“We all carry each other, sometimes”: care-sharing as social justice practice in integrated dance

ABSTRACT

In this article, we explore how one integrated dance community engages in everyday practices of care-sharing as a form of social justice. The notion of care-sharing emerged from a performance ethnography in which 12 dancers co-created a research-based integrated dance. For this community, integrated dance is a recreational and pre-professional art practice that is inclusive of people with a wide range of embodiments and capacities, including those experiencing disability. Within this dance context, disability is not regarded as a bodily problem in need of therapy, but as a matter of social injustice. To navigate these and other forms of social injustice, dancers practised care-sharing, which involved: life-sustaining, communal acts of radical interdependence; practices of consensus-building and the sharing of discomfort; and a commitment to negotiating complex power relations. We conclude by sharing some points of learning, hoping that they may offer new perspectives on therapeutic recreation research and practice.

RÉSUMÉ

Dans cet article, nous explorons comment une compagnie de danse intégrée exerce une forme de justice sociale par la pratique quotidienne du partage des soins. La notion de partage des soins apparaît dans l’étude d’un groupe de douze danseurs qui ont co-réalisé une performance de danse intégrée basée sur la recherche. Pour ce groupe, la danse intégrée est un art récréatif et préprofessionnel qui inclut des personnes dont les réalités et les aptitudes diffèrent beaucoup, notamment des personnes vivant avec un handicap. Dans ce contexte, le handicap n’est pas perçu comme un problème physique nécessitant de la thérapie, mais bien comme une question de justice sociale. Pour surmonter cette forme ou toutes autres formes d’injustice sociale, les danseurs pratiquent le partage de soins. Cette pratique inclut: des actions communes de survie d’une profonde interdépendance; la construction d’un consensus et l’expression des inconforts; et un engagement à composer avec des relations de pouvoir complexes. Nous concluons en partageant certains faits instructifs en souhaitant qu’ils puissent amener de nouvelles perspectives de la pratique et la recherche en loisir thérapeutique.

Keywords:

• Integrated dance
• social justice
• disability
• care ethics
• therapeutic recreation

Mots-clés:

• Danse intégrée
• justice sociale
• handicap
• éthiques de soin
• loisir thérapeutique

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all of the dancer-collaborators on this research project, and to Danielle Peers for her editorial support. We also acknowledge the insightful and helpful contributions of the anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. iDANCE Edmonton Integrated Dance was founded in 2008 as a programme of The Steadward Centre for Personal & Physical Achievement, and has since grown into two non-profit organizations: CRIPSiE – Collaborative Radically Integrated Performers Society in Edmonton; and Solidance Inclusive Recreation Society.

2. This co-authored paper represents collaborative post-thesis reflective thinking about the dancers’ experiences of being involved in the research process.

3. We define consensus decision-making as a creative and dynamic way of reaching agreement between all members of a group. Instead of simply voting for an item and having the majority of the group getting their way. A group using consensus is committed to finding solutions that everyone actively supports, or at least can live with. Retrieved from http://seedsforchange.org.uk/consensus.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the SSHRC Vanier Graduate Scholarship, the Alberta Government Arts Graduate Scholarship, and the University of Alberta President’s Grant for the Creative and Performing Arts Human Performance Scholarship.