Disability is there upfront and central; no one can escape or avoid its presence

Wheelchair Dancer – I am always amazed that we have an audience. Performing at home is one thing; we’ve been there for years — had time to build a base, form a community. Performing in a different town, in a different place is makes me wonder: who wants to see us perform? Who funds a dance company like ours? Who brings us to your town and why?

These questions haunt me as I read the following article: an interview of crutch-master Bill Shannon about being a performer at the Paralympics. The title is, I think, intended as one of those journalistic plays on words:”Performance artist resists ‘disabled ghetto’:Disability not a crutch for skateboarding dancer,” but to me the conjunction of these ideas is meaningful.

Shannon wants to talk about how his art and creativity are not tied to his disability. He wants to reinforce the idea that he is not there to fill the disability slot on any program. He is an artist. A performer. And he wants to be — no, should be — taken seriously as such. This is a really hard project. When funding often comes from disability related sources, you get promoted as a “disabled” artist. When disability is the first thing your audience sees, you are interpreted as a disabled artist. Disability has a way of making itself felt. And there’s not much you can do about it.

That said, no one should be going around — journalist or performer (it’s not clear whose phrase it is…the quotes seem to suggest it belongs to Shannon) — talking about disability ghettos.

GHETTOS? Seriously? In this day and age, people still use that word? What does it mean to “racialize” disability in this way — for communities of colour, disability communities, and communities of disability and colour? Is “ghetto” really the only way people can think of to describe the marginalization of people with disability?

To use that word is to simultaneously re-invoke and reinforce a negative understanding about the lives and cultures of people of colour (and African Americans in particular). To use that word is to casually invoke a history of prejudice and hate to signal a second history of prejudice and hate. And that doesn’t work. If we are to survive and support each other AND (most importantly) have memberships in both communities, we just can’t go around saying stuff like that about each other. As a person of colour, this makes me question the relationship of mainstream (i.e. white) disability community to the community of disabled people of colour. It make me question my place.

People! If there is to be equality and justice in the world, we have to stop hurting each other. Only then can we work together to make a better world.

OK. Back to the question of audiences. Who comes to see us perform? The presenters we work with — regardless of whether our funding has come from a disability related source — seem to understand the appeal of the community to a broader audience. They do outreach to the disability community (if there is one locally — weirdly, we often perform to absolutely no visibly disabled people). They also do outreach to the local arts and dance audience. With a little luck, our director is able to get a good message across about disability and dance to the media; she often does radio, TV, and press interviews. Sometimes, despite her best efforts, the “inspirational” “tragedy” “overcoming” story does make it to the article, but more often than not, she is able to cut most of that junk off.

People come to see us for a variety of reasons. I don’t know who they are or why they come; I am just happy that they come. I do good work. My company does good work. I feel happy and fulfilled as an artist and performer. I don’t think it is ever going to be possible to separate what we do from the disability angle. Disability makes what we/I do possible. Disability is there upfront and central; no one can escape or avoid its presence. It’s just not the point of what we/I do.