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Articles scientifiques

“They really looked, looked and looked:” Contemporary dance, disability and the circulation of emotions

“Ils ont vraiment regardé, regardé et encore regardé”: danse contemporaine, handicap et circulation des émotions
Elisabet Apelmo
p. 5-21

Abstracts

Over the past decade, several inclusive dance projects, in which professional dancers with and without disabilities collaborate, have been started in Sweden. The article explores disabled and able-bodied dancers’ and leaders’ experiences of and strategies for managing gazes and emotions – in encounters with the audience and other surrounding people – from a phenomenological perspective. Eleven qualitative interviews were conducted. The interviewees meet gazes filled with benevolence, surprise, pity and fascination. The emotions stick to the disabled dancers’ bodies, distance them from their own bodies and arouse uneasiness that needs to be handled. However, disabled dancers and disabled persons in the audience may also meet in the gaze of recognition. The companies’ internal gazes are important, too. When disabled dancers are only physically integrated or when differences are hidden, the potential for change gets lost. If choreographers and audiences succeed in looking beyond the body itself, an empathetic identification may take place. Another strategy is to completely break with voyeurism by blocking all gazes. The companies show new ways of interacting, thus expanding the possibilities for both able and disabled bodies.

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Author's notes

This work was supported by Norrbacka-Eugeniastiftelsen and Stiftelsen för bistånd åt rörelsehindrade i Skåne. The author thanks the interviewees who so generously shared their experiences with me.

Full text

Introduction

  • 1 The anonymity of the interviewees is guaranteed by using D (dancer) or L (leader) and a number.

“When you arrive in a wheelchair, you have an audience at once. So, you are on stage immediately, regardless of whether you are on stage or not (D7).”1

1For people living with visible disabilities, gazes are a central part of everyday life: strangers’ gazes filled with pity or fear in public settings, children’s curious stares – often followed by questions – or medical, fragmenting gazes in contacts with professionals in the healthcare sector. The gazes are often influenced by cultural narratives of lack, tragedy and the heroic mastery of obstacles (Garland-Thomson, 2009). It means constantly being seen, managing the looks as well as the emotions that arise in both parties and staging one’s identity by taking advantage of or counteracting stereotypical ideas about disabled people (Apelmo, 2016, 2019; Cunningham, 2018; Durham-Wall, 2019; Sandahl & Auslander, 2005). This is particularly true for wheelchair users.

2In the performing arts, disabled people have greater opportunities to control how they appear. Dance is a particularly interesting example, as the body and its movements take centre stage. On the one hand, there is a potential for the dancers, in negotiation with choreographers and other dancers, to take control of the presentation of their own bodies – when, where and how they are presented – and to invite the audience’s gaze, thereby going against the cultural prohibition of staring at disabled people. On the other hand, bodies within the mainstream dance world follow a clear template. They are slim, agile and “often hyper-able ones, operating at the extreme end of functionality and strength” (Kuppers, 2014b: 115; see also McGrath, 2012). There are several expectations both of who can become a dancer and of people who use a wheelchair. Kuppers describes the disabled body as being characterized by hypervisibility – it is always “a particular body” (2014b: 116) and perhaps even more so in dance.

3The analysis in this article is based on a broader research project on contemporary dance and disability in Sweden. The article aims to explore dancers’ (with and without visible, physical disabilities) and leaders’ (choreographers, artistic directors or project managers) experiences of and strategies for managing gazes and emotions – in encounters with the audience and other surrounding people – from a phenomenological perspective.

Background

Disability and contemporary dance

4During the 1970s, at a time when marginalized groups became organized and called for equality and social justice, inclusive dance emerged in the USA and the UK. It began as community-based dance; however, eventually professional companies such as Axis in San Francisco and CandoCo in London started (McGrath, 2012). In Sweden, endeavours to make dance accessible for disabled people were part of the policy of equal cultural rights (Turner, 2008). Over the past decade, several inclusive dance projects – in which professional dancers with and without disabilities collaborate – have been started in Sweden, both within existing dance companies and outside the institutions. They also arrange community dance and/or educational projects aimed at, for example, young disabled people or dance educators. All have the stated aims of contributing to a more-inclusive dance scene as well as criticizing stereotypical ideas about disabled people and body norms in the art of dance.

