Passing Able

[Image description: Black and white picture of a dancer stretching her legs wide in front of her and bending over so her torso touches the floor, in the foreground of the photo is her foot in a ballet shoe]

Female. Twenty-four. Feminist. Dancer. Disabled?

In this essay, I’ll be writing about my own experiences and trying to incorporate some evidence from people who are much smarter than me and have been thinking and talking about disability for much longer than I have. I’m writing this to make sense of my thoughts as I’ve never really reflected on my identity as a disabled person.

I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy (of the lower limbs, otherwise know as spastic dyplegia) at three months old, as my mother noticed issues with my mobility; due to this I started to learn how to walk much later than an average child and my mother had to perform physiotherapy on my feet and ankles. My feet were rolling inward and sickled and my arches were non-existent. I also was given hard, plastic insoles every six months that required me to sit in leg casts for about an hour each session so my feet could get better.

My mother had always wanted a daughter, you can imagine her elation when she found out she was having me. She wanted a daughter so she could share her love of dance. She asked the doctors in the hospital if dance would help my condition. “In theory, it would work,” they said. So my mum researched local dance schools and off we went to find one.

I was about three or four when I first experienced discrimination. I had to audition for a ballet school (not the one I enrolled in) with other (able) children and I remember vividly, my mum pulling me away from the town hall so enraged, because they said that they refused to teach me. I didn’t understand what was happening at that time, but screw that ballet school.

The dance school I enrolled in welcomed me and my first lesson was a private one and I struggled to lift my heels off the ground in relevé. It wasn’t until I was nineteen or twenty that it dawned on me that if it wasn’t for Miss Tanya at Allenova, I probably wouldn’t be able to walk as well as I do now.

By the time I turned ten, my feet were in better alignment from all the dancing I’d been doing and now I could have insoles that just slipped into my shoes, invisible. That’s fourteen years ago and I don’t really remember what it was like being visibly disabled, other than being bullied and having no other representation of disabled people until I entered secondary school.

I first encountered the word spaz at five. I hadn’t known what it meant at that point and I doubt the girl did either, but even now the word hurts. The word spaz is derived from the word spastic which was a medical term at some point in the early-mid 20th century. Spaz became a derogatory word in the 1980s, where the term gained popularity with children. I was called it again in secondary school and the boy was smug when he said it because he knew he would get away with it as I wasn’t visibly disabled, like my peers in the Physically Disabled Resource (a place disabled pupils at the secondary school could socialise and get work done). When I still had the plastic insoles, people would jeer and pick on me for them. It’s not the type of thing you let go of when it's tied to your identity, not for me at least. I was so othered by kids from my school, even from different year groups, I thought I was the only kid with cerebral palsy. Representation matters. I even had my Year One teacher try to get me statemented, to my knowledge, it's a document to outline what the child needs to do better at school, however this is not what the teacher wanted. She wanted me statemented as someone with learning difficulties and my disability is mobility specific. She even tried to get my grandmother to sign something by saying that she already had my parents’ consent to do so. She didn’t. I was later statemented at some point in my teens as I needed some help during some of my subjects, with that help I was able to manage my workload much better and was de-statemented after that.

In my teens, I was exposed to more disabled people and I met more people with cerebral palsy. It was nice to know I wasn’t alone. Making jokes about being part-braindead is one way to bond I suppose. I found it interesting that an able-bodied teaching assistant actually said that we couldn’t say that. But it’s mine and my friend’s condition. The piece of discrimination I was faced while doing my GCSEs was with AQA Dance refusing to give me considerations with the criteria when there was definitely things I struggled with that my able peers had no problem executing.

But now as a twenty-four year old, I’m not sure what to identify as. I had a family member say that I wasn’t disabled because it wasn’t visible and it only really affects me when I go for a day out with lots of walking or am in a dance studio—situations I’m only in when there isn’t a global pandemic.

But passing as able has affected me. It definitely has its benefits, as I don’t need adaptations such as ramps and specifically needed lifts or lowered counter heights in bathrooms or receptions.

But unfortunately, not knowing how to identify has led to having imposter syndrome, like I’m undeserving of being in disabled spaces or being a part of the conversation because I don’t need special considerations. It makes me feel like a fraud. The only difficulties I experience with my disability, as mentioned previously, is when I’m in a dance studio and I can’t execute phrases “well”, or when I’ve walked a long distances and my feet are tired.

