Rethinking Disabled Leadership in Dance

In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews disabled dance artist and researcher Kate Marsh. Based in the UK, Kate shares her perspective as an assistant professor at Coventry University. She reflects on how the discourse on disability has evolved during her career, from breaking literal barriers to breaking attitudinal barriers, and yet how today’s dance education landscape is experiencing economic cuts. She discusses her personal trajectory and how the pipeline she traversed is the epitome of a successful career in dance, and yet how so much of success in dance is based on luck, especially for those dancers with disabilities. She questions what institutions can learn from the bespoke training that disabled dancers have been giving themselves for a long time.Kate Marsh is a disabled dance artist and researcher with more than 20 years of experience in performing, teaching, making, and researching dance. Her interests are centered around perceptions of the body in the arts and notions of corporeal aesthetics. Specifically, she is interested in each of our lived experiences of our bodies, and how this does (or doesn’t) inform our artistic practice. Her practice-research focuses on leadership in the context of dance and disability and draws strongly on the voices of artists to interrogate questions around notions of leadership, perceptions and the body. Kate’s work is strongly fed by co-design and co-facilitation, where we all arrive into our practice from our own place and pace, and this informs the ways we work together, privileging all experiences and ways of being, and prioritizing a playful, accessible and generative environment.