5Over the past twenty years, international disability research has begun to pay attention to performative art (e.g., Burridge & Svendler Nielsen, 2018; Garland-Thomson, 2009; Kuppers, 2003, 2014b, 2019; McRuer, 2006; Sandahl & Auslander, 2005; Whatley et al., 2018). Initially, this research was mainly conducted in the USA, in the humanities, with a focus on interpretations of the produced art works, exploring the construction of difference as well as the disabled body’s potential to deconstruct and remodel dance (Albright, 2001; Durham-Wall, 2019; Kuppers, 2005, 2014a, 2017; Sandahl, 2003, 2018). European disability research in general has tended to be based more in the social sciences. Professional equality and the dance industry have been explored from an organizational perspective (Patrick & Bowditch, 2013) and collaborations between able-bodied and disabled practitioners have been discussed (de Senna, Bowditch & Bower, 2016). A qualitative interview study with disabled performance artists (García-Santesmases Fernández & Arenas Conejo, 2017) showed that the stage is used to challenge current understandings of disability and to disclose ableism. Solo performances, when artists can more easily control their self-representation, proved to be even more effective in doing this. In later years, research from European dance studies has grown. Methods for inclusive dance pedagogy have been elaborated on and analysed (Østern, 2009, 2018; Whatley, 2007; Whatley & Marsh, 2018) and the importance of choreographic choices has been emphasised (Long & Conibere, 2018). Moreover, disabled dancers’ specific qualities, springing from lived experiences of disabilities, have been brought up (Cunningham, 2018; Katerega, 2005). Two studies of dance films discuss the risk of reinforcing otherness and dichotomies such as able/disabled (Whatley, 2010) and of evoking feelings of pity and heroism as well as the potential to question dominant aesthetics within dance (Hermans, 2016). Scandinavian research about disability and contemporary dance is rare. Østern’s (2009, see also 2018) dissertation about meaning-making in an improvisational community dance project is one notable exception. Another is Notér Hooshidar’s (2017) case study about methods and communication during the artistic process in an inclusive dance ensemble. The dancers’ differences led the trained dancers and audiences to think anew; in this way, habitual behaviour changed and new aesthetic ideals developed.

Phenomenologies of emotions and gazes

6Phenomenology is used as a theoretical framework to understand the interviewees lived experiences of gazes and emotions (Ahmed, 2004, 2006). According to Merleau-Ponty (1945/2012), it is through the body that the individual is in the world, experiencing and interacting with it. The body is situated in time and place. The situatedness is influenced by how the individual has lived and continues to live in the world, how the world interacts with him or her and by the individual’s body and physiological preconditions. Ahmed (2006) argues that the situatedness orients or directs the individual towards some people, objects and rooms, while turning its back on others. The orientations are shaped by cultural norms and perceptions of what is considered normal and different. They start from the individual’s point of view – that is, the body – but this point of departure is also part of a social and cultural context with certain paths to follow. A path is the result of those who have gone there before and points out a direction (Ahmed, 2006; see also Albright, 2011). By making the seeing and looking practices visible, what Ahmed (2006) calls a reorientation may take place. A need to “reinhabit space” follows the reorientation: “It puts some things ‘out of reach’ that I didn’t even notice when they were in reach,” as Ahmed puts it (2006: 101-2; see also Pratt, 1991).

7One example of such a situatedness, is the able body. A medicalized understanding of disability, which reduces disabled people to a diagnosis and thus dehumanizes them, is still prevalent in society (e.g., Apelmo & Alftberg, 2022; Campbell, 2009; Hall, 2021). Hughes associates the able-bodied gaze with this medicalization, arguing that it imagines itself to be neutral but constitutes a moral and aesthetic discourse when the deviant is sorted out (Hughes, 1999). The gaze hinders the lived body, which becomes an object; it goes from being experienced from within to something a person “has” (Bartky, 1990; Hermans, 2016; Young, 2005). Garland-Thomson (2009) makes a distinction between the gaze – which subordinates the person who is gazed at – and the stare, which may be intrusive but which has a positive potential in its curiosity. The starer wants “to make the unknown known” and the staree gets an “opportunity to be known” (Garland-Thomson, 2009: 15), and the interaction may lead to an empathetic identification. The stare can be met, resisted or renounced in everyday interactions.

8Different gazes and stares are connected to different emotions. Emotions do not reside in the subject or object – as Ahmed (2004) claims – but arise in social and cultural practices. They are shaped by previous memories and histories and comprise a way of perceiving the world. A society’s emotional culture limits how emotions are felt and expressed and sets up rules about which emotions the different categories of people ought to feel in specific contexts (Hochschild, 2003). Moreover, emotions circulate and have effects – e.g., a gaze filled with fear creates a social distance. It makes the disabled person who is gazed at an object of his or her own gaze, and he or she will assume the character of the negative emotion; the sign of being fearsome sticks to the body (Ahmed, 2004). Emotions need to be managed, to overcome gaps between what it is considered appropriate to feel and what is felt (Hochschild, 2003). People get socialized into different emotional cultures and different ways of staring depending on their social position (gender, class, functionality, etc.). These differences are not static, however, but possible to change.

9In the study, different gazes appear in the interviewees’ stories about the meeting with the audience and in encounters with choreographers, organizers, journalists and other surrounding people. I analyse the interviewees’ experiences of both the looks they get when they enter the stage and the view of disabled dancers, as they appear in the interviewees’ narratives.

