Dancing Place/Disability

Abstract

This article is developed from a paper presented at IFTR as part of the Performance and Disability Working Group in summer 2013. The work considered is a practice-as-research contribution by Welsh dance theatre company Cyrff Ystwyth towards a large Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded enquiry into performance, place, dislocation and vulnerability. The article uses contrasting concepts drawn from the work of critical theorists and dance scholars André Lepecki and Carrie Noland to think about the implications of Cyrff Ystwyth's site-specific performance authored by choreographer Adrian Jones, who has a learning disability. The research question is interrogated through the lens of the practice and understandings of place, performance and vulnerability, and proposed in the light of theory and its application to practice. The practice's challenge to theory is then considered as it confronts the researcher's expected outcomes and posits new understandings.