Response To Disability

The contradiction in cultural mindsets of persons with disabilities challenges us to introspectively examine our personal response to divergence. In the emerging paradigm of an inclusive society, we are confronted with 'ugliness' that pierces our own perfection bubbles created by the media. We are threatened to engage our own sense of imperfection, shattering our protective shield. We become aware that we are all an accident or illness away from a restricted dance through life. We are blinded by the norms that restrict us. What would it take to see?
In the article, Strategic Abilities: Negotiating the Disabled Body in Dance, Albright asks a powerful question: “How do you see me?” Presented through the photograph, you look like a person,

In reviewing GIMP, a studious dance performance incorporating four classic dancers and four dancers with disabilities, Theodore Bale wrote: “…as a child, I was taught never to stare at disabled persons. I remained curious into adulthood, however, the dancers in GIMP not only break this common taboo, they make the situation reciprocal. They stare back at you.” (Goodley, 9) Dancers with disabilities produce unique, modernistic movements foreign to dance, making these movements rare and intangible by most able-bodied dancers. The unique gate of cerebral palsy or fluid involuntary movements of Huntington’s disease, when interpreted as dance, grants the individual freedom to acquiesce from the pressure to assimilate into society. They are pangloss, displaying their ‘grotesque’ body open, protruding (Albright, par. 9), fear and anxiety being replaced with the eager anticipation of change. Imploring the reaction of ‘disgust’ will eventually fade into appreciation, and by final curtain the audience forms a new definition of beauty, and what it means to be a

The stage is therapeutic to the dancer, enabling them to face the emotional wall of perception, removing the veil to an arranged marriage. The viewer takes this opportunity to stare, like an infant taking in its mother’s face, we become attached. As the dance continues we become emotionally invested in the dancers and the story they tell. We realize, somewhere along the way, we began to see past the disability to see dancers, capable, strong and beautiful. As we stand to applaud we feel joy, not the usual charity, for we understand the dedication involved to rehabilitate our own disability of blindness in