Methods

10Eleven qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2019. Four interviewees were disabled dancers using wheelchairs, two were able-bodied dancers and the seventh dancer had acquired an invisible physical impairment during a higher dance education. Four interviewees were what, from now on, I will call leaders: artistic directors, choreographers or project managers. The study thus gained different perspectives on the article’s subject: the disabled dancers’ embodied experiences of gazes and circulating emotions, the able-bodied dancers who may become allies as they experience the emotional work done by their disabled colleagues and, finally, the leaders’ experiences of contacts with, for example, collaboration partners, choreographers and journalists. None of the leaders had a visible disability, which reflects the situation in the dance world (de Senna, Bowditch & Bower, 2016). The interviewees worked at four different companies but were also involved in other, temporary, projects in parallel. To gain a deeper understanding of the field, eight dance performances were seen and three dance conferences attended during 2018-2020.

11The leaders were contacted via email with information about the study and a request for their and the dancers’ participation. If a company had several able-bodied dancers, I chose those whom I had seen dancing in inclusive performances in order to be able to relate to the performances during the interview. The leaders in turn asked the dancers for whom I then received contact details. The interviews were conducted at a location chosen by the interviewees themselves; at the dance company, in a dressing-room in connection with a performance, in their homes or on the university’s premises. One interview was conducted digitally due to geographical distance. The interviews took between 45-105 minutes. An interview guide was used, with thematically ordered questions about education and professional background, attitudes, the artistic process, the reception and thoughts about the future – all related to dance. Questions relevant to this article were, for example, what attitudes towards disability and dance have you encountered? Have your own attitudes towards disability and dance changed? If so, how? What reactions have you received from the audience? What are the obstacles and opportunities to a more-inclusive dance scene? All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were sent to the interviewees for approval and one interviewee developed the answers to a few questions. Repetition and some colloquial language have been removed from the quotes to make reading easier (Kvale, 2007).

12In the analysis, a hermeneutic approach was used. A phenomenon can only be understood in its context (Gadamer, 1986/2006). The interpretation implies a constant movement between the parts and the whole and between the empirical material, the context and the researcher’s pre-understanding (Gilje & Grimen, 2007). Initially, the interviews were listened through. Then two readings were made. The central text was marked and keywords were written in the margin, both based on the research question and new themes that arose. Each interview was also briefly summarized in a separate document. Finally, the central themes in all interviews were compared and four were distinguished: benevolence, the spectacle, between discomfort and desire for change and paths forward.

13The study was approved by the Regional Ethics Review Board in Uppsala. All participants received written information about the study and subsequently gave their consent to participate. Since the Swedish dance scene is small, the anonymization has not only included names of persons, cities, dance companies and performances; the dancer who had acquired an invisible impairment is referred to as able-bodied in order not to reveal his or her identity, which is also justified by the fact that the focus of this study is on gazes and the visible.

Results

Benevolence

14Almost all interviewees posit that their artistic work is not taken seriously. L10 said that, when the company started, it was not seen as a performing arts institution:

Some, especially at the beginning, thought that we were doing so-called handicap activities, as they said at the time. Which we then quickly tried to say, “No, our focus is not to work with the disability rights field, our focus is to work with the artistic field but from a rights perspective that applies to disabled people.”

15The leader feels compelled to correct the misconceptions about the company. Other interviewees use terms such as charity project (D5), leisure activity (D7), therapy and goodwill project (L8). Among the audience, there may be a similar view of inclusive dance as something other than a cultural expression: “Initially, people might think: ‘Well, should I go to this? Is it good or not? Or is it some social project where disabled people can participate?’,” as D3 puts it. One of the able-bodied dancers (D2) protests against this kind of comment about a disabled colleague:

“It must be great fun for her to do that.” […] Well, it’s super for me too. It’s fantastic for me to be able to dance with X. […] I don’t come across that every day. So, I can kind of take it and instead try to give a key to how we want it. [laughter] Or the way we look at it. But some people get angry and offended because they might face it so often.

16What may appear to be benevolent comments expose a view of disabled people as tragic objects that must be let in by a supposed “us.” Disabled bodies are assumed to be dependent and without agency (Nash, 2005) and are treated paternalistically (Apelmo & Alftberg, 2022). It is unthinkable that the performance is a collective work that is developmental for and appreciated by all parties. The quote also shows that benevolence arouses emotions. When the benevolent gaze is turned on the disabled person, he or she is made a suffering victim and the benevolent person is given social capital and status as an altruistic citizen (Ahmed, 2004). Benevolence is expected to be answered with gratitude – but that does not happen in this case. Instead, the disabled dancers resist by reacting with anger. By “giving a key to how we want it” the agency is regained. D2’s functionality certainly follows the norm but, as an ally, the dancer can help to explain “how they live and they want to live with that body” (García-Santesmases Fernández & Arenas Conejo, 2017: 349) and thus contribute to change.

17Another way in which the idea of dance and disabilities as a social or therapeutic project is expressed is when people declare that they are pleasantly surprised. D7 says that dance critics do not write about the performances but that journalists “are impressed by what they see because they don’t think that… you can do so much.” Several interviewees testify to the great audience reactions, including D5:

They are often very positively surprised when they see a performance. Which I think is a bit funny, because everyone can do different things with their body and even normative bodies have different functionalities, like, some are very flexible, others are very strong, some are good on the floor, some are good at spinning.

18That the audience and journalists are impressed or positively surprised shows their low expectations. D5 believes that they also ignore the variation in functionality that always exists. The implicit questioning means that disabled dancers are put under constant pressure and need to “prove that I have the right to be on this stage” as D7 puts it. D6 explains that on stage:

It is really important that what I do […] is good. Because I know that people may not really believe it’s for real. And I don’t want anyone in the audience to think or say or believe that “[…] the one in the chair, she is there just because they want to be PC.”

19Several have experiences of collaboration partners inviting the companies only to “tick the box,” to fulfil the welfare state’s requirements for inclusion. According to Ahmed, “a tick box approach is when institutions can ‘show’ that they are following procedures but are not really ‘behind’ them,” or without being committed (2012: 113-4). This can be part of what D6 calls politically correct and does not lead to a profound change but only to tokenism. The view of disabled dancers as objects for the goodwill of others implies a disapproval and questioning of their professional choice and can also be reinforced when certain performances or projects are in the pedagogical and outreach extension of a mainstream institution rather than as part of the regular repertoire (Albright, 2001).

The spectacle

20“Many people are surprised that I am dancing,” says D7; D6 develops a similar theme:

There are not many people who believe that it is even possible. I didn’t think so three years ago either. […] For example, the other day I called a chiropractor because I wanted to book an appointment with her, and said “Well, hey, I’ve hurt my hip, I work as a dancer.” “Do you work as a dancer? […] But how does that happen, you’re sitting in a chair!” I just, “Well I do, but now I called about my hip, maybe we should talk a little about that.” [...] So I have encountered a lot of surprise and people are impressed and fascinated. […] Sometimes I hesitate a little to say what I’m working on. Because it’s a bit hard sometimes to get that kind of reaction.

21Surrounding people express different emotions when D6 talks about her profession. Some react with surprise. Being a disabled dancer appears beyond the conceivable, an approach that D6 had previously internalized. Others are impressed. D6 appears as someone who has overcome both her own body and societal obstacles and risks being seen as a hero or what is usually referred to as a supercrip (Grue, 2021; Swartz & Watermeyer, 2008). Still others express fascination, which I interpret is being directed at the bodily difference itself, rather than the dance. Perhaps it is challenging that the disabled body is not hidden but is displayed in a context where perfection is normally displayed. Albright (2001) suggests that, at traditional dance performances, the audience can indulge in voyeuristic pleasure at the sight of the dancers’ technically skilled and sexually desirable bodies. Disabled bodies, on the other hand, are usually concealed. Thus, when a disabled person takes the stage, “[…] he or she stakes a claim to a radical space, an unruly location where disparate assumptions about representation, subjectivity and visual pleasure collide with one another” (Albright, 2001: 57-8). Another type of voyeuristic pleasure arises. The emotional reactions are strong, and my interpretation is that they alienate D6 from her own dancing body (Hermans, 2016). Instead, she is reminded of the body as the object of others’ gazes (Young, 2005). The feeling that arises is negative, therefore she sometimes avoids talking about her profession.

22D1 links surrounding people’s fascination to the fact that disabled people are uncommon in dance: “We don’t have enough representation on our stages so it’s still a fascination.” It can also be a matter of segregation in society: “There are still too few spaces in society where we meet naturally across functional boundaries.” However, D1 also brings up the connection between how a choreography is developed and what kind of gazes she experiences during the performance:

[When] the [dis/abled] person hasn’t been involved based on their full potential, when the other individuals haven’t been allowed to work equally with that individual, then the expectation of what is presented on stage is also very low. So, there will be this applause just because it’s another functionality on stage […] For me it’s back to human dignity again […] this fascination with another functionality.

23Sandahl (2018) claims that, when disabled dancers only are physically integrated into mainstream dance, the audience’s comparison of bodies and search for differences are encouraged. Then the fascination for the deviation risks taking over, which – according to D1 – negatively affects human dignity. L11 is one of two leaders who explicitly associate this fascination with circuses and the freak shows that were at their height of popularity in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries (Garland-Thomson, 2017). L11 believes that the audience does not come to see the dance itself:

You go there to see them. Not what is being done, and how it is said, and in what way you address each other. […] You come there to see the spectacle. We haven’t come that far from it being a circus attraction. It’s just camouflaged in some kind of good person who, ugh yes, I sound terrible, it’s not like that everywhere and all the time. But I see the trend.

