Choreographies of Disablement

Abstract

Choreographies of Disablement interrogates the historical relationship between dance and disability to recognize and define ‘disablement’ as a choreographic concept within contemporary dance practice. Working from choreographic analysis, interviews, and theories of sovereignty and crip time I argue ‘disablement’ grows out of the historical nexus in which Western concert dance, through the paradigm of ballet, was cultivated: the seventeenth century French political sphere and the prestige of a sovereign balletomane King. The performances of French kings in the burlesque ballet choreographies of 1624-1627 serve as the historical center of this research because disability has a political role to play at the dawn of concert dance in the West. This insight provides the historical perspective from which I locate the development of ‘disablement’ in the seventeenth century and identify its emergence in twenty-first century choreographies. This dissertation uses the historical and political significance of the burlesque ballets as a touchstone to then analyze three contemporary sites of choreography produced between 2004 and 2016. Chapter 3 considers the repertory of German choreographer Raimund Hoghe, a queer disabled artist. I focus attention on his piece Sacre – The Rite of Spring (2004), which draws upon dance’s historical, canonical past. Chapter 4 focuses on Disabled Theater (2012), devised by French choreographer Jérôme Bel in collaboration with the Swiss-based company Theater Hora, a professional theater company comprised of performers with developmental disabilities. The piece is composed of theatrical tasks, including the presentation of self-choreographed dance solos. Chapter 5 centers on the collaborative performance work, A Fierce Kind of Love (2016), comprised of Philadelphia-based disabled and nondisabled performers with choreography by US dance artist Nichole Canuso. Taken together, my analysis of these sites questions the state of disability within the discursive space of dance studies, and in turn positions ‘disablement’ as a historically inflected site of choreographic thinking materializing in contemporary practice.