Dance and Disability in Jewish and Israeli Contexts

This panel will discuss the complicated junction of dance and disability within Israeli and Jewish contexts. While the phenomenon of “disability dance,” an art form in which dancer with and without disabilities collaborate, has received a growing scholarly attention in recent years, arguing for the empowering force of disability performance art, the specific junction where dance, disability, and Jewish studies come together, has not received much scholarly scrutiny.

In this panel we ask to remedy this lacuna, inviting scholars to reflect upon the Jewish and Israeli aspects of disability dance they have encountered in their studies, examining the complicated cultural meeting between dance and disability, which are typically considered oppositional, and in conflict with each other. The Jewish and Israeli contexts invite further thoughts on the cultural binarism dividing dance and disability, and different possibilities to challenge it.