Divided by Ability a Critique of Inclusion in Dance Education and Performance

University of Surrey Department of Dance, Film and Theatre DIVIDED BY ABILITY A CRITIQUE OF INCLUSION IN DANCE EDUCATION AND PERFORMANCE By Christina Kostoula September 2008 Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ProQuest Number: 27557434 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 27557434 Published by ProQuest LLO (2019). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLO. ProQuest LLO. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.Q. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 - 1346 ABSTRACT The concept of ‘inclusion’ has been propagated as a key policy within British New Labour rhetoric for an expanded social agenda in education. This thesis provides a critical analysis of discourses that underpin existing notions of ‘inclusion’ in dance education and performance. My critique is based on the specific case study of ChickenShed Theatre Company and its outreach project, in which I have been involved as an inclusive group leader. My methodology integrates interdisciplinary perspectives and strategies to examine a range of different kinds of evidence from studio practice, rehearsals, stage production, press reviews, and ChickenShed’s policy and promotional documents. I employ discourse analysis, embodied fieldwork and self-reflection as methods for evaluating the philosophy/practice that I have trained in and implemented, but also for investigating elements of inclusive pedagogy beyond ChickenShed (such as disability arts, CandoCo Dance Company’s training, and a number of integrated curricula endorsed by the Arts Council of England). My purpose is to discuss strengths, deficiencies and possibilities emerging from current theorisations and tactical treatment of ‘disability’ as cultural ‘otherness’. P art One offers an overview of the ideology that supports ChickenShed’s teaching settings and practices concerning inclusion. Mobilising critical socio-cultural analysis, I consider the ways in which the progressive value of inclusion can be subverted by the demands of a competitive neoliberal society. I suggest that the corporatisation of inclusion in mainstream cultural production often involves a form of commodified identity as ‘sameness’. I argue that implicit adoption of a non-critical/apolitical stance within arts pedagogy can lead to a conservative position in relation to disability and inequalities of cultural capital. Part Two provides a counter-narrative that contests the perceived normative functions of inclusive practice. Based on participant observation of my own outreach group, I illustrate how the agencies of diverse individuals/students and the teacher/leader’s decisions can make contradictions visible, spell out differences explicitly and negotiate them expressively within the pedagogic situation. Dominant concepts of homogeneity as well as binary divisions of ability, which can often prevail in inclusive dance teaching, are confronted by the embodied agencies of the participants and can be altered through a shared and critically informed creative process. I propose an alternative conceptualisation of inclusive pedagogy, in which dance provides as basis for a new model of inclusion; not just an ideology of community and cohesion, but an embodied ontology recognising inequality in practice and problem-solving around lived differences. Ultimately, the performative agencies of disabled participants emerge as capable of addressing oppressive/exclusive structures. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ü TABLE OF CONTENTS iü CHAPTER 1 THE STUDY OF INCLUSION AND INCLUSIVE DANCE -EXCX US/FF CHALLENGES 1 1.1 Theoretical Background, Aims and Objectives 1 1.2 The Politics of Inclusion 6 1.3 The Case Study - Why ChickenShed? 10 1.4 Inclusion in Dance: Agency and Critical Pedagogy 18 1.5 Interdisciplinary Research Design 22 1.6 Methodological Process: Ethnographic Data and Teacher Research 25 1.7 Ethical Considerations 29 1.8 Outline of the Thesis 32 PART ONE: STRUCTURES AND CONDITIONS INFLUENCING INCLUSIVE DANCEPEDAGOGY 35 CHAPTER 2 CHICKENSHED’S TEXT AND ITS SOCIAL AND IDEOLOGICAL CONTEXT 35 2.1 Social Site: ChickenShed as an Imagined Family 36 2.2 Social Settings: Inclusive Ideology, Dance Methodology and Habitus 49 CHAPTER 3 CHICKENSHED’S INCLUSION AS PRODUCT WITHIN THE ARTS MARKET62 3.1 The Theoretical Concept of “Field” 63 3.1.1 Field Styles 68 3.1.2 A Theory of Field Practice 72 3.2 Global Fields 74 3.3 Spreading Inclusion Across Fields 80 3.4 Cultural Contexts and Inclusive Idioms 84 CHAPTER 4 INCLUSION AS RESISTANCE, INCLUSION AS COMPLIANCE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR ALTERNATIVE INCLUSIONS 86 4.1 Inclusive Education and its Contradictions. The Core Problem of Hegemony 87 4.2 Cultural Production: Divisions, Stratification and the Construct of Ability 91 4.3 ChickenShed’s Pedagogic Action and Symbolic Control 97 4.4 Political and Economic Conditions: Exclusion/Inclusion in British New Labour Discourse and Arts Policy. 108 111 PART TWO: PERFORMED REALISATIONS AND DANCE-BASED ANALYSIS OF EMBODIED AGENCY 114 CHAPTERS INSTANCES OF INCLUSION/EXCLUSION IN CHICKENSHED’S DANCE WORKSHOPS 114 5.1 Problematic Realisations during Inclusive Dance Tuition 116 5.2 Embodiments of Difference 125 5.3 Authority as an Obstacle to Inclusion - Alternative Authorships 130 CHAPTER 6 DANCING BEYOND INCLUSION: THE CASE OF NEW SHED INC. 138 6.1 Teaching Inclusion - Critique in the First Person 140 6.2 Out-reaching and Defying Exclusion 142 6.3 Individual Agencies Resisting Inclusion 149 6.4 Dances of Resistance 157 6.5 A Collective Choreographic Utopia ? 168 CHAPTER 7 ADVOCