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

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn 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.