Five Themes

I go through five themes (overcoming [through cure and genius]; symbiosis of dance and disability; denial of disability; shifting and expanding choreographic practices; and disability aesthetics) in detail and elaborate on how these themes arise within writing about Shawn, Humphrey, and Graham. First, the theme of overcoming, closely linked with notions of “inspiration porn” and “cure,” which are commonly critiqued tropes among disability scholars (Young Reference Young2014; Clare Reference Clare2017), is frequently found and challenged throughout disability representation. There are a myriad of other disability tropes that dance representation should critically examine our role in perpetuating, including: the inspirational narrative, the outcast narrative, the romantic narrative, the blind seer narrative, and the cure narrative (Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts 2006). By noticing when and how these cliché narratives are being used in dance representation and finding ways to complicate disability stories, we can examine our preexisting ideas about the body. I argue that when analyzing dance through the trope of overcoming, dance is seen as able to superimpose over disability, injury, or illness as a form of cure, strength, or beauty. In subsequent paragraphs, I unpack first how overcoming through complex ideas of “cure” are apparent in writing about Shawn having polio, and then second how the term “genius” is used to create an overcoming narrative of productive disability within primary source letters written about Graham. Together, genius and cure are used to gloss over temperament and illness, and reinforce a focus on productive disability in dance.

Second, one of the central tenets of this article is that dance and disability are symbiotic and inseparable, and this theme dominates the archival material. Definitions of disability are broad; I debate including the legal definition of disability because it continues to re-center legal over community definitions. However, the legal definition from the Americans with Disabilities Act highlights the breadth of what disability can be for our discussion:

The ADA illustrates that perception and history can be part of disability status under the law. I often offer a definition of disability that includes mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual disruption to normative ways of being. For this article, I will often bring together aging, illness, and injury under the umbrella of disability. On one hand, this obscures specificity and creates an illusionary homogeneous group, while on the other hand it might allow us to understand the expansiveness of legal and cultural definitions. As an aside, aging, although not a disability, brings up a similar set of stereotypes, tropes, stigmas, and assumptions of “less virtuosic” movement that are often applied to people with disabilities. Aging can sometimes lead to injury and disability and does for Graham and Humphrey, so I include aging in my list of identities.Footnote ⁴ Illness, both chronic and temporary, also falls under the definition of disability, although illness can be vastly different from physical disabilities or learning disabilities. I believe in a both/and approach to exploring the nuances of how these categories work specifically and collectively. With these definitions in mind, US concert dance culture is often engaging in symbiosis with this broad understanding of the body as disabled. Because much of dance is concerned with the body as medium, dancers are always negotiating a fluid spectrum of ability and disability in training practices that seek bodily control and hyper-able aesthetics, an argument developed in subsequent paragraphs. Another aspect of the negotiation of disability is the role of bodily control, which is a foundational part of much of US concert dance training. Some forms of disability confront notions of bodily control, thus upending stereotypical ideas about predictability, repetition, and reliable performance. Thus, I argue that dancers are always navigating disability language and (often unconsciously) identity, and this is mirrored throughout the article and specifically in writing by Humphrey.

Third, denial of disability exists throughout dance culture. The way we deny the identity label of disability continues as an ableist undertone, which suggests that disability is not a desirable experience or identity. Ableism more broadly creates cultures that focus attention on ability and indirectly might deny disabilities’ presence. Talila “TL” Lewis has a working definition of ableism that I would invite us to consider:

I choose Lewis's definition because of the way it highlights interconnected systems of oppression, including anti-blackness, which is inextricably linked to ableism in dance. Further, I would argue that all dancers experience ableism by nature of being in a field that is built upon its conceptual foundation. Applying Lewis's definition with dance in mind, dance as a field is often focused on creating value based on appearance and a person's ability to satisfactorily produce and “behave” in ways that have been defined as “normal.” There is much work on inclusion and access within the field of dance at this point; however, addressing ableism's roots is needed before the field can create systemic change. Indeed, many dancers work with people who have disabilities or include them in their work; however, one can continue ableist practices, aesthetics, and ideologies while supporting people with disabilities. Dismantling a system of oppression requires more than support; it requires systemic change. Accepting that disability is present in our culture and bodies is a first step toward understanding the ways that ableism is present in our own internalized ableism and in our dominate culture. For example, internalized ableism suggests that rest is not important (resisting capitalist production) or that observing a dance class is marginal dancing (less valuable in appearance) or that leaving a performance because of physical pain or triggering content is rude (both unsatisfactory behavior and challenging normalcy). By denying that disability exists in our spaces and bodies, the field of dance avoids acknowledging the ways it is upholding and reinforcing ableism. There are two sections about denial, the first section expounds upon denial as a part of upholding optics of ability, and the second emphasizes the role of the choreographer's assumed unchanging body. Between these sections, I place a short conversation about disclosure and my own relationship with disability and passing identities. The placement of this section intentionally interrupts and interjects into the sections about denial with the opposite: claiming and disclosing.

Fourth, I explore how Graham's choreographic practices shifted and expanded, stemming from her arthritis and changing eyesight. The implications of the theme of shifting and expanding choreographic practices for dance aesthetics, culture, and choreographic, pedagogical, and technique practices are vast. This section argues for dancers with disabilities as self-producers of their own choreography and technique practices, histories, aesthetic values, and cultural practices by hinting at how Graham's practices shifted during choreographing Acts of Light in 1980.

Fifth, and finally, I touch on disability aesthetics, as coined by Tobin Siebers (Reference Siebers2010), and the relationship between modern dance and modern art. I conclude by examining how aesthetics and choreographic practices shifted in the work of Graham as it was becoming more distorted. Often the aesthetic values of dance point back to ableism, in attempts to define who is seen as productive, normal, and desirable. Disability aesthetics and complex aesthetic matrix's challenge the normative dance aesthetics. As the diversity of choreographers’ embodiments are acknowledged in the coming decades; disability aesthetics and aesthetic matrixes will change dance in ways we cannot predict.

Overcoming: Complex Cure

Overcoming disability is a trope that repeatedly emerged while sifting through the archival material. The overcoming narrative trope focuses on superseding injury, illness, or disability rather than existing with, or having a neutral relationship, with it. Like many tropes used to represent and reduce individuals in the margins, the overcoming narrative is a simplified “stand-in” for a more complex examination of disability identity and culture. Eli Clare (a writer, speaker, activist, teacher, poet) writes about overcoming and cure with mosaic nuance and complexity. For Clare, overcoming “is a peculiar and puzzling concept. It means transcending, disavowing, rising above, conquering, Joy or grief overcomes us. An army overcomes its enemy …” and later, “that concept requires dominated, subsuming, defeating something. Pairing disabled people with overcoming imagines disability as that thing. But how could I dominate my shaky hands, defeat my slurring tongue, even if I wanted to?” (Clare Reference Clare2017, 9). Clare also offers the idea of an ideology of cure, saying:

Stories of Ted Shawn's polio illustrates the trope of overcoming through domination of his body with a tone of cure. Shawn discusses using dance to “overcome” polio through the alluded-to therapeutic physicality of dancing and by controlling the way his body and dancing were perceived. Managing Director June Hamilton Rhodes writes that Ted “wanted to show off his beautiful body and be admired. He had taken up dancing following a polio bout and he felt dance would be his proper medium” (De Mille Reference De Mille196?–1991). This quote highlights how Shawn begins dancing directly after having polio as a way to overcome the illness, at least optically. The focus on the perception of health continues in another conversation about Shawn in the quote below:

The words “ugly” and “weak” intend not to describe a dancer's body here, but the potential to overcome by developing muscle and “strength and firmness,” covering over the illness, even so much as to be compared to a deity. The ideology of cure is present in the location of cure being placed on Shawn in his development of his body and the notion of returning or being “reincarnated” into a previously “undamaged” body. In Kinetic Molpai (Reference Shawn1935), strength (presented in clenched fists, lifting bodies, and bare chests providing visible muscles) and firmness (through rigid upright torsos) are used to accentuate masculinity through ability. Physical perfection is tied to hegemonic masculinity and overcomes the once disabled body toward both a physical and mental illusion of “perfection” (Shuttleworth, Wedgwood, and Wilson Reference Shuttleworth, Wedgwood and Wilson2012; Lenore Manderson and Susan Peake Reference Manderson, Peake, Sandahl and Auslander2005). Ableism is likewise tied to hegemonic masculinity. Normative masculinity is linked to being an active agent in the world, rather than the stereotypically gendered feminine, passive body. To be clear, I am not saying that illness did not exist, as disability and ability can coexist on a spectrum and are not mutually exclusive. What is evident, from the writings about Shawn, is that the perception of disability is highly controlled and shifted toward a curative overcoming narrative. The control of perception happens through the ordering of the narrative of this quote, which starts with a pejorative description of an ill body and then moves (through dance) to one of control and physical “perfection.” The lack of common knowledge about Shawn's illness is further evidence that the language of overcoming successfully obscured this part of his history. The residue of this theme of overcoming disability through ideas of cure continues into the present and works together with ideas of genius to overcome disability.

Overcoming: The Label of Genius

The notion of a “superb mind” (as stated in the quote about Ted Shawn) overcoming disability is continued, although slightly differently through the discourse of “genius” in archival letters about Graham and Humphrey. Genius becomes a quantifier around descriptions of disruptive outbursts by Graham; the idea of a “mad genius” along with whiteness allows for Graham to maintain her status. The study of “madness” often falls within psychology, history, and mad studies. Mad studies, as a field, resists medicalized models of “mental health” and advocates for the production of understandings of madness controlled by those who experience it. Mad studies is often described as “a field of scholarship, theory, and activism about the lived experiences, history, cultures, and politics about people who may identify as mad, mentally ill, psychiatric survivors, consumers, service users, patients, neurodiverse, and disabled” (Castrodale Reference Castrodale2015). Madness can be explored independently from ideas of disability or in connection to the concept through the breadth of the definition of disability. To be clear, I am not interested in labeling Graham as mad or disabled, although I am interested in the ways her temperament is described and the notion of genius is used in these passages to affirm the importance of her creativity and brush over her temperament.

In Agnes De Mille's interview with Gertrude Shurr, they discuss how Graham's temperament informed her creative process. Notice how, in the quote below, a gentle critique of Graham's temperament is softened by the notion of creative genius.

The above description indicates not that Graham is being prompted to overcome disability itself, but the way “genius” pacifies her temperament. Genius becomes a modifier to her behaviors and reminds us of the importance of her work. If we view madness as part of disability, then in Shurr's statement about genius, she alludes to disability as a creative and productive identity. E. R. Best writes in more depth about the rhetoric of the “Mad Geniuses” (Reference Best2020) as applied to Graham and Alvin Ailey. I draw from Best's work and from Girsh Segalin's unorthodox statements about the need to not cure genius because it may affect their creative output:

However, genius, in this framing, is only valid as a productive tool, otherwise, as Shurr notes about Graham, it gets in the way of the rigor of the work.

