance that don’t rely on tradition but rather highlight both the wheelchair and the ramp as vital parts of the piece.
Both Lunn and Sheppard have a right to their ways of creating movement. Sheppard’s method may feel more accepting of disability because she fully grasps and utilizes her disability to make the piece unique, to form new shapes, and to draw the audience in. However, one could argue for the value of Lunn’s methods in that she does not need to create an entirely new movement in order to continue dancing. She modifies the practice and sticks as much as she can to what she learned and performed when she was not in a wheelchair.
As Hermans employs in her piece, there exists both “Körper” and “Leib” for any given person: Körper refers to our outer self — the body and flesh — and Leib refers to the soul and the experience within a body. We can see Lunn and Sheppard’s approaches to dance as different forms of Körper. Their forms, apart from being different from each other, will be distinct from able-bodied dancers or from people who don’t dance at all. However, the ultimate experience — the Leib — stays relatively the same for dancers. The purpose of dance — creating that kinesthetic empathy between the movements, the dancer, and the audience– still motivates and guides both performers, or else they wouldn’t continue dancing. Lunn and Sheppard’s differing methods symbolize the ways in which the artificial boundaries of dance can be torn down. Dance is not, at its core, an exclusive practice; when broadened and expanded, dance becomes all the more emotive, beautiful, and captivating.
Works Cited
Carolien Hermans. “Differences in Itself: Redefining Disability through Dance.” Social Inclusion 4.4 (2016): 160–167. Web, www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/699. Accessed 17 Apr. 2020.
Martin, Lindsay. “Dancing with Disability.” NEA Arts Magazine, vol. 3, 2014, www.arts.gov/NEARTS/2014v3-healing-properties-art-health/dancing-disability. Accessed 17 Apr. 2020.
Sheppard, Alice. “I Dance Because I Can.” New York Times [New York], 27 Feb. 2019, Opinion sec., www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/opinion/disability-dance-alice-sheppard.html. Accessed 17 Apr. 2020.
