This dissertation explores how discourses of difference sustain and disrupt the separation and marginalization of individuals with disabilities from the world of art, specifically dance. I enter the discussion through a case study of The Dancing Wheels Company and School – Art in Motion in Cleveland, Ohio. Dancing Wheels is the first modern dance company in America to integrate professional stand-up and sit-down (wheelchair) dancers. Through its performances, this organization challenges assumptions of difference as members perform a counter-narrative of disability. Mary Verdi-Fletcher, President and Founding Artistic Director of The Dancing Wheels Company and School, a pioneer in the field of integrated dance, started the company in 1980. For more than a quarter of a century, Dancing Wheels has performed, taught, and inspired children and adults of all abilities around the world. Additionally, Dancing Wheels provides innovative employment opportunities by supporting artistic integration between individuals with and without disabilities. In bearing witness to the lived experiences of artists (with and without disabilities) who have traditionally been excluded from public discourse, I provide insight into how members organize resources (material, corporeal, and symbolic) and aesthetic and instrumental rationalities for social change.
Using the frameworks of post-structural feminism and narrative theory, I collected discourse related to Dancing Wheels through participant observation, in-depth interviews with dancers, staff and board members, and document analysis. The results of the data collection and analysis are presented in light of three research questions: How is disability storied and performed at Dancing Wheels?; How do the discourses of Dancing Wheels reinscribe and/or resist dominant narratives of disability?; How do legal, economic, and corporeal issues shape how Dancing Wheels enacts disability?
The results covered five themes: Meaning in Motion: (Re)storying Persons, Organizations, and Publics Through Dance; The Art of Dialogue in Integrated Dance; Aesthetic Knowledge and Sensemaking in Organizational Life at Dancing Wheels; Science, Technology, Medicine, and the Dancing (Dis)abled Body; and Moving Through Realms of Exclusion and Inclusion in Integrated Dance. Ultimately I argue that this organization (re)inscribes dance and (dis)ability through dialogic, aesthetic, and narratively based communication, performances, and practices.