By Allison Kirkland
Kelsey Peterson‘s journey in Move Me will resonate with anyone who has undergone change and found something different but just as beautiful on the other side of that change. Using dance and choreography as a guiding framework, Move Me culminates in a performance, mixing disabled and nondisabled dancers, and scored by a disabled composer. Co-director Peterson has always danced, but here dance and choreography become not just a way for her to process and communicate what it means to inhabit a changed body, but shows how the body influences how art is created.
Gaelynn Lea
Dance is an art form in which the body is centered, so thinking about the ways disability affects dance might be obvious, but dancers aren’t the only artists whose physical disabilities influence their artmaking. Gaelynn Lea, a folk singer and violinist, points out: “My voice is unique partly because my body is smaller… everybody’s voice is unique to their own body shape and size.”
Because of her height, Lea plays the violin in a way that brings forth a unique tone, and some mistake it for a viola. She has been releasing music since 2012 and won NPR’s Tiny Desk concert contest in 2016. This past year she composed original music for Macbeth on Broadway starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga, and credits the experience with opening up doors for her.
Lea’s body also influences her work lyrically. “With osteogenesis imperfecta you break bones in situations where other people wouldn’t. So, I think the idea of impermanence and accepting change and mortality made its way into my lyrics,” she tells me. “There are frustrating aspects of disability—for me that’s mostly around society and stigma and things that are outside of my body—but at the same time, I have a really rich and beautiful life. So that idea of holding the good and the bad, and not letting one dominate the other, is a theme in a lot of my music.”
Ryan J. Haddad
It is vital to see disabled performers in the arts, but due to a lack of access—whether that’s inaccessible venues or a scarcity of funds to provide American Sign Language interpreters—there is a dearth of opportunities. What would it look like for the stage to be an inclusive and welcoming place for performers of all abilities?
Ryan J. Haddad is an actor and playwright whose solo play Hi, Are You Single? is a real and raw examination of what it’s like to be a gay man with cerebral palsy. This rising star recently got a shoutout from writer and public intellectual Roxane Gay on Twitter. In winter 2023 he will be performing in his next play, Dark Disabled Stories, in its world premiere at the Public Theater in New York.
Lea is also committed to accessibility, and specifically only books accessible venues when touring. “[Dancer] Alice [Sheppard] is a huge inspiration. She says that the show begins when people look at the ticket link or the poster, which means that for art to be really inclusive it needs to be inclusive all the way through.”
Haddad calls this “radical access,” pointing out that “full access” is a misnomer because “nothing is ever a hundred percent, and there will always be people who need things that are different than what we planned for.”
Lachi
In an effort to raise awareness and fight against some of these barriers, Lea and her colleague Lachi [Instagram], who describes herself as a blind Black EDM singer, founded RAMPD: Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities, in May of 2021. A membership organization for disabled artists and music professionals, one of its first big projects came in April 2022, when the organization advocated for accessibility features for the 64th Grammy Awards.
Thanks to their advocacy, a ramp to the stage and visible ASL interpreters were provided at the ceremony for the first time in Grammy history. “As much as I relate to other folk artists on the road touring, and we can joke about the ridiculous nature of that lifestyle, there’s a big part of my experience that they just don’t relate to because they’re not thinking about access,” says Lea.
RAMPD Up
“The goal is to keep [RAMPD] going long beyond when [Lachi and I] are involved. A network where [disabled artists] can get support and camaraderie and put out messaging that shapes culture. Just sharing a space with other professionals that know what you’re talking about, [where] you can bring your full self and bounce ideas off a community—anyone who’s a professional [and] disabled deserves that.”
Lea says there’s another barrier that’s more subtle than physical access: the way disabled artists are portrayed in the press. “It is often not about their art; it’s always about their disability or their advocacy. If it is about their art, there [can be] untrue or unhelpful ways to frame it.”
This includes using outdated terms like “wheel-chair bound,” or describing a disabled artist as an inspiration just because they are making art in a body that’s different from the norm. She sometimes has to educate journalists as she’s being interviewed.
Thinking about these types of interactions is something that also influenced Haddad’s Dark Disabled Stories, an autobiographical monologue that speaks to the assumptions we make about each other, both disabled and nondisabled. The play was inspired by his experience walking the streets of New York City using a walker, where his disability is visible all the time.
Sometimes strangers would comment on his body, ask questions, stare, or try to help. “I might be making assumptions about those strangers in the same way they are making assumptions about me,” Haddad tells us.
Inclusion and Access Are Just the Beginning
In Moving from Disability Visibility to Disability Artistry, disabled theatermaker Morgan Skolnik posits that disability inclusion and access are just the beginning of a new kind of theater, and defines disability artistry as “work that is informed, from the beginning and down to its core, by some aspect of the disability experience.”
“We need to do more than include disability,” writes Skolnik, “We must allow it to shape our world.”
Even as doors are opening for artists like Lea and Haddad, there’s still a long way to go for disabled performers. Making our way forward will involve getting honest about the assumptions we might be making about people’s bodies.
Allison Kirkland is a writer based in Durham, North Carolina, who writes at the intersection of disability and the arts. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter @alliekirkland.
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