Dancing Around (Dis)Ability

Abstract

In this article, we heed lessons from Laurel Richardson’s After a Fall: A Sociomedical Sojourn to investigate how nondisabled high school–aged girls are affected by their volunteer experiences in Believe Ballet, a nonprofit organization that provides primary- and secondary-school-aged girls with physical disabilities with the opportunity to dance and perform ballet. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis of three academic years of volunteers’ pre- and post-participation questionnaires, this article focuses specifically on changes in volunteers’ self-reported perceptions of disability and ability. This article also points to directions for future research in the fields of disability, feminist disability, and ableism studies.

Keywords

disabilities abilities gender volunteerism

Believe Ballet is a nonprofit organization that provides primary- and secondary-school-aged girls with disabilities with the opportunity to dance and perform ballet.¹ The radical message of this effort—that beauty resides in girls’ differences and abilities—echoes loudly every May when, after an academic year of weekly hour-long practice sessions, the dancers perform to a packed recital hall.

Standing behind each dancer at that recital is a high school–aged girl: A nondisabled volunteer who committed herself equally to the program each week. Wearing black to the younger girls’ pink, she helps her assigned dancer make the arm and leg movements that, without her consistent presence and physical support, might not otherwise be possible. At a developmental moment when many young women struggle with specifically gendered forms of what Connell (2009, p. 66) refers to as “social embodiment” (Kimmel, 2004; Thorne, 1999), this female high school–aged volunteer has made room for the difference and dance of another.

In this article, we heed lessons from Richardson’s (2013) After a Fall: A Sociomedical Sojourn, which illustrates how proximity to disability can impact one’s sense of embodiment and understanding of ableism, to investigate the ways in which Believe Ballet’s volunteers are affected by their experience(s) in the program. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis of three academic years of volunteers’ pre- and post-participation questionnaires, we focus specifically on changes in volunteers’ self-reported perceptions of disability and ability. In doing so, we both add to the disability studies and feminist disability studies literatures and begin “to shift the gaze of contemporary scholarship away from the spotlight on disability to a more nuanced exploration of epistemologies and ontologies of ableism” (Campbell, 2008, p. 1).

Background

Believe Ballet is located in a large city on the east coast of the United States. It was founded by a pediatric physical therapist in 2002 to provide therapeutic exercise through dance to five elementary-school-aged girls with Erb’s palsy (or Erb-Duchenne palsy) or cerebral palsy.² The organization has since expanded to include more than 50 female dancers, aged 3- to 18-years-old, who are diagnosed with a range of physical disabilities and are typically excluded from traditional ballet programs.

Believe Ballet’s efforts unfold each week of the academic year through small, staggered dance classes. Class placement is determined by a dancer’s age, not her (dis)abilities or preferred style of dance. Dancers’ participation in each class is informed by three programmatic goals: acquisition of developmental skills through the use of movement; development of independence and social integration through recreation; and realization of creativity and self-confidence through artistic expression. The culmination of the year’s classwork is the program’s annual spring recital, which serves to showcase the dancers’ physical achievements and abilities, as well as the pleasures they find in performance.

The growth and success of Believe Ballet rests heavily on the more than 40 female high school–aged volunteers who also commit themselves to the program each year. These volunteers are drawn from neighborhoods within and around the city in which Believe Ballet is located, and they are diverse along such variables as age, race/ethnicity, and type of high school attending (i.e., public, private, or parochial). The nature and breadth of volunteers’ personal experiences with dance and/or disability also vary.

Each volunteer is paired with one dancer for the course of the academic year. Together they study the exercises and ballet movements that ground the dancer’s recital performance, as well as her physical development more broadly. In most pairings, the dancer’s performance and development require the active physical support of her volunteer partner. As a result, both the dancer and the volunteer take center stage at the annual spring recital.