Genius is constructed as a way of overcoming disability and promoting ableist ideas that place value on “productive” disabled people. Intellectual justifications founded on the notion of “genius” exist within academia, dance, and society, and construct illusions of normative ways of processing and a narrow concept of how intelligence looks. Dance studies often questions mind/body dualism with concepts such as phenomenology and supports a myriad of ways to demonstrate intelligence often specifically located in the dancing body (Kuppers Reference Kuppers, Kowal, Siegmund and Martin2017; Fraleigh Reference Fraleigh1996; Sheets-Johnstone Reference Sheets-Johnstone1966). However, the specter of the rhetoric of “intellect” and “genius” still permeates our value structures, grading, and professional accolades, and implies mental superiority over the body. The example of the term “genius” applied to Graham illustrates its use as a problematic quantifier of her temperament, signaling the ability to overcome and obscure the “undesirable” with productive “madness” as a justification for worth.Footnote ⁵

Symbiotic and Inseparable: Dance and Disability

The aesthetic of hyper-ability in modern dance in the United States is enmeshed with bodily entropy. Aesthetic desires for virtuosity, as seen on shows such as So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars, are part of the disabling of dancers’ bodies through a focus on hyper-ability in training and performance (Anderson Reference Anderson2015). The disabling of dancer's bodies is furthered by ableism's resistance to rest, self-care, and lack of affordable access to physical, mental, and spiritual care. Dance training is often connected to bodily maintenance, daily practice, and honing in on the constant fluctuation of the body; the result is an emphasis on bodily control and problematic “mastery.” Although not all dancers perform ballet, literature about ballet dancers’ bodies is vast. Articles and discussions underscore the ballet dancer's “fate,” including Muzaffar's discussion, “‘A Dancer Dies Twice’: The Unique, Sad Challenge of Retiring from Ballet” (Reference Muzaffar2014), and Wainwright, Williams, and Turner's article, “Fractured Identities: Injury and the Balletic Body” (Reference Wainwright, Williams and Turner2005), both of which underscore ballet as tied to identity.

To be clear, bodily “mastery,” technique, and precision are also attributes of numerous dance styles, such as Javanese Court dance (Hughes-Freeland Reference Hughes-Freeland2007). Dancers who identify with their bodies, as Wainwright, Williams, and Turner suggest, focus on their identity around their role and career as a dancer. Temporary or permanent injury causes many dancers to question who they are and how they exist in the world.Footnote ⁶ Injury also shifts economic structures and social relationships, as much of a dancer's life revolves around being in the studio, earning income through teaching and performing, and relating socially with other dancers and collaborators as colleagues, peers, friends, and partners. Broadly, temporary injury (a temporary disability) can shift and cause fluctuations in how someone sees themselves (Garland-Thomson Reference Garland-Thomson and Davis2018).Footnote ⁷ This shift in viewing oneself due to injury, coupled with changes in bodily control, creates a friction between dancer and the dance practices, which may have produced the disability. Lenore Manderson and Susan Peake underscore the relationship of disability to a lack of control” “The injured or diseased body is a body out of control, often at both the cellular and the systemic level, in terms of stability, mobility, and bodily functions.… While disease and injury can create situations whereby individuals lose control, social membership demands autonomy and control of the physical body” (Reference Manderson, Peake, Sandahl and Auslander2005, 232). I am arguing that dance often produces disability through its training practices and aesthetic desires that value control, and when a dancer experiences injury or disability, which disrupts their sought-after bodily control, it has the potential to change their identity and relationship to dance. In this way, dancers are always navigating disability as a symbiotic and inseparable part of their world. When dancers become disabled, they retire or redefine dance for their new (changed/always changing) body.

The writing of Doris Humphrey illustrates her connection to bodily control. In a letter dated November 28, 1953, to “Hay” Helen Mary Robinson, Humphrey describes the past fourteen years of searching for relief from hip pain, the new metal hip that was recently surgically implanted, and her experience attending rehearsals while using crutches. The letter concludes with a quote from Humphrey, stating, “My general attitude about all this is a fury. After being master of my body all these years; it finally turns on me, and I am the prisoner of it” (Humphrey Reference Humphrey1953). I have heard this sentiment echoed by many dancers over the years and believe that it has permeated modern concert dance culture in the United States.

