What are you looking at?: Staring down notions of the disabled body in dance. Issue 1 (1st April 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Durham-Wall, Meghan
• Is Part Of: Choreographic practices. Volume 6:Issue 1(2015)
• Page Start: 25
• Page End: 40
• Publication Date: 2015-04-01
• Subjects: Dance -- Philosophy -- Periodicals; Dance -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Choreography -- Periodicals; 792.82
• DOI: 10.1386/chor.6.1.25_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2040-5669

Abstract

This article considers the display of the disabled body in dance performance. I use Heidi Latsky's Five Open Mouths as an example of how staging physical otherness can be an act of provocation that reframes conventional perceptions of the disabled dancing body. I draw on cultural critic Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's construct of the 'baroque stare' as a prolonged and engaged visual encounter between seer and seen. Used productively in dance, this stare helps viewers recognize how they experience seeing and holds potential as a generative site for renegotiating social, cultural and aesthetic assumptions about the disabled body.