Theoretical Framework

In After a Fall: A Sociomedical Sojourn, Richardson (2013) writes from her position as a woman facing a temporary non-life-threatening mobility disability. Employing an autoethnographic style, she connects her experiences with medical practitioners, loved ones, caregivers, and other individuals with disabilities to many of the themes central to the disability studies literature: the ways in which disabilities are both embodied and socially constructed; the relational construction of ability and disability; the intersections of disability and other social inequalities, like gender; and disability and carework. Given their centrality, these themes also ground the theoretical framework for our study of Believe Ballet.

Disability scholars argue that disabilities are both embodied and socially constructed. For example, Barton (1998) makes the distinction between impairment, that is, a lack in part or mechanism of the body, and disability, that is, the disadvantages or restrictions caused by the organization of society and incurred by people who have impairments. As defined, impairment is understood as an embodied condition or characteristic of the individual, whereas disability is understood as a feature and function of the social world. Significantly, much of the contemporary scholarship in disability studies has focused on the latter; on the socio-cultural (Wendell, 2006), legal (Campbell, 2001), economic (Chouinard, 1997), and political inequalities (Wolbring, 2008) that map onto impairments, as well as the disabling social interactions and contexts that shape the lives of individuals with impairments (Donaldson, 1980; Fine & Asch, 1988). Of interest, however, are recent efforts to, in the words of Snyder and Mitchell (2001), “re-(engage) the body” (p. 367) in disability studies. Grounded in the anti-dualism of poststructuralism and the experiential orientation of phenomenology, these efforts marry the individual and the social by defining the body as “the key domain in which struggles over power and control are contested” (Hughes, 2004, p. 66).

One important element of these efforts is the recognition that bodies materialize through social discourse (Price & Shildrick, 2002). In disability studies, this recognition is best expressed via interrogation of the “interdependent and intertwined” concepts of disability and ability (Inahara, 2009, p. 56). According to Campbell (1999), “‘disability’ is a profoundly relational construct . . . (that) obtains its meaning through its relationship to the Other, that which it is not” (p. 77). For Campbell (2001), this Other is ability or, more specifically, ableism: “a network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, species-typical and therefore essential and fully human” (p. 44). For Inahara (2009), this Other is an ideal of “fixity and wholeness,” of “simplicity” and “sameness” (pp. 57-59). For Garland-Thomson (1997), this Other is the normate: “the abstract, unmarked, disembodied” “subject of democracy” (pp. 80, 136).

Garland-Thomson’s (1997) creation and use of the more general “normate” is instructive in that it reaches beyond ability to extend and liken disability to other relational inequalities in American society. In similar fashion, scholars have long linked and likened constructions of disability to constructions of race/racism (Asch, 2004; Campbell, 2008; Garland-Thomson, 2004), heteronormativity (McReuer, 2002), and sexism (Asch, 2004; Campbell, 2009; Gerschick, 2000; Wolbring, 2008). Most relevant to our research is work that connects disability studies and gender studies. According to Garland-Thomson (2004), given the “many parallels that exist between the social meaning attributed to female bodies and those assigned to disabled bodies” (p. 19), these connections often stem from a shared focus on embodiment and normalization.

One exciting result of this shared focus is a new area of study: feminist disability studies. Moving beyond the use of disability “as a metaphor for women’s oppression,” a rhetorical device that engages “an ableist perception of disability as a despised condition that should be prevented or eliminated,” feminist disability studies interrogates the terms and limits of our “understand(ing) of human diversity, the materiality of the body, multiculturalism, and the social formations that interpret bodily difference” (Garland-Thomson, 2004, p. 74; Hall, 2002, p. x). In this way, it also encourages the critical reexamination and potentially liberating expansion of both disability studies and gender studies.

