Dance and disability
Recognizing performance as a central lens in the everyday lives of blind women led me to my work on disability culture and integrated dance. I became interested in how people with diverse bodies negotiate disability on stage and choose performance as a professional career. In my research on embodied knowledge—how it is formed, translated, and mobilized for activism and social change—I conducted over a decade of fieldwork with disability dance projects across genres including ballet, modern dance, contact improvisation, dance theatre, and breakdance, in Israel, Europe, and the United States.
In this study, I explore the following questions:
What type of bodily knowledge is created when people with widely differing bodies explore and articulate kinesthetic knowledge, that is, the bodily sense of locomotion, the knowledge and feeling of the movement of one’s body and its orientation in space?
How is this knowledge transmitted and translated across different bodies (I call this “embodied translation”)?
In which ways are disability politics expressed and translated into the embodied experiences of inclusive dance practitioners?
What are the potentials, as well as limitations, of aspiring for socio-political equity when those goals are intertwined with the moving body?
In this study, I conducted over seventy interviews with dancers, practitioners, directors, choreographers, and staff members with and without disabilities, and participant and nonparticipant observations of company classes, rehearsals, outreach programs, workshops, tours, and performances.
About this study
Photos
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Dancers collaborate in an integrated dance setting
Dancers Sebastian Grubb and Emily Eifler of Axis Dance Company, 2011. Photo by David DeSilva.
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An example of embodied translation
Meitali Aharoni, who uses a wheelchair, and Shani Licht, a non-disabled dancer, express the emotional and kinesthetic essence of a movement in unison in an integrated contract improvisation workshop in 2017. Photo by Tali Vertheim.
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Luca “Lazylegz” Patuelli dances on his crutches
Performance at the University of South Florida, demonstrating the ways crutches are integral to the dance, 2018. Photo by Tom Kramer.
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Masterclass for dance students and teachers
Luca “Lazylegz” Patuelli demonstrates a “high pushup,” his translation of a traditional pushup, lifting his entire body from the floor, 2018. Photo by Gili Hammer.
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Axis Dance Company dancers
Sonsheree Giles, Joel Brown, and Sebastian Grubb performing Divide by Marc Brew, 2014. Photo by Andrea Basile.
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Integrated dance school-based project
Dancers, choreographers, and co-founders of the integrated dance project Vertigo – The Power of Balance, Hai Cohen (who uses a wheelchair) and Tali Wertheim (on the left), instructing the “sharing-weight laboratory.” Photo by Gili Hammer.
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Instructor and students
Tali, the instructor (on the right), working with two students at Vertigo – The Power of Balance “sharing-weight laboratory,” 2016. Photo by Gili Hammer.
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Hai Cohen
Hai Cohen, co-founder and director of Vertigo the Power of Balance, 2016. Photo by Menshikova.
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Performance of the "Intimate Duet"
Tali Vertheim and Hai Cohen, co-founders and director of Vertigo the Power of Balance, 2016. Photo by Elad Debi.
Publications
Gili Hammer. 2024. Navigating Frictions: Crip Utopian Performatives in Integrated Dance. Etnofoor 36(2): 109- 130.
Gili Hammer. 2021. “A Pirouette with the Twist of a Wheelchair: Embodied Translation and the Creation of Kinesthetic Commensurability.” American Anthropologist, 132, 2, Pp. 292-304.
Gili Hammer. 2020. “Expanding Intersubjective Awareness: The Anthropology of Kinaesthetic Diversity.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 26, 3, Pp. 554-574.
Gili Hammer. 2018. “Dialogical Encounters with Disability in Integrated Dance Education.” The Journal of Inclusive Practice in Further and Higher Education, 10, 1, Pp. 106-119.
Media
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This talk explores the Israeli aspects of integrated dance, an art form that brings together dancers with and without disabilities. Together, these dancers challenge the way disability is presented and perceived in public culture and in the arts. Yet, the dance projects also reveal a hierarchy between those veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces who are disabled and others with disabilities. Integrated dance embodies the possibility of challenging national, religious, and social boundaries while expanding public awareness of multiculturalism.
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In this three-part podcast, Dr. Hammer meets with the director, choreographer, and creator, Emanuella Amichai, to discuss shared aspects of art and research in and on disability culture.
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This discusses Gili’s recent article in the American Anthropologist.
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This discusses Gili’s recent article in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.