When I started university, I was in a funny place. I didn’t know if I could do it because I had been doing ballet for fifteen years and contemporary, although similar to ballet, the movements are initiated from a different point of the body. In my first year, I would discuss movement and dance with a lecturer, we’d talk about how institutions have molded how I look at dance. Before university, everything had to be as technically perfect as I could make it, but my lecturer helped me deconstruct my ideas about dance. Whether it's wrong or right, technically speaking, it’s still just dance and expression.

I had the amazing opportunity to speak at a symposium at my university about neurodiversities.

That’s what dance became for me, about expression and my body was a dancing one, and it always has been. I began choreographing what I wanted outside of university and got praise for it. However that didn’t stop me from questioning myself when criteria for a module is purely technical.

In third year, I got a really high mark for Physical Skills, a module that had a focus on how well you executed movement, the mark was so surprising that I was going to query it—I didn’t think I was deserving of it. Actually, when I told a classmate she just gave me a look of absolute shock.

I shied away from studying dance with a lens on disability while I was at university because I didn’t want to be that disabled girl who was only interested in dance and the non-conforming body. I wanted to explore other interests like race and dance, where I wrote an essay on dance as protest during Black Lives Matter protests. I was interested in queer people dancing like Vaslav Nijinsky and how queerness and sexuality was coded on stage. But perhaps I should have looked into Crip Theory a bit more. Over the pandemic, I’ve opened myself up to more exposure of Crip activists such as Nina Tame, who has spina bifida, and they use Instagram to inform and educate. I’ve also found the disability resource Disability Connect on Instagram, through which I discovered July is Disability Pride Month! Imagine that!

Now, I realise that I might still need those critical, academic conversations that I had with my lecturers to validate me because now the safety blanket of university has evaporated, poof, I feel lost. Pre-pandemic, I had/have a perception of not feeling deserving of going to professional dance classes, because I’m not able-enough to execute the work and I know it’ll take time to deconstruct those thoughts because I have a 2.1 degree and am therefore a professional and deserve to take up space.

Could that be because I haven’t seen many others like me in the dance space? The general perception of dance is highly athletic, able-bodied people performing with such virtuosity. Even growing up, children’s dance like after school clubs don’t give off the perception that children who have non-conforming bodies, are welcome, I didn’t see anyone other than myself there. I grew up watching The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, to the point of wearing out the videos, where was someone like me?

Dance and the disabled gives off the perception of becoming a type of therapy as a way to improve the body. I did it and I worked hard and my feet grew stronger but the way that dance helped me improve my body became secondary when I would dance for the sake of dancing; it became more about performance and expression—communication and connection. For me dance has been therapeutic but never therapy, the focus has always been on the expression.

Researchers Michelle R. Zitomer and Greg Reid conducted a study (2011)* about children in an integrated dance class and their perceptions about dance ability, there were five disabled participants (most with cerebral palsy) and eleven able bodied participants. The idea of adaptation in dance (known as the translation method StopGap Dance Company uses, where disabled members change dance phrases to what suits them (StopGap website, accessed 2021) allows change in attitudes towards integrated dance. It promotes equal opportunity and participation.

The researchers noted that one able bodied child considered this study as therapy which disabled dance is often referred to. The other children all thought the study was simply dance education. Zitomer and Reid imply that the biases the able bodied children brought to the study would have lessened had they been exposed and integrated with disabled people prior to this, this theory is known as Contact Theory.

Through their research they found that Donna Goodwin (2009) who had researched disabled students and inclusive physical education, discovered that disabled students wanted to participate with their able bodied peers. Through this meaningful integration, disabled students were able to demonstrate physical competence, this then gave them a sense of belonging. However when the teacher did not encourage involvement of all parties, exclusion occurred.

Zitomer and Reid filmed the class, conducted interviews with participants and took notes; they wanted to focus on contact theory, ableism and a situative approach. Prior to the study the participants’ perceptions of dance and of dance ability were “all kinds of moves, like ballet and turning/jumping.” Ballet dominated conversation as it was favoured with girls. Parents also wanted their preschool daughters to enter ballet. One of the disabled participants mentioned that they were familiar with hip-hop, when discussed. Here, dance is something the able bodied children have experienced and yet the disabled participants have only heard of it, there’s an imbalance of opportunity prior to the study.