Disability studies offers a complex view of disability, impairmentFootnote ⁸, and illness from which to analyze Humphrey's statements. The models of disability help explain disability as a cultural phenomenon. The previous sections mostly grapple with a medical model of disability, which can be defined as

By contrast, I am applying a social or social justice model to much of my analyses. The social model of disability focuses on society and the environment as a vital part of what creates or produces disability (Oliver Reference Oliver1990). Disability is then, at least, partly socially and environmentally constructed. Within the social model, disability is not attributed to the individual (as with the medical model), but rather responsibility is placed on society to create equity through environmental and social change (Davis Reference Davis2017; Roush and Sharby Reference Roush and Sharby2011). In past years, disability studies scholars have been questioning the social model, but I believe it is still a valuable reference for dance scholars to begin to frame how disability is situated in belief systems and experiences. Impairment and illness can (for some) point to the “facts” of the disability and the lived implication of being a person who is ill or disabled. Holding a both/and relationship to disability and impairment can offer an exciting examination of how identities are concurrently constructed socially and in location, experience, and positionality of the individual. Clare highlights the both/and in implications of disabled embodiment in his writing about the “maze of contradictions” and violence associated with ideas and practices of cure and the lived realities of pain and medical treatment that, for some, provides life (Reference Clare2017).

Finally, disability pride movements can acknowledge that disabled bodies hold and produce knowledge, as well as can contain pleasure through and in their disabled embodiment. Disability does not automatically equate to suffering. Social constructions of normalcy frequently do produce suffering through creating limited body expressions and asking people's productivity and aesthetics to be measured by an illusioned “average” or “norm.” It is the both/and nuance of disability, illness, and injury that provides depth. Returning to Humphrey's quote, becoming the “prisoner” of a body that has been controlled and is now rebelling through injury, illustrates the concept of bodily domination (often through training) as an inherent part of dance history and culture in the United States, and the medical model that places the responsibility of recovery on the dancer rather than on the ableism in dance culture.

Denial Part 1: Optics of Ability

Denial is related to the overcoming narrative as a way of dealing with the presence of disability. Rather than overcoming disability through a rhetoric of genius or narratives of health and physicality, denial of disabilities’ existence within dance produces a similar ableist culture. Denial and the maintenance of an optical illusion of ability is a central aspect of dance culture and of the specific optics of ability that are forwarded by the field. Although the below story about Graham's increasing physical disability has circulated widely, when examined through optics and disability studies, it underscores how the field of dance's self-presentation and denial of a disability influences dance culture. In this interview between Martha Swope and Agnes De Mille, Swope discusses Graham and the way she presented herself as she aged. Graham had arthritis (an illness or disability), and this quote illustrates how she wanted to be seen on the stage as the arthritis became more visible to audiences and impacted her movement.

Graham's desire to be perceived as unassisted, and able to walk, has its roots in internalized ableism. Independence, interdependence, and dependence are all concepts explored within disability studies. These concepts expose the relationship of individuals to society, caregivers, and each other as well as individualism and constructions of “productive” bodies. The role of assistive technology, mobility devices, prosthetics, and various embodiments questions ideas of dancers moving “independently” and where the body begins and “ends.” Denying disability through an optic of ability is about choosing not to claim an identity with a complex interweaving of oppression and privilege, especially within a representational form such as dance.