24She continues by saying that, sometimes, people in the audience say “Oh, but we didn’t see who was disabled!” When this is not fulfilled, the audience is surprised. What Garland-Thomson (1997, 2009) terms the extraordinary body attracts the novelty-seeking stare, which “normalize[s] the viewer by spectacularizing the body on view” (Garland-Thomson, 2017: 39) and makes the viewer both excited and concerned. This double emotion can be explained by the notion of the abject. Kristeva (1982) maintains that the self must reject the abject to secure a clean, proper, and socialized body – an able body. The abjection is caused by “what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules” (Kristeva, 1982: 4). According to Kristeva, the abject originates from the small child’s ambivalent struggle to separate from its mother’s body, which is simultaneously the body that both comforts and nourishes it (Young, 1990/2011). The subject moves between being fascinated and attracted to the object and overcome by fear and retreating from it. The negative part of the emotions is transmitted to the other body and the fearfulness becomes looked upon as inherent in it (Ahmed, 2004). The emotion’s origin in the subject’s own feelings is hidden. Perhaps it is the experience of becoming not only an object but also an abject that makes D6 in the quote above avoid talking about her profession. According to L11, who expresses negative feelings even mentioning this, the desire to watch the spectacle is disguised as goodness: “I have permitted this.”

25At other times, the audience cannot believe their eyes. They may ask, as D4 recalls: “‘Is she really in a wheelchair?’ It has become a very common reaction.” I ask what she thinks it is due to and she answers:

Ah, I don’t know, prejudice I suppose. […] What you are used to seeing. I suppose that’s the most obvious thing. You haven’t seen it before, you haven’t thought about it before, you haven’t even gone there before.

26Again, dancers are met with surprise. Previously, surrounding people could not believe that a wheelchair user could be a dancer. Now it is the other way around: can this dancer be a wheelchair user? D4 thinks that it may be about prejudice – it is unthinkable – and ignorance – it is unknown. A body using a wheelchair on scene is “out of place” in contrast to the able-bodied dancer’s body which “can do” and is “at home” (Ahmed, 2006). The dancer appears as too capable to be a wheelchair user. D7 recalls a similar question when she talks about audience conversations after school performances:

They asked, “Are you really in a wheelchair?” […] I’m quite mobile in the wheelchair… And the whole performance was based on us… helping each other in such a way that our functional variations weren’t really visible as much, so I think that’s why that question came up.

27The choreographer has created a collaboration on stage with the effect of hiding the differences and thus the spectacle too. Hence, D7 managed to pass as normal in the show. However, “the (real) difference that disability can make in radically refiguring how we look at, conceive of, and organize bodies” is then limited (Albright, 2001: 60) and there is a risk that an ableist aesthetic is maintained.

28A variation on the same theme is described by D2: “There may be comments such as ‘I forgot there even was a [wheel]chair on stage.’ We take that as a compliment; I don’t know if it’s really a compliment.” Through being skilful, the dancer has almost passed as normal in the eyes of the viewer. Again, the dancer becomes a hero who has overcome obstacles to become a dancer despite impairment. Being portrayed as a hero may seem better than being a freak or a victim. However, the hero still strives to imitate the normal body and will never be critically judged on the same terms as other dancers (McGrath, 2012). The ending of the quote shows a doubt. This is not what they are after. D6 danced without her wheelchair in a performance and says: “It was a bit sad that my chair was not included. Because I think that’s a bit of the point, that it should be seen that we are different.” Previous research has shown a similar reluctance to hide or make the audience forget the disability, which is seen as aesthetically important (Solvang, 2012).

Between discomfort and a desire for change

29When L9 and the dancers are out giving lectures, “[We] always try to meet people who have questions”; however, sometimes, they encounter “a person who may not really know his limits.” D7 also has experience of people in the audience crossing the line:

I don’t care. […] Upper school and upper-secondary school were what we played for and they can be quite cruel sometimes. I was the first one out on stage […] and sometimes I was met with giggles and stuff like that. At the time it didn’t matter but the others who had some functional variation and were in this show, who came in a little later, sometimes became… There was one time when we almost stopped a show because the audience had such a bad attitude towards us […] You never know how an audience will react, so you choose to put yourself in such a situation where you can be booed.

30The assumed control over the performance on stage is lost. On the one hand, D7 distances herself from the feelings of discomfort: she herself does not take offense but other disabled dancers are affected. In this way, D7 also avoids being positioned as a victim in relation to me, the apparently able-bodied interviewer. Being perceived as a victim may lead to support and sympathy; however, a female victim also tends to be seen as weak, powerless and out of control of her own life (Loseke, 2001) – and even more so if she is disabled (Apelmo, 2016, 2019). On the other hand, D7 takes responsibility herself. She has chosen to expose herself to gazes and opinions and avoids criticizing the audience, the framework for the performance or the social and historical situation that enables a booing. Nevertheless, her way of acting can also be interpreted as a “proud, spectacular defiance of pressures to assimilate to exclusionary norms” (Hall, 2021: 12). Instead of trying to assimilate, the difference is celebrated.