For a participant with disabilities, dance was work, describing her experience with the movement itself, “You have to hold onto that rail (barre) and do those moves” (demonstrates moves from ballet technique). However, three children (two with disabilities) demonstrated forms of turning when entering the studio which implies their ability to dance.

All of the children except two (one abled bodied and one disabled) expressed that they perceive themselves able to dance when discussing turning and jumping. One child with a walker, was eager to demonstrate his jumps by also leaning on his walker for stability.

When shown images of people using walkers and wheelchairs, the able bodied children indicated that as there was an inability to walk in the images then there is inability to dance. An abled bodied child suggested that the person with the walker could dance because their feet were touching the ground. But another child (able bodied) cited Artie Abrams from Glee, a character who was in the titular glee club and participated in the dance numbers, implying that wheelchair users can dance. However, unfortunately Artie is played by an able bodied person, we still need better representation.

Soon the notion of inability continued and the theme of passivity occurred when an interview of all able children were discussing doing the moves together but then portraying them as physical manipulators of movement. This idea of passivity perpetuates ableism, the able bodied children made assumptions about their disabled peers ability and then seemed to ignore the disabled child’s autonomy in the decision making process. A group (2 a, 1 d) was asked to demonstrate a letter with their bodies, the child with the walker was slow in performance, the two able bodied children rushed over and one of them even grabbed hold of the walker to push the disabled child into the shape, assuming passivity. This happened without prior consultation with the disabled child and his presence was ignored. The children were unaware that this was ableist.

The research found that only two of the eleven able bodied children had met other children with physical disabilities prior to the study. The perceptions of disabled children differed, with quotes like “They have wheels, we have feet, she [the child with walker] has feet… it's complicated,” and “they have those things.” Though two girls did not perceive the children with disabilities as different, “Because they are still people.”

After the study the interviews conducted found positive change. Perceptions were inferred by the subjects’ kinaesthetic experience of using the space together and exploring diverse ways of movement in the dance space. This developed understanding of dance as body movement and levels in space.

The emotional connection in the study implied enjoyment of dance. “Enjoying the context in which the contact situation occurs is imperative for the contact to be effective in re-evaluating in-group and out-group norms” (Zitomer and Reid, 2011). The word fun was repeated from most of the children, abled bodied and disabled, one of the disabled participants described dance as a way to express yourself and that was reiterated by an able bodied peer.

There was a time when I was fourteen, in year 10 of secondary school, that I actually questioned my place in dance. I asked if my being in classes was just because my parents paid for my classes; when my mum found out, she was taken aback and was hurt that I’d suddenly come to that conclusion. Had my mum forced me there in the hope to better my disability? It might’ve started that way for sure, she didn’t know anyone else with cerebral palsy. I was even asked if I wanted to give up. There was a time where I questioned dance because I didn’t see myself during GCSE Dance and didn’t feel like my teachers were supporting me, so I took a break; from this break my passion and love for the craft rekindled and I wanted to choreograph, express myself, create narratives with bodies, forge an emotional connection with dance. Led me to explore into my degree.

To refer back to my original point about my own perceptions of myself in dance, I shared similar biases as the children did of equating perfect execution of movement to ability within myself. I had to confront those biases as the able bodied children but much later in life. This was due to the lack of representation I’d seen throughout my life in dance. I’d only seen dance as ballet or dance in the curriculum at GCSE, none of which at the time had disabled dancers. Since then StopGap Dance Company are now part of the AQA Dance GCSE as part of dance appreciation. So where was the inclusivity for me? When I was denied considerations of the criteria. I hope that mistake isn’t repeated. But I continued to dance despite the biases I held, I dance and hope for a career in dance, I am able.

Dance is more than perfect execution, if that was the case then I wouldn’t have gotten my degree. It is about comprehension of movement beyond demonstration, it’s expression, embodying the lived experience through movement.

*From this point on, when discussing the study I will be paraphrasing the article and as this is not formal the citations will be sparse.

Zitomer, M. and Reid, G., 2011. To be or not to be – able to dance: integrated dance and children’s perceptions of dance ability and disability. Research in Dance Education, 12(2), pp.137-156.