Disclosure: Disability & Me

I often struggle with disclosure in the field of dance. At the time of this writing, I identify as a white, middle-class dancer who has disabilities. Yet my disabilities are mostly hidden in the public sphere, and I have learned how to adapt in academia and the world. I identify as disabled, yet often have “ableist” privilege. I have had deep, unyielding realizations about just how fluid ability and disability are in my body. My ability to “pass” in numerous situations affords me luxury. Yet, the longer I insist on staying in the field of dance, the more I recognize the ways dance culture values the hyper-able and virtuosic dancer and upholds ableist notions of wellness, health, and ability that both subtly and directly oppress dancers who are injured, ill, aging, or disabled. How often do we post on social media or advertise our dances with images of ableism that highlight our intense ability to “do” rather than “be.” Further, within the academy, various prestigious grants state that “sound physical and mental health” are part of the eligibility to apply. How could I deny my own disability for a grant to study disability? To deny the reality of my bodymind (much like many famous dancers and choreographers who wish to ignore a changing or aging body) would be to deny that my disabilities are fundamental to the ways I relate in the world, my political choices, choreographic and teaching methods, and my knowledge production. I recognize that my disclosure can influence my employment and that perceptions about my ability to be productive, healthy, and rigorous have a real impact. Within dance departments, there have always been conversations about mental health, wellness, injury, and ultimately disability … they just have not been theorized as an interdisciplinary academic pursuit. There is a wealth of academic scholarship on dance, performance, and disability; however, many of the authors work outside dance departments. When we deny that disability is part of a dancers’ relationship to their bodies, we uphold ableist ideology that continues oppression and gatekeeping. Disability is present; 19 percent of the US population identified as disabled in 2012, and accommodations within academia are on the rise (Bernstein Reference Bernstein2012).Footnote ¹⁰ Disability representation within dance is inherently tricky; on the one hand, when disability is not easily visible on stage, it does not mean that disability is absent. On the other hand, easily apparent disabilities often become tropes of disability in dance, and artists and students with visible physical differences become token figures for the field based on the optics of their bodies. By not denying my disability, or the existence of disability in the field of modern dance in the United States, I find new connections, new communities, new processes and practices, and complications that feel real to my lived embodiment.

Denial Part 2: The Choreographer's Body

At times, a choreographer's body is seen as never changing; their choreographic style, vocabulary, and aesthetic, once developed, are often seen as fixed. Yet, the body is never fixed; it shifts and changes over time. Many choreographers embrace this ongoing bodily shift, including Bill T. Jones, Anna Halprin, Kazuo Ohno, and many from the Judson Dance Theatre, including Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay, Simone Forti, and Trisha Brown, who are (or were) actively investigating this shift as they age, which illustrates how age is evident in changing practices/ideas about what their dance practices are and choreography is.Footnote ¹¹ Simply by acknowledging and respecting the truth of the aging body, these artists are examples of how dancers could stay with, rather than exit, dance as they age or, I suggest, become disabled.

Here we enter a paradoxical argument centered on Graham; I argue both that Graham's aesthetics do not change drastically (even as her body does) and, in the subsequent section, that her aesthetics and choreographic practices do subtly change with her changing body. Nuance and specificity are important in describing the complexity of Graham's changing body. Graham tried to fix her “body” in time, by using others’ bodies as a stand-in for her aging, increasingly disabled one. In a newspaper article regarding Graham's relationship to choreographing, her body (and her mental health) is directly (and publicly) stated by Kisselgoff: “After a severe depression and a two-year illness in the early 1970s, Graham actively resumed working with her company. More importantly, after a difficult transition, she accepted the fact that she can no longer choreograph on her own body” (Reference Kisselgoff1984). This news clipping draws our attention to several assumptions about choreography and a choreographers’ body as needed to produce the movement. When we question the role of the choreographers’ body as the “original” or “correct” version, it can open up the potential for changes in authorship, ownership, and choreographic practices (when done ethically). Historically, the friction between the perception of the choreographers’ body as tied to ability and the ableist aesthetics of the company created a double bind in which both are asked to continually produce a specific image of ability. Dancers who have been with the choreographer the longest are perceived as able to “replicate” movements that are more “natural” to the choreographer. Note that the notion of “natural” does not take into account the current, changing state of the choreographers’ body. The dance or “product” that has come to be associated, in this instance, with Graham, must maintain some of its naturalized roots. The movement signature/autograph/product does not often shift with disability, illness, or aging.

