Contribution short abstract:

Dance Theatre made by learning disabled people opens possibilities for the untellable to take form. I will argue that learning disabled colleagues take advantage of choreography and relationship to temporarily unwrite historical and contemporary, social and medical inscriptions of lack.

Contribution long abstract:

Drawing on my work with learning disabled and non-disabled dance theatre makers I will argue that Tobin Siebers’ concept of disability aesthetics (2010) is at work in the practice and that this opens possibilities for the untellable to take form within movement, gesture and relationship with others. I will argue that learning disabled colleagues take advantage of the form of dance theatre to temporarily unwrite the historical and contemporary, social and medical inscriptions of lack. Such inscriptions in the bodyminds of individuals are not always negative and may achieve necessary recognition to enable support. However, in my examples I will show how agency is enacted in the process of making and performing and holds potential for unwriting and interrogating ideas of capacity, intention and knowledge. In the endeavour I suggest that we reframe notions of inclusion via practice that foregrounds the concerns, interests and choreographies of learning disabled theatre makers who unwrite histories of Othering, charity, pity and their accompanying problems, still in evidence in our time. It is in taking the risk of following disabled colleagues who lead that an unwriting and perhaps a re-writing of dance form takes place. Dance theatre might unwrite normative aesthetics towards a disability aesthetics that can be shared and re-work the codes of dance theatre and inclusive practices.