An example of this can be found in the feminist disability studies’ scholarship on carework. Centrally situated in each area of study, carework illustrates the often-contradictory orientations of the individual disability studies and gender studies perspectives. For example, Garland-Thomson (2001) argues that the “liberal ideology of autonomy and independence that fuels the broader impulse toward women’s empowerment” tends to ignore the “needs and accommodations that disabled women’s bodies require” (p. 6). From a similarly illustrative, if not contrary, standpoint, Garland-Thomson (2001) also describes how “the controversial feminist ethic of care . . . has been criticized by feminist disability scholars for undermining symmetrical reciprocal relations among disabled and nondisabled women” (p. 5). By simultaneously acknowledging the necessity (Galler, 2006), inequalities (Hillyer, 1993), and “interrelationality” (Campbell, 2001, p. 46) of carework, feminist disability studies scholars complicate acts and analyses of care. They also connect experiences of disability, gender, and carework to larger conversations about individuality (Goble, 2004), rights and subjectivity (Garland-Thomson, 2004), control and strength (Fine & Asch, 1988), and self-mastery, freedom, and independence (Campbell, 2001).

Method

This study’s participants included volunteers from three academic years of Believe Ballet programming between 2009 and 2012. Each of these years engaged an average of 48 volunteers, some of whom were repeat volunteers, with 116 unique volunteers during the time of the study. Seventy-three of these individuals consented to participate in the study and complete both pre- and post-participation questionnaires for at least 1 year of their participation in the program. Given the design of Believe Ballet, all study participants were female.³

We asked the study participants to complete open-ended pre- and post-participation questionnaires. The pre-participation questions included items about prior contact with individuals with disabilities and expectations about the program. The post-participation questions included items pertaining to their experiences in the program.⁴

We examined volunteers’ open-ended responses on the pre- and post-participation questionnaires using qualitative content analysis, which begins with a

“count” of textual elements . . . [that] provide[s] a means for identifying, organizing, indexing, and retrieving data. Analysis of the data once organized according to certain content elements [then] involve[s] consideration of the literal words in the text being analyzed. (Berg, 2001, p. 242)

Although inductively generated, the content elements or codes constructed and used in this analysis did not emerge in a vacuum. Theory no doubt primed our search for recurrent patterns or paradoxes in volunteer’s responses to the questionnaires, and theory almost certainly affected which data patterns or anomalies we deemed interesting and/or important. To control for this dialectical interplay, we made every effort to allow our “data to speak as loudly as the theories” (Snow, Morrill, & Anderson, 2003, p. 193), using broad or inclusive codes that allowed for multiple associations within and across the questionnaires.⁵

In the next section, we present the findings of our qualitative content analysis. Although a number of content elements or codes emerged from that analysis, we focus on those that relate to volunteers’ most frequently referenced category of impact: perceptions of disability and ability. Consistent with selective coding, we have used these data to construct a larger story about the effects of girls’ interactions across physical (dis)abilities (Punch, 2005). In doing so, we hope to both add to and qualify the theories—or, in Richardson’s words (2007), “stories” (p. 927)—that framed this work.

Perceptions of Disability and Ability

The most frequently referenced impact of participation in Believe Ballet was a change in volunteers’ perceptions of disability and ability. For many volunteers, this change was a multilayered phenomena: one that led to an increased awareness of the existence and experiences of individuals with physical disabilities; moved through a grappling with constructions of physical ability and disability; encouraged an acceptance of and appreciation for body diversity; and produced a sense of communion and social responsibility across (dis)abilities.

Becoming More Aware of the Existence and Experiences of Individuals With Physical Disabilities

For many volunteers, Believe Ballet provided the setting for their first intimate contact with individuals with physical disabilities. For example, when asked to describe their level of contact with individuals with physical disabilities prior to their participation in the program, many volunteers claimed that they had “not had any experience” or that they “haven’t had much exposure.” Many others described a limited or moderate level of contact that was facilitated during structured interactions at work or school: “I’ve been exposed to people with physical challenges in middle school. Although they were separated academically, in extracurriculars [sic] they joined us.” In addition, volunteers often realized this moderate level of contact by proxy, through family members. For example, quite a few volunteers attributed their contact with individuals with visible physical disabilities (and/or individuals who used mobility aids) to a parent’s professional status or career: “My mother works in a nursing home and many people there are in wheelchairs.” Only a small number of volunteers referenced prolonged and/or intimate contact with individuals with visible physical disabilities prior to their participation in the program. In fact, it was relatively uncommon for a volunteer to indicate that she had a close family member or a good friend with physical disabilities, and only two volunteers described themselves as having personally experienced their own physical challenges.