31D4 prefers to avoid audience conversations after the performances “because I know that questions can come.” It can be “about my chair in the dance, audience questions can become either private – why I’m sitting in a chair – or…” D4 elaborates on the questions involved:

My colleagues sit next to me and they are asked questions about the work they have created […] I get questions about my functional variation. Yes, but it will be nice to get to the point where it doesn’t even come up [laughs] […] I’m very torn about it. To the idea that… we must do it, we must talk about it, we must go all that way to get to […] that it won’t be such a big deal. That audiences are used to seeing different bodies on stage.

32The reason behind her ambivalence is that, while the colleagues are asked about their profession, D4 is expected to publicly tell her personal story (cf. Kuppers, 2005). She experiences the questions as intruding on her privacy. Moreover, the questions show that she does not belong and must explain her presence (Hall, 2021). Again, the body that tends to disappear from consciousness in everyday life suddenly becomes present; thus her being as a dancer is interrupted.

33The dancers’ emotions need to be handled, as L9 says:

We do professional work […] if we want to be treated well ourselves, then we should also treat everyone well regardless, even if we might be boiling inside and feel that “damn!” But it’s tough. We have many different occasions […] within the company where we get the opportunity to reflect on things.

34Garland-Thomson believes that the person being stared at can help the starer to save face “by relieving them of anxiety, understanding their motivations, working with them to overcome their limited understanding of human variation and indulging their social awkwardness” (2009: 87). However, this also arouses strong negative emotions. The company acts professionally and holds back the emotions but a subsequent collective emotion management is required (Hochschild, 2003). Why, then, do these audience conversations exist? The dance audience has been schooled in a way of seeing and valuing dance that is questioned when disabled bodies are on stage (Notér Hooshidar, 2017). Kuppers states that physical accessibility is not enough: “An accessible dance culture needs […] also wider educational work on the level of dance literacy, our ability to read dance, and appreciate its manipulation of bodies, spaces, and time” (2014b: 114-5). D4 sees the conversations as a necessary evil, to reach a point where what the bodies do is at the centre.

35D3 recounts what can happen after school performances:

Children have asked afterwards “Are those your real legs or are they dolls’ legs?” […] In [the performance], I have beige tights so they might look a bit like prosthetic legs […] They have really looked, looked and looked and looked and then it feels like “Yes, but of course you are allowed to look.” Because that’s how it is, you might dare to ask and then it becomes less serious and when you meet someone next time, it’s not such a big deal. […] But at the same time, not being watched must, in a way, almost be worse, I think, because then it’s like you don’t… But you can be watched in different ways. You can meet that person’s gaze and not look at the cheek that isn’t there.

36What Garland-Thomson (2009) calls the baroque gaze is a gaze where curiosity has been replaced by wonder. It wants new knowledge and opens a dynamic relationship between the starer and the staree. If the baroque gazing happens in, for example, a public environment, when the staree is busy doing other things, it can be problematic (Apelmo, 2016, 2019). However, from the stage, the audience is given silent permission to stare (McGrath, 2012). Children who have not yet been socialized into the prohibition of staring can stare in amazement and dismay and their staring is often more accepted by those being stared at who, like D3, choose to educate the children and answer the questions (Garland-Thomson, 2009; see also Apelmo, 2016), with the hope that it can contribute to a changed view of disabled people. At the same time, “almost be worse” still suggests that D3 is not entirely comfortable with the intense viewing and objectification of her body.

37The conversations have an additional function in the meeting with others who are disabled. Performances with disabled dancers have a higher proportion of disabled spectators in the audience (de Senna, Bowditch & Bower, 2016). Several interviewees address the importance of children and young people in particular seeing professional role models on stage in order to be able to imagine their own dance career. D6 says: “Yesterday there was a girl in the audience who apparently just ended up in a chair. She said ‘Thank you, this was so amazing to see! It was so important for me […] to see these possibilities.’ So, it feels so important.” Newly injured people may have previously seen disabled people as deficient, tragic and less capable; however, they are now in the process of reorienting and reinhabiting space (Ahmed, 2006). Furthermore, L9 says it can be significant for children living in the countryside:

We know that we have somehow changed the lives of children with functional variations in particular. Like maybe, you know, in small places […] it has never existed in their conceptual world that this could happen. […] And what’s more, that person remains afterwards, you can go up to them.

38Children and young disabled people direct the surprised “gaze of recognition” at the disabled dancers “that affirms their subjectivities” (hooks, 1992/2015: 130). There is a strong commitment to social change in the above quotes. “Disabled people have been absent from the stage for so long that convincing them that they belong on a stage or in a dance studio is still difficult” (Patrick & Bowditch, 2013: 89). By seeing others who have trodden this path before, new possibilities open and the imaginable expands.

39But not everyone finds being a role model for other wheelchair users entirely positive. As D4 puts it:

You become a role model; you can’t get away from that. […] Sometimes you don’t want to be that, perhaps. Sometimes I just want to concentrate on the dance… There will also be some kind of responsibility that I may not have agreed to, or that I’m not interested in. Or that I should represent a target group.

