Crohn's Chronicles: A blog about Crohn's Disease

This one may venture slightly away from Crohn's for a moment, but I promise I'll circle back to it. I just need to get this off my chest, be patient with me for a minute. I went to a panel earlier this week on dance and disability. The panel itself was incredibly diverse, with disabled dancers and choreographers, a research scientist, educators, and a dance critic, among others. Each person had a unique perspective on the subject, which made the discussion interesting and inspired a lot of thought. However, there was this moment about half-way through the night when one of the panelists whose experience was mainly in the dance world said that there's really no difference between a modern dance company like Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) and a physically integrated dance company like Axis Dance Company , both of whom just happen to be showing in Chicago this weekend. To give a brief overview, Merce Cunningham was a pioneer in modern/post-modern dance....

Below is small segment of my Dance Studies Research Project, "Cripping Dance: Radical Representations of the Disabled Dancing Body." It's the bit I wrote about my own work, Overwhelming Nuance (excerpted below), which, as you will see, was inspired by the feelings of denial that so often accompany disease.  Nearly four years after I was diagnosed with Crohn's, it flared massively. Lost in the idea that "my disease will not define my life", I ignored for months the signs of the looming crash. This breakdown forced me to come to terms with the reality of my disease. I suddenly understood that the idea that the mind might overcome the body just supported the willful denial of my disease. After this experience, determined to force an openness about disease in my own life, I claimed disability as part of my identity and choreographed my own "crip" coming out.