what is access in the context of dance and performance spaces?
What access looks like will depend on the space and the people in it. Public spaces such as theaters must have certain accommodations specified by the ADA. However, dance does not happen only in these kinds of spaces. Additionally, access is more than just meeting a list of requirements. Access is an ongoing process. It's dynamic. It's co-created by all the people in a space. It's responsive to what people need in the moment and might in the future.
access as aesthetic
Physically integrated dance spaces may make movement accessible by teaching it different ways for different people. The teacher might start with a movement: raising their arms while stepping forward with their right foot. If someone is unable to do that movement, the teacher could adapt the movement for that person. For example, they could have them move just their arms. Or, the teacher could translate/transpose the movement. For example, they could recreate the movement in a way that works for the disabled person, such as by having them raise their head instead of their arms.
However, neither adapted movement nor translated/transposed movement value disabled movement as much as the original, nondisabled movement. These forms of accessibility still center and use nondisabled movement as their base. Instead, Sheppard encourages access through native disabled movement: the natural ways disabled dancers move and create (personal communication, February 21, 2023). Accessible movement should not act as a bridge towards "normalcy" or nondisabled movement.
Alice Sheppard: “I’m looking for disability as an aesthetic. [...] That means understanding disability culture, understanding disability history, and also disability practices—and connecting with the practices of other disabled art-makers, and being in conversation with them. I don’t want my work to be simply about presenting the disabled body. I want people to understand how disability creates and expresses the movement and beauty of the work" (Embuscado, 2017, para. 6).
Because of ableism and capitalism, we have certain ideas about what art and dance are supposed to look like. Often people associate beauty with the "ideal," healthy, nondisabled body. But Siebers (2005) argues that disability has long been an important part of beauty and challenges the idea that intelligence, bodily integrity, and health are necessary for art. Disability aesthetics says that disability has an aesthetic, artistic, and beautiful value.
Petra Kuppers also describes disability as having its own aesthetic. Kuppers (2011) writes that disability aesthetics are the "shapes, senses and emotions of bodyminds labeled as 'different,' art that happens outside conventional genres and spaces" (p. 5). Disabled people's movement defy nondisabled norms. Their movements, feelings, and understandings expand what it means to move, dance, and perform. They expand with it means to create art.
access as art and pleasure:
artist spotlight on alice sheppard & kinetic light
Sheppard often uses and dances on ramps. However, like a lot of architecture, some ramps reinforce ableist ways of thinking: disability is a burden and disabled people should be grateful for access. There are many examples of ramps hidden by fences; ramps made of cheap, flimsy material; and ramps too steep to be used safely, if at all. Even when a ramp does work, it's usually only designed to be useable, not enjoyable. But Sheppard wants to think of the ramp, and access more broadly, as pleasurable and beautiful. Ramps and other forms of access are part of disability aesthetics. Sheppard said that “[d]ancing on the ramp changed the dance world’s notions of disabled movement. Critics called it ramp porn - beautiful, sexy, unattainable. Ramps are art and can hold center stage" (personal communication, February 21, 2023).
Sheppard is artistic director of the disabled arts collective Kinetic Light. One of the Kinetic Light's most recent pieces is DESCENT, performed by Sheppard and Laurel Lawson. DESCENT tells the story of a romance between the goddesses Venus and Andromeda. The performance takes place on a large ramp with peaks and curves. DESCENT is described as a celebration of "the pleasure of reckless abandon" ("DESCENT: a touring performance," 2019, para. 1). Like many of Sheppard's performances, DESCENT highlights the joy she finds in her disabled movement.
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Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson performing DESCENT. Sheppard lays on her stomach on an elevated platform. Her arms are wrapped around Lawson, who is in front of the platform. They are both wearing dark tank tops and pants. In the background there is a projection of video filmed underwater.
audio descriptions as art
Kinetic Light is also currently developing an app called AUDIMANCE. The app will provide audio descriptions of performances for blind or low vision people. Often, audio descriptions simply describe what is happening in the performance. But this app is an example of access as art, because these audio descriptions will let people have a full, artistic experience of the performance solely through sound. Instead of being an add-on to a visual performance, the audio description is a performance itself. Descriptions will be paired with different music and sounds. Users will be also be able to customize the audio descriptions. For example, they could choose if they want their audio description to be in poetry, prose, or another style.
For DESCENT, Kinetic Light created an audio description experience of the performance. You can listen to it on the AUDIMANCE website.
#rampfail and #rampjoy
Sheppard also uses the social media hashtags #rampfail and #rampjoy to push for more intentional accessibility for wheelchair users. This means not just better functionality but also better aesthetics and experience. Sheppard and other wheelchair users use these hashtags to share stories of frustration and joy and to imagine new forms of access. Below are a couple of #rampfail and #rampjoy tweets.
access-centered movement
What does it mean to think of access as more than a bridge between the disabled and nondisabled world?
India Harville uses the access-based movement framework to help her answer this question. In her classes, her goal is to "create spaces that work for more and more bodies" (Wong, 2020). That does not mean supporting everyone to meet the same nondisabled standards for movement. Instead it means working collaboratively to meet everyone where they are. Access-centered movement frameworks recognize that people's access needs sometimes conflict and that existing ways of doing things don't work for everyone. This often means thinking about dance and performance in new, creative ways. For example, Harville has put on performances where audience members were able to touch her and the set as she moved through the choreography (Wong, 2020). Audiences usually engage with dance through sight. However, what's to say that dance can't also be a tactile experience?
new sensory dance experiences:
artist spotlight on yo-yo lin
Like Sheppard, Yo-yo Lin 林友友, a Taiwanese mixed media artist, is also making dance into an audio experience. In her art, Lin often uses technology in new and creative ways. In 'The walls of my room are curved,' microphones are attached to her body which has a connective tissue disorder. These microphones pick up the sounds of bones and joints as they move, crack, and creak. While the performer dances, an electronic musician turns the sounds of her body into music. The performance is described as "blurring the lines between body and musical instrument, organic and synthetic, human and device" ("The walls of my room are curved," 2019). Often, dance is performed to music, but Lin makes dance its own kind of music. This performance allows the audience to directly engage with her dancing through sound, not only sight.
Below is a recording of 'The walls of my room are curved,' (40 minutes) performed by Yo-yo Lin and Despina (Mica Matchen). Below the video is a photo from the piece.
Warning: This video contains flashing lights from projections.
Yo-yo Lin on a darkened stage that is surrounded by a white, translucent sheet. Abstract shapes are being projected onto the sheet. Lin is wearing a white, sleeveless top and white pants. Her hair is pulled into a bun. She is kneeling on her right knee, and her right hand is on the ground. Her left arm stretches up towards the ceiling.