40People who are strongly categorized and who reach a position often run the risk of involuntarily becoming representatives of the group (Goffman, 1963/1990). However, they can also become involuntary role models.

Paths forward

41Dance critics have often focused on the otherness and heroic mastery of the disabled dancers – if they reviewed it at all (Harmon et al., 2018; McGrath, 2012). However, the interviewees have experiences of critics seeing beyond the body. One example is given by D3:

We got a review, but nobody wrote about it [her functionality] and I just felt like: “Yes, but how nice.” It’s not such a big deal then, it’s just one of the ways to use your body. And then I felt “but then something has happened.”

42D3 is relieved at the thought that the view of dance, body and functionality may have started to change. L8 tells me that she contacted a dance critic:

I pretty much pestered him [the reviewer] to come. But then he wrote precisely that, “I had never intended to see this performance. Who could this be interesting for, apart from a politician with diversity issues, for parents and relatives?” And he made it quite clear in his article that it was one of the best experiences he ever had.

43The reluctant reviewer expected to see only disabled amateurs. Perhaps he thought the bodies would interfere with the visual enjoyment or that the performance was the result of an aesthetic limitation (of which all the disabled dancers were capable) and not artistic interpretation (a choice) (Albright, 2001: 57-8). The sign “aesthetically uninteresting” is stuck on their bodies and consequently they are treated with “disinterest.” However, he got a strong dance experience instead.

44Several interviewees talk about people in the audience being deeply moved by their performances. One able-bodied dancer, D2, states:

People are really touched by our [performance…] and it’s absolutely fantastic to be a part of. I have never experienced such a response ever in my career. […] People come and cry, as it were. But then sometimes I don’t know what it is that strikes a chord. […] it’s just my theory, but I think there’s pity for a few times in that reaction.

45D2 believes that the crying is sometimes caused by pity – in other words, the view of the disabled person as a tragic victim. Pity is a diminishing emotion, which makes the starer distant and alienates the staree (Garland-Thomson, 2009). In these cases, the audience is not “‘with them’ by feeling sad: the apparently shared negative feelings do not position the reader [audience] and victim [disabled dancer] in a relation of equivalence” (Ahmed, 2004: 21). However, this does not always apply. It is also “absolutely fantastic” to experience the audience’s response. D4 also talks about strong emotions: “People I don’t know and who cry openly and who come and say ‘Thank you! Oh, God, that was good!’, like this. They have, no, not really expressed why, just that they have been extremely affected.” While D4 does not know why they cry, L9 thinks that it is the permission to look that raises emotions:

People are very affected and it may be that you are affected for various reasons. […] Being allowed to, kind of, rest your eyes on something, that’s, okay, it’s very overwhelming. […] Imagine that I am invited into this world and I am allowed to watch and no one incite, but I get to watch for real. And it’s a bit breath-taking. Some are crying and no one wants to leave.

46It is impossible for me to fully interpret the dance critic’s enthusiasm and the audience’s tears without interviewing them. However, Kuppers (2014b: 120) suggests that the framing, the distancing of audience and performer…

lifts bodies, actions and movements out of their everyday meaning and allows us to see them differently. By doing this, performers can show the constructed nature of the everyday, the assumptions that the spectator brings to a performance.

47Ideas about bodies and practices of staring and associated emotions may thus become visible and could be one reason behind the tears. Cunningham (2018) has another explanation for strong audience reactions. She maintains that the lived experience of disability entails certain qualities in body and mind: spatial awareness, timing, precision in movement and attentiveness to energy and of other people. While able-bodied dancers need to learn to be “present,” presence is a necessity and embodied knowledge for physically disabled people.

48The choreographers’ view of disabled bodies is important, too. “I have also experienced, from both teachers and choreographers that, when a person is able to look beyond the body itself and see what the body actually does, it makes a huge difference,” states D1. On stage there is a potential opportunity for disabled dancers to make decisions themselves about how they are represented, both artistically and politically (García-Santesmases Fernández & Arenas Conejo, 2017; Sandahl, 2003). In the productions that I have seen and the ones that the interviewees talked about, self-determination has varied. One problem is that there is a lack of disabled leaders (de Senna, Bowditch & Bower, 2016) such as choreographers, project managers and artistic directors, with the situatedness and orientations that follow from lived experiences of disability. Often the possibility of self-representation depends on methods and insights among (able-bodied) choreographers, which also affects the final result.

49L11 is working on disrupting the vision in various ways so that the sight becomes partial:

You block the vision […] and we start to see other things and that is extremely interesting when it comes to art. That’s what art does. I’m trying to counter and sort of go straight against this that you should reveal something. But rather that you re-veil something.