For those volunteers with limited or moderate prior contact, Believe Ballet’s weekly hour-long meetings made them more aware of the existence and experiences of individuals with physical disabilities. For many volunteers, this awareness occurred at a very general level: “(Believe Ballet) made me more aware of life and of people.” For others, this awareness emerged as recognition of embodied and experiential difference: “(Believe Ballet) showed me people’s differences and made me aware,” and “(Believe Ballet) made me more aware of the different conditions in other people’s lives.” For still others, this awareness focused on the struggles that seemed to map onto these differences: “(Believe Ballet made) me more aware of challenges people have to face,” and “Previous to this experience, I didn’t realize how difficult it was for others.”

Grappling With Constructions of Physical Ability and Disability

For many volunteers, this increased awareness led to the development of a new life perspective: “(Believe Ballet) changed the way I view people in the world and being less unaware.” Most often, this new perspective was born of a grappling with constructions of ability and disability. For example, through their participation in the program, quite a few volunteers developed a new outlook on their own physical abilities: “I have learned a lot about peoples’ differences. I am more aware of how many children suffer from physical challenges and am extremely appreciative of what I have and what I can do.” For these volunteers, proximity to physical disability made them both more aware of and thankful for their own able-bodiment: “I appreciate all of the abilities I have,” and “I am grateful for having a fully proper working body.” In other words, while participation in Believe Ballet made many volunteers more mindful of disability and ability, it didn’t necessarily challenge them to think differently about either. Instead, in fairly typical and normative terms, these volunteers framed physical disability and ability as matters of misfortune or luck, respectively: “I have learned to be more . . . considerate of the challenges that others are faced with. I’ve realized how lucky I am.”

Yet, for other volunteers, this grappling bore a different “new” perspective on physical disability and ability; one centered on the critical examination of disability/ability as mutually exclusive, mutually constitutive constructions. At times, this perspective emerged as a type of self-reflection, a coming-to-terms with how they perceived individuals with physical disabilities before and after their participation in Believe Ballet: “At first I thought I should be more cautious and careful with handicapped kids but (then) I realized they are just like me.” Significantly, these reflections tended to draw on notions of “similarity” and “difference.” For those volunteers who developed this perspective, similar experiences, either in dance or with friends, took precedence over difference in their relationships with dancers: “Since Believe Ballet I have . . . realized that we are more alike than different.” For others, differences in ability were acknowledged but redefined as insignificant to these same relationships: “This was my first experience with girls with physical disabilities and it has changed my outlook. I’ve found ways to relate with them despite any supposed ‘differences’ between us.”

Significantly, in both cases, volunteers evidenced a developing sense that physical disability and ability are more than embodied realities; they are also constructions—often of similarity and difference—that take shape and change through interaction. In this spirit, many of the volunteers who developed this more critical perspective came to question why physical ability and disability were constructed as mutually exclusive poles: “I have a different perspective and realize that handicapped people have a lot more abilities than people give them credit for.” Likewise, many came to describe physical ability/disability as a continuum: “Believe Ballet has exposed me to the range of capabilities and talents that these girls have.” Or, conversely, but to similar effect, to disregard the continuum entirely:

(Believe Ballet) has helped me reinstate the fact that physical abilities and disabilities do not define people. The girl I work with is not able to walk on her own, yet we are able to carry out a full conversation and she is only 6 years old.

