C2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2020the world. And this year, it’s going to be
even larger — a 24-hour Zoom gathering on
Thursday with performers from more than
30 countries, grouped by geography into
segments that are a half-hour to two hours
long. Join at 12 a.m. Eastern time, and it’s a
window to the Tasmanian Museum and Art
Gallery. Join later, and the virtual view
might open onto apartments in Amsterdam
or rooftops in Iran.
Also on Thursday (through Saturday),
the disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light is
streaming a film of its acclaimed work “De-
scent” via the website of the University of
Minnesota, Northrop. In aim and approach,
“Descent” differs greatly from “On Dis-
play.” And that means that the two projects,
taken together, can throw a little light on the
variety of disability dance today.
“The field is broad and complicated,” Al-
ice Sheppard, Kinetic Light’s artistic direc-
tor, said in a recent interview. “No one work
should be taken as representative of the
whole. As we would expect of any other
group, there are different subcultures, dif-
ferent interpretations.”
‘On Display’: Seeing ‘the Real Me’
“When I’m dancing in ‘On Display,' I’m giv-
ing the spectators an entree to gawk,” said
Quemuel Arroyo, who joined Heidi Latsky
Dance in 2015. “I allow them to see me, but
the real me, to see me as I want to be seen.”
For Mr. Arroyo, that means as a dancer, a
performer, “a person with abilities despite
my disability.” He broke his spine in a moun-
tain biking accident 13 years ago and has
used a wheelchair ever since. An athlete —
a rock climber, sailor, scuba diver — he lik-
ens the experience of being in “On Display”
to sky-diving.
“It’s scary and it’s uncomfortable,” he
said. “You think, ‘What the hell am I doing,
letting these people look at me?’ But the
other part of my mind is thinking, ‘Isn’t this
awesome? Here I am, tearing apart miscon-
ceptions about what a person with disabili-
ties can offer.’ ”
“It shows how we’re not very different
from one another,” he continued. “It doesn’t
matter that I’m Dominican, that I’m in a
wheelchair. It’s my humanity that people
see.”
Donald Lee, another company member,
said that “On Display” is about “quieting
and emptying and getting to the core of your
being.” It’s also about entering into the un-
known. “You’re sculpted by time and the en-
vironment like a Calder mobile,” he said.
“You become the art, a self-portrait.”
When Mr. Lee, a bilateral amputee, first
saw photos of himself in “On Display,” he
was shocked. “I had never looked at my
stumps,” he said. “I had never seen myself
that way before, as a work of art.”
Mr. Lee believes that people who watch
“On Display” can experience similar reve-
lations. “When they see me, they see some-
thing in themselves,” he said.
Both Mr. Arroyo and Mr. Lee stress the
importance of integration and lament how
their nondisabled colleagues are often
treated as invisible by audience members
and the media. “The whole idea of ‘On Dis-
play’ is that we want everybody to be seen,”
Mr. Lee said. “You’re not seeing a disabled
person. You’re seeing our society. You’re
seeing yourself.”
Aspects of this year’s event will be differ-
ent, of course. The shared gaze isn’t the
same over Zoom. Everyone will be muted.
Because of the pandemic, many if not most
performers will be alone, at home in their
private spaces. That’s a new sort of inti-
macy and exposure. (The 10 dancers from
Nalitari, a troupe in Yogyakarta, Indonesia,
are gathering, distanced, in their company
studio. They don’t have internet connec-
tions at home.)
Joining for the first time is a group fromBeirut. Some of these participants became
physically disabled very recently, in an ex-
plosion that rocked the city in August. And
as the group’s organizer, Shirine Jurdi, ex-
plained in a video call — a call interrupted
by one of Lebanon’s regular power outages
— participating in the event also has bene-
fits for those experiencing other challenges
and trauma, as many in Beirut are. She said
a virtual practice session with Ms. Latsky
relaxed her: “It was the first night since the
explosion that I slept.”
Even in virtual form, the project’s ethos of
inclusiveness remains constant. “It’s not
just people with disabilities,” Ms. Latsky
said. “It’s a meditative space where the
world can come together.” Viewers have the
option of turning their own cameras off or
on.‘Descent’: ‘Access Is Not a Checklist’
Ms. Sheppard began her dance career in
physically integrated companies. That, she
said, is still the only way for a disabled danc-
er to get training. But what she does with
Kinetic Light, she emphasized, is different
from the physically integrated model. It’s
rooted in the conversations, politics and
perspectives of people in the disability com-
munity, in inside jokes and states of being.