50Albright (2011) states that dancers negotiate between seeing and being seen; however, in this example, both the eyes and the bodies are completely or partially hidden. It is not about hiding the differences of disabled bodies so that they pass as normal – as in the previous example – but, in fact, all bodies are more or less hidden. In some performances, the audience participates in the dance, instead of watching the dancers looking back at the audience. As L11 says:

You are both the one doing the performance and the audience. But even in more regular […] performances where there is a clear difference between the one who views and the one who delivers what is to be viewed, all my productions since then have also left it unsaid where to look and for how long. […] That you can’t really see exactly.

51In this way, the audience becomes a co-creator of the dance and the dancers also become observers. “It is not me who is on stage watching the audience but it is the audience and I who watch the dance,” continues L11. The re-veiling confuses the scrutinizing able-bodied gaze. The voyeuristic pleasure is broken, as it does not know how, where and on what to look. The circulation of emotions based on a view of disabled bodies as characterised by negative difference (lack, inability, tragedy or fearfulness) is also hindered. The boundary between the spectator and the spectacle dissolves, “other things” – e.g., other types of movement and relations – can be seen and a new vision can develop.

Discussion

52The interviewed dancers and leaders meet gazes and stares filled with paternalistic benevolence, surprise, pity, mockery and fascination. The emotions stick to the disabled dancers’ bodies and are seen as inherent in them. They become tragic victims, heroes or simultaneously fascinating and unruly, disturbing abjects. The gazes and emotions distance them from their own dancing bodies and result in self-consciousness and the coercion to “see myself as they see me” (Bartky, 1990: 27; see also Young, 2005). The emotions arouse uneasiness and anger that must be dealt with. The disabled dancers have support from their committed colleagues and together they teach audiences and others about inclusive dance. Ultimately, nevertheless, it is the disabled dancers who must make the emotional work, as it is on their bodies that the emotions are stuck.

53The internal gaze within the dance companies is also important. What approaches do the leaders have and what choreographic choices do they make? When disabled dancers are only physically integrated on the scene or when differences are hidden, the potential for change that exists in the difference itself gets lost and the questioning of ideas surrounding the functionally perfect dancer runs the risk of disappearing. Furthermore, by diverting attention away from disability, socio-economic obstacles (e.g., discrimination, inaccessibility and prejudices that have both social and economic effects) are also denied.

54The companies work for change by inviting the audience’s gazes during performances and by answering their questions at the subsequent audience talks. The disabled dancers show great patience during these conversations, despite their ambivalence towards them, based on the fear of privacy-infringing questions and sometimes at the expense of the individual’s well-being. They use avoidance strategies; they may distance themselves from an unpleasant situation or avoid public talks. Another of the companies’ purposes is to expand what is conceivable for young disabled people. Since dance is not “a path well trodden” (Ahmed, 2006: 16) by disabled persons, it is difficult to imagine a future as a dancer. During and after the performances, disabled dancers and disabled persons in the audience meet in the gaze of recognition that “constitutes [both of] them as spectators” not as spectacles (hooks, 1992/2015: 130).

55The interviewees want the audience to see the dance instead of the functionality. This happens sometimes and is seen as a sign of change. Strong emotions like enthusiasm or tears may be interpreted as an expression of the audience being alerted to something new, such as how bodies are organized, their own gazes or the highly tuned presence in space and movement that is part of the lived experience of disability. With the new insights follows an empathetic identification, instead of diminishing pity (Garland-Thomson, 2009). Another strategy used by one company is to block the gazes and thus completely break with voyeurism. I can also discern pride: the dancers want the bodily differences to be seen but without them being associated with lack, inability, freakishness or heroism. Thus, “a poetics of disability” (Whatley & Marsh, 2018: 10) can replace an ableist aesthetic.

Conclusion

56In my material, the beginning of change is discernible. Practices of looking and feeling in different ways in front of different bodies are effects of previous ways of looking. The dance companies tread new paths by showing new ways of interacting together. This not only expands the possibilities for disabled bodies but also for other bodies both in the continuum of differences between the socially constructed categories of able/disabled (Campbell, 2009) and for the supposedly hyper-able bodies in, for instance, dance. The article’s opening quote describes the everyday life of a person with visible disability as a performance. With new ways of thinking and feeling about bodies and new ways of living together, a reorientation takes place that may even reach everyday interaction.

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Notes

1 The anonymity of the interviewees is guaranteed by using D (dancer) or L (leader) and a number.

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References

Bibliographical reference

Elisabet Apelmo, ““They really looked, looked and looked:” Contemporary dance, disability and the circulation of emotions”Alter, 18-1 | 2024, 5-21.

Electronic reference

Elisabet Apelmo, ““They really looked, looked and looked:” Contemporary dance, disability and the circulation of emotions”Alter [Online], 18-1 | 2024, Online since 05 March 2024, connection on 15 June 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/alterjdr/3259; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/vyi7

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About the author

Elisabet Apelmo

Department of Social Work, Malmö University, Sweden
elisabet.apelmo[at]mau.se

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Copyright

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.

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