Accepting and Appreciating Body Diversity

For the volunteers who engaged a more critical stance on constructions of ability and disability, this perspective seemed to yield equally personal effects: “Since (Believe Ballet) . . . I was able to let myself feel free and open, and therefore able to achieve more.” In these cases, freedom and openness were experienced at the level of the body, through an increased acceptance and appreciation of body diversity: “Believe Ballet has made me appreciate my own physical differences and other peoples’ differences.”

One concept that was frequently used as an axis for this acceptance and appreciation was “perfect.” Although some volunteers reported an expanded definition of perfection, a sense that “everyone is perfect in their own way,” it was more common for volunteers to abandon the concept entirely: “Believe Ballet has made me realize that no one is perfect and everyone has something unique about them,” and “Believe Ballet has made me realize that no one is perfect.” Two interrelated shifts in foci appeared central to this abandon. The first is a new focus on the efforts of the body: “From seeing these girls struggle each week but still have so much fun, I have learned that everything does not have to be perfect as long as it is my best.” The second is a new focus on effort as a means to beauty: “Believe Ballet showed me that everything does not have to be done perfectly, as long as you try your hardest it will be beautiful.”

While consistent with the grappling introduced earlier, this recognition and re-evaluation of effort reframes the physical ability/disability continuum in a way that potentially privileges physical difference. For example, some volunteers wrote of a new respect for the strengths and creative potential of body diversity: “Now I think of multiple ways to solve a situation instead of trying one way and I think of how the girls would resolve it if they were in the same situation.” In fact, it was this sense that the dancers were active embodied subjects—rather than passive embodied objects—that seemed to really affect volunteers: “(Believe Ballet) has given me a new perspective, not only on people with physical challenges but also on all people. I also have a great appreciation for what our bodies are capable of.”

Communing Across (Dis)Abilities

For many volunteers, Believe Ballet not only provided the setting for their first intimate contact with individuals with physical disabilities but also provided the setting for their first opportunity to actively cultivate and bear witness to the success of another: “Every hour I spend with Julia shows more and more improvement [sic]. I know I have truly helped her.” For some volunteers, this opportunity became evidence of a developing responsible self: “Working with my dancer has made me realize that I am someone she depends on. What I do and say impacts her physically and emotionally. I enjoy being someone that she can rely on.” For others, it facilitated new feelings of competence and confidence: “Believe Ballet showed me that I can make a difference in someone’s life, and that has made me more confident in my abilities.” In either case, volunteers expressed a sense of surprise at the extent to which they could help and matter to another—“I honestly didn’t think I’d ever make a difference in anyone’s life, but I did”—at such a young age: “Although just a teenager, I am making a difference.”

Given this opportunity, the vast majority of volunteers concluded the program with an expressed desire to help other individuals with disabilities in the future. For a few volunteers, this desire manifested in relatively informal ways: “I am more likely to approach someone (with disabilities) and ask if they need help. Also, I don’t stare like I used to . . . ” For others, this desire formalized into an academic and/or professional goal: “Believe Ballet has encouraged me to study physical therapy in college. I want to help people that cannot help themselves and maybe work with children.” For still others, this desire translated into abstract feelings of connection and, even, communion: “When I see people with disabilities outside the program, I wonder what I’d be able to do to help them. I feel a deeper connection to them.” In fact, a number of volunteers expressed that they felt a “deeper connection” to individuals with disabilities, and quite a few offered evidence of how this connection had affected their behavior: “In my everyday life, I try to make sure people refrain from using the term ‘retarded’ because I now take it personally,” and “I am offended if someone treats handicapped people differently or disrespectfully and make others aware of it.”

Yet, for a larger number of volunteers, this desire to help came to be directed at a larger population; one encapsulating all people, regardless of ability/disability: “Believe Ballet has made me see that people need help and others or anyone can help in the smallest way.” Central to this perspective was a newly developed appreciation for the ways in which people are both interconnected and interdependent:

Believe Ballet makes me feel like I am making an impact on someone’s life, and they are making an impact on mine by participating (as a dancer) in Believe Ballet. It helps me to see how the ripple effect of an action can impact anyone. Also central to this perspective was a developing sense that success is a function of “work(ing) as a whole, not an individual.”