“I’m not some amazing person doing all
this work,” she said. “Over here, in the cul-
ture, people have practices and knowledge
and history that are way beyond the ques-
tion of ability or non-ability, the language of
‘despite disability.’ This work is how peopleare. It’s just that it hasn’t fully registered in
the nondisabled world.”
Almost all of “Descent” — from the chore-
ography and performance to the design of
the lighting, set, sound and custom-made
wheelchairs to the film editing and audio
description app — is the work of disabled
artists. “And that changes the work,” Ms.
Sheppard said. “It allows you to ask differ-
ent questions about who is centered.”
Take the set. While access ramps are of-
ten ugly or merely functional, this ramp is
reimagined for the aesthetic and sensual
pleasure of wheelchair users. Ms. Sheppard
and Laurel Lawson, while suggesting a love
story between Venus and Andromeda and
borrowing poses from Rodin sculptures,
ride its curves with roller-derby force and
ice-dance grace.
Or consider the audio version for blind
audience members. It’s less a description of
a visual experience than a separate sonic
one, a companion work of art. “Sighted
folks, less expert in ways of listening, often
find it overwhelming,” Ms. Sheppard noted.
“Rather than access being retroactive ac-
commodation, we’re thinking about access
from the very beginning,” Ms. Sheppard
said. “When you invite someone to a show,
you want them to experience it, not some-
body else’s description of it. We aren’t there
yet, but we’re working toward an equitable
aesthetic experience.”
“Access is not a checklist,” she continued.
“It’s a relationship, a promise. It’s creative,
generative, so it’s always growing.”JAY NEWMAN/BRITTGaining Visibility
As Works of Art
ANNETTE KOLZOW CHARLOTTE JONESCONTINUED FROM PAGE C1
Above, Alice Sheppard,
left, and Laurel Lawson
in “Descent.” Below left,
Quemuel Arroyo in “On
Display Global” in 2017.
Below right, Donald Lee
in “On Display” in 2016.
“I had never looked at my
stumps,” Mr. Lee said. “I
had never seen myself
that way before, as a
work of art.”American Ballet Theater will not perform at
the Metropolitan Opera House in 2021. The
company announced the cancellation of its
coming season at Lincoln Center on Tues-
day, citing the impact that the Covid-19 pan-
demic has had on its ability to prepare for
resuming live performances.
A decision has not yet been reached about
the company’s shorter fall season at the Da-
vid H. Koch Theater, another Lincoln Cen-
ter stage.
Many other performing arts groups in
New York, including the MetropolitanOpera and New York City Ballet, canceled
their spring engagements earlier this fall.
The Ballet Theater season was scheduled to
begin late in the season, in June, which gave
its leaders hope they might be able to perse-
vere with their plans, the company’s execu-
tive director, Kara Medoff Barnett, said. But
as the pandemic stretched on and virus
cases surged this fall, the company deter-
mined that staging a full slate of indoor per-
formances in New York City would not be
feasible.
Despite the setback, Kevin McKenzie,
Ballet Theater’s artistic director, said thathe was confident the company would be
able to use what it had learned during the
pandemic to find creative ways to make and
share dances until it could perform indoors
again. “We know that we can do this and
continue to create, because ultimately
that’s our lifeblood,” he said. “Otherwise
we’d just be, institutionally, trying to keep
our pulse alive but we wouldn’t be following
our mission.”
Last week, as a part of a virtual gala, the
company presented new video dances by
Pam Tanowitz, Darrell Grand Moultrie,
Gemma Bond and Christopher Rudd thatwere created in cloistered “ballet bubbles”
in upstate New York and Connecticut. More
new work is planned for 2021, with pieces by
Alexei Ratmansky, Lauren Lovette and So-
nya Tayeh, as well as an expansion by Mr.
Moultrie of his recent dance, set to debut
virtually or outdoors.
Details are still being finalized, but the
company plans to begin performing outside
around the United States next spring before
returning to New York in the summer to
dance for audiences in and around the city.
Information about these events will be re-
leased this winter.American Ballet Theater Cancels Season at Met Opera House
The company still By PETER LIBBEY
plans to create and
present dance
during the pandemic.