Shifting and Expanding Choreographic Practices

The adaptation of choreographers’ practices changing with injury, illness, or a bodily change—from aging or disability—has the potential to create disability aesthetics and new practices for creating dances. Choreographers who self-identify as disabled, creating contemporary work around the world, might choose to use choreographic processes that stem from “able” bodied choreographers across the globe or intercultural exchanges. They might also use emerging choreographic practices and techniques that they develop from their embodied experiences and ways of producing dance and knowledge. Here I cite the work of some US dance companies: Wobbly Dance, Kinetic Light, Kayla Hamilton Dance Projects, Axis Dance Company, Sins Invalid, Cleveland Dancing Wheels, Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival, Bill Shannon/Crutch Master, Leroy Moore and the Krip Hop community, The Olimpias, and the dancers of the UCLA Dancing Disability 2019 cohorts, among many others.Footnote ¹² Creating space for disability culture and identity within dance, and advocating for people with disabilities as self-producers of their own choreographic and technique practices, histories, aesthetic values, and cultural practices, will innovate dance and academia in ways we cannot yet imagine.

The rest of this article will focus on the ways that disability shifted the aesthetics and dance-making practices in Graham's work. Once again, although Graham might not have identified as disabled, her working processes did change due to her arthritis and changing eyesight. There are two ways Graham's work changed that might be informed by her changing body: the distortion of the bodies and the movement becoming exaggerated and more “pushed.” The idea of distortion evokes something to be distorted from, perhaps a norm. Distortion is discussed in a Q and A session after a lecture in 1981 by Deborah Jowitt on “The Early Years: Martha Graham and Modernism.” Dorothy Bird chimed in, saying, “I felt that Martha had two things going, one was in class she was building a centered body. A perfectly functionally organism … better than any machine and then in performance she was distorting from that” (Jowitt Reference Jowitt1981). Gertrude Shurr further noted, “The technique, as she taught it in the beginning, it was very classic almost, it was not distorted. It was to train you to become a terrific dancer” (Jowitt Reference Jowitt1981). Shurr's statement underscores a binary between the early Graham “almost classic” technique in response to Bird's labeling of the later performed “distorted” movement. Distortion hints at a grotesque body, a body in counterpose to the classical. Compared to the current dance climate, I would not personally label Graham's work as grotesque. However, within the cultural and historic climate she was working, it could very well have been perceived as distorted, perhaps even grotesque.

Graham's choreographic practices also shifted as her eyesight changed. These creative adaptations produced a change in her aesthetic or/and enabled Graham to maintain an aesthetic similar to her former works. In the below conversation between Agnes De Mille and Bertram Ross (on October 2, 1985), Ross discusses how Graham had dancers exaggerate movements, and the movement became “more pushed” because of her changed eyesight.

The following anecdote in an interview with Agnes De Mille in 1987 is repeated with little variation within the archives by several of Graham's dancers; the use of costumes to help Graham see the dancers in rehearsal is mentioned repeatedly.

Mary Hinkson suggests directly that the leotards in Acts of Light (1981) are there not only for aesthetics but to help the choreographer, Graham, see the bodies on stage. The costume, as a choreographic adaptation, although an effort to maintain a previous way of working, still imbues the choreographic practice with a shift in aesthetics, a more pushed style. Reduced eyesight is part of being human for some and might inform their aesthetic choices. The expansion of choreographic practices by people with disabilities or those aging will continue to further the field of dance and expand what choreography and dance can be.

