A Pirouette with the Twist of a Wheelchair: Embodied Translation and the Creation of Kinesthetic Commensurability

The field of integrated dance brings together dancers with and without disabilities to create a novel art form. In dancing together, participants engage in a process of “translation” to interpret and enact movement, a practice I term embodied translation. This practice involves distilling a movement to its kinesthetic and expressive core, then exploring potential manifestations of those elements through various uses of space, objects, and bodies. Performed among people whose means and range of movement vary widely, embodied translation necessitates the recognition of multiple pathways toward shared expression, engendering a collective of kinesthetic multiplicities. Based on fieldwork with projects of integrated dance in Israel and the United States, I examine participants’ verbal, embodied, kinesthetic, and material means of translation, questioning whether translation can in fact produce commensurability among diverse bodies. [translation, disability, dance, embodied knowledge, anthropology of movement, nonhuman].