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"The Invisible Choreography: When Dance Redefines the Meaning of "Ability" "
Can imperfection be equal to perfection?
Does an incomplete body mean a loss of agency?
Introduction
In the early 1990s in London, there was a dancer named Celeste Butteker who, in a wheelchair, collaborated with Adam Benjamin to establish the Candoco Dance Company. During the same period, the United States also rapidly developed similar dance companies, which they called "Integrated Dance". This is the AXIS Dance Company that we are familiar with now.We think that in order to be able to act, to think positively or to create something the body needs to move in its familiar and safe ways.. If our bodies are injured or suffer from trauma, what else can we do?
The emergence of these two companies was not accidental. They emerged within the wave of the "perfect body" narrative of post-modern dance and during the era when the disability movement was flourishing. But what is even more important is that they raise a series of exciting questions: If the starting point of dance is no longer "what the body can do" but "what the body is", what changes would occur?
In the practices of Candoco and Axis, understanding the body politics in dance
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