Discussion

Studies indicate that, despite the Americans With Disabilities Act and other contemporary efforts to integrate individual lives across (dis)abilities, many young Americans still report limited levels of intimate contact with individuals with disabilities (King, Rosenbaum, Armstrong, & Milner, 2008; Rosenbaum, Armstrong, & King, 1986, 1988). Given that “personal contact is a major factor in attitudinal shifts (about disabilities) across many cultures,” young peoples’ relationships across (dis)abilities stand to affect both the individuals involved and the cultures/societies in which they are embedded (McConkey, Dowling, Hassan, & Menke, 2012, p. 11).

Volunteers’ experiences in Believe Ballet are illustrative of these effects. As a result of their participation in the program, most volunteers reported an increased awareness of the existence and experiences of individuals with physical disabilities. Although significant in and of itself, this awareness provided the foundation for meaningful changes in the way volunteers perceived disability and ability, more generally. Interestingly, and consistent with disability studies scholars’ efforts to “re-(engage) the body” in their research on the social construction of disability, this perceptual change reflected volunteers’ active contemplation of the relationships between bodies and society (Snyder & Mitchell, 2001, p. 367).

For example, because of their experiences in Believe Ballet, many volunteers began to grapple with their own and others’ definitions of (dis)abilities. Reflecting on the capabilities of the dancers, they questioned who or what makes one individual able-bodied and another individual disabled. They also began to trouble the poles of “ability” and “disability”; actively interrogating whether a continuum was even the right register for our varied/variable abilities and embodiment. Noteworthy, of course, is how the linguistic categories and words volunteers used to dismantle these definitions (e.g., new poles like “similar” and “different”; the word “handicapped”) threatened to discursively reconstruct them. Early reports from this research encouraged Believe Ballet’s executive director to take an active role in teaching volunteers about preferred language usage when talking about disability and individuals with disabilities. Also significant are those volunteers who didn’t partake in this questioning; those whose conceptions of disability and ability were mired in ideas of “misfortune” and “luck.” Future analysis of these data will employ a critical analytic perspective to tease out the variables—demographic, relational, and so on—that might explain these divergent impacts.

Also related to their participation in the program, many volunteers conveyed a developing acceptance and appreciation for body diversity. In fact, eschewing language most typically associated with constructions of the “super-crip” (Quinlan & Bates, 2008), they came to see body diversity as a source of power and creativity in the world. Invoking words like “freedom” and distancing themselves from the notion of a singular “perfect” body, they began to privilege effort—over form—in their assessments of bodies (including their own), and to perceive the body as a subject, rather than an object, in the world.⁶ Countless studies document American girls’/women’s efforts to measure up to objectifying images of the ideal female body (e.g., Bordo, 1993; Brumberg, 1997; Davis, 1995; Gimlin, 2002). Yet, few studies, apart from the rare and notable theoretical exception (e.g., Galler, 2006; Garland-Thomson, 2004; Hahn, 1988), explore how girls’/women’s interactions across (dis)abilities might impact their individual and collective sense, acceptance, and use of their bodies. Building on insights from the field of disability, gender, and sport (DePauw & Gavron, 1995; Manderson & Peake, 2005), as well as disability and the arts (Sandahl & Auslander, 2005; Sherlock, 1996; Silvers, 2002), future research should examine whether physical activity and artistic/creative self-expression are central to the effects described above.

