Kate Marsh: What if I just stop?

The so-called inclusive dance world has been developing for over two decades, with various foci ranging from the “problem” of access and participation to conversations around disabled leadership. Kate Marsh has been in this world for over twenty years, performing, making dance, and contributing to academic work in the field both in the UK and internationally.

This period of research offers an opportunity to stop, to reflect on what has taken place, what still needs to take place, and how the future might look for disabled and crip people in and around dance practice and research.

Marsh will use slow practice to gently explore her own experience of a long career in this field, acknowledging the irony that, with long-term activism around inclusion in dance, the body and bodily experience often gets left behind. This is a chance to go back into how our bodies are a site for exploration and how the joy of crip dance and crip identity can significantly inform our future, cementing our legacy and what we might pass on to the next generation.

Marsh will interrogate what knowledge is held in her body – knowledge that is inherent, instinctive, and immediate. She will use this residency to consider the relationship between her body, her practice, and her writing, engaging in playful methods for creating shared writing that is strongly linked to where she is now with her practice and in her chosen community of crip artist-researcher peers. Marsh will draw strongly on her relationships within this community, for support, critical feedback, and shared thinking.

Kate Marsh's Fellowship at Οnassis AiR is supported by the Europe Beyond Access network which is co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.