Toward Disability Aesthetics

Disability aesthetics, as coined by Tobin Siebers (Reference Siebers2010), is the idea that modern art (such as that of Pablo Picasso or Marcel Duchamp) forwards an aesthetic of disarranged, augmented, and grotesque bodies. Siebers makes the argument that modern art is disability aesthetics. Disability aesthetics is meant to be a first attempt to theorize the representation of disability in modern art. What I am calling “disability aesthetics” names a critical concept that seeks to emphasize the presence of disability in the tradition of aesthetic representation. My argument here conceives of the disabled body and mind as playing significant roles in the evolution of modern aesthetics, theorizing disability as a unique resource discovered by modern art and then embraced by it as one of its defining concepts. Disability aesthetics refuses to recognize the representation of the healthy body—and its definition of harmony, integrity, and beauty—as the sole determination of the aesthetic. Rather, disability aesthetics embraces beauty that seems, by traditional standards, to be broken, and yet it is not less beautiful but more so, as a result. Note that it is not a matter of representation of the exclusion of disability from aesthetic history, since no such exclusion has taken place, but of making the influence of disability obvious. (Siebers Reference Siebers2010, 3) I want to apply this argument to early modern dance in the United States. The connection of modern dance to modern art is underscored by John Martin in a quote drawn from the New York Times on February 8, 1931:

If Graham's work is linked to modern painting and sculpture and distorted bodies by Martin, we could also logically link Graham's aesthetics to disability aesthetics through the notion of distortion. If Graham's work, as described by Dorothy Bird in previous paragraphs, is moving toward “distortion” and described by Martin as aesthetically linked to modern art, then Siebers's (Reference Siebers2010) modern art disability aesthetic could logically be also present in the work of Martha Graham. However, I would not call Graham's work, in relation to currently existing dances, a disability aesthetic. Historically though, it (and many other dance works) might have broadened aesthetics within the modern dance tradition. At the time of this writing, I believe disability aesthetics in dance has moved beyond Graham, and the aesthetic work of Graham has become normalized. Identity and cultural aesthetics shift; they are not stagnant. Aesthetic practices are also not a binary; a work is not solely informed by disability aesthetics, but is rather a complex matrix of aesthetic presentation informed by various influences, cultures, and identities. Is a disability aesthetic something that a creator consciously chooses to embrace or a quality that an observer sees achieved in a work, regardless of intent?Footnote ¹³ Is disability aesthetic an active choice versus outside interpretation? Disability aesthetics are both an act of political claiming as well as a form of interpretation. Looking back at Graham's work, I suggest that it has traces of disability aesthetics and is in conversation with modern art practices of the time. Yet, to call Graham's work a disability aesthetic would be reductionist and essentializing. Nuance is important when describing an aesthetic. The complex and careful work of naming aesthetic values can help us see how beauty, desire, and normalcy are constructed across time and space. When we claim that high art is embedded with aesthetics of disability, we deepen our recognition of the lived implications of that aesthetic in bodies. I hope that we might change our value structures around who is a productive body and what aesthetics are sought after in dance. A disability aesthetic might value nonnormative bodies, question beauty, incorporate bodily extensions and new technologies, expand ideas of embodiment and different cultural practices into the art.

Siebers (Reference Siebers2010) further argues that, although disability in modern art is treated as desirable, when those bodies are seen in the flesh, they are not treated with the same reverence as disabled bodies in works of art. One work Siebers discusses is the Venus De Milo, who could be described as a beautiful (in part because of her disability) woman without arms. The Venus De Milo is revered for its beauty and grace; however, women with amputated arms are not always given the same status in our society (Siebers Reference Siebers2010, 43). Carrie Sandahl and Philip Auslander suggest that disabled bodies upend aesthetic conventions, saying:

On one hand, as the quote suggests, dancers with readable difference can upend and challenge aesthetics; however, even in dance companies that incorporate dancers with disabilities, there is often still an ableist aesthetic. An ableist aesthetic continues to uphold aesthetic values of normative, productive, capitalistic, and “behaving” bodies. Although still an evolving idea, I do not believe the presence of disability automatically creates a disability aesthetic. Ableism affects everyone, and the aesthetic of ability is persuasive within the field of dance. The crux of my argument is that a shift of aesthetics in dance could allow new and emerging relationships with dancers who have disabilities. Changes in the training practices, accessibility of studios, and language only go so far if performing companies still prefer to present ableist ideologies of the body in their dancing. Disability aesthetics might offer a shift in the “product” of dance so that we have both a “bottom-up” and a “top-down” approach toward social change.