Finally, in reflecting on their role in dancers’ success in the program, most volunteers reported an emerging sense of responsibility to and connection with others. Reveling in this sense, as well as associated feelings of confidence and competence, they reported a desire to continue helping others, even after the program’s end. How these “Others” were defined, however, varied: individuals with disabilities; people, more generally; even other volunteers and/or themselves. Ironically, it might be those volunteers who recognize this final group in need of help—other volunteers and/or themselves—that deserve our attention; primarily because they came to view “help” as an expression of interconnection/communion rather than service. Early feedback provided to the executive director of Believe Ballet encouraged her to frame volunteers’ contributions to the program in these terms, as well as to engage volunteers in regular written reflections on the ways in which the program and the dancers were “helping” them. Future research at the intersection of volunteerism, (dis)abilities, and gender should delve further into participants’ definitions and experiences of care (see also Froschl, Rousso, & Rubin, 2001).

Conclusion

In After a Fall: A Sociomedical Sojourn, Richardson (2013) reveals—through insights both personal and analytic—how proximity to disability can impact one’s sense of embodiment and understanding of ableism. In this article, we build on these revelations by examining how nondisabled high school–aged girls’ perceptions of disability and ability are affected by their volunteer experiences in Believe Ballet. As noted, the study indicates that volunteers’ participation in Believe Ballet often led to their increased awareness of the existence and experiences of individuals with physical disabilities, grappling with constructions of physical ability and disability, acceptance of and appreciation for body diversity, and communion with others across (dis)abilities. This study also points to directions for future research, specifically, the variables that mediate nondisabled individuals’ interactions with individuals with disabilities, how girls’/women’s interactions across (dis)abilities affect their individual and collective sense of embodiment, the ways in which physical activity and artistic/creative self-expression might be central to the aforementioned effects, and the manner in which carework is understood and experienced at the intersection of (dis)ability, volunteerism, and gender.

At the same time, this study also adds to the burgeoning effort to shine a “spotlight” on ableism in more general ways as well (Campbell, 2008, p. 1). For example, although Staub (2005) argues that inclusion is most often studied from the perspective of students with disabilities, this study explores how inclusion—in the equally under-resourced and understudied context of after-school-programs for children and young people with disabilities (Rousso, 2001)—impacts nondisabled youth. In a similar fashion, although Garland-Thomson (2004, p. 94) praises those moments in contemporary Western culture(s) when people with disabilities are “resymbolized”—moments like the Believe Ballet recital, which centers and celebrates the difference and dance of girls with physical disabilities—this study attempts to understand nondisabled individuals’ reactions to this “resymbolization.” In so doing, it shifts our focus to what Albright (1998) calls the “ableist gaze” (p. 494) encouraging us to examine whether and how these moments actually resymbolize (dis)abilities and/or the body in/for the culture at large. Finally, by focusing not on Believe Ballet’s dancers with disabilities but on the program’s nondisabled volunteers, we begin to interrogate and trouble what Richardson (2013) describes as the privileges of normalcy.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Nivah Kaplan-Nadel and Jesse Berberich, two former Queensborough Community College students who were instrumental in organizing the data and literature for this research. In addition, the authors would like to recognize the generosity of the executive director of Believe Ballet, as well as the many volunteers who consented to participate in this research. They would also like to thank Dr. Ronald Berger for his encouragement and editorial assistance with this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors wish to acknowledge the following organizations for their support of this research: the American Sociological Association’s Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline and the PSC-CUNY Awards program.

Notes

Author Biographies

Amy E. Traver is an assistant professor of sociology at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is a graduate of Colgate University (BA, 1997), Harvard University (EdM, 1999), and SUNY Stony Brook (PhD, 2008). She is interested in intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, and (dis)ability in contemporary American families and educational institutions. She has published articles on these topics in Qualitative Sociology, Sociological Focus, International Journal of Sociology of the Family, The Journal of Education Policy, and The Irish Journal of Sociology. She is also engaged in research on community college pedagogies.

John Duran is an honors undergraduate student at Queensborough Community College and Queens College, both of the CUNY. He received his AA in liberal arts from Queensborough Community College in May 2014. At Queens College, he majors in sociology. He aspires to become an occupational therapist and continually engage the two areas of study he holds dear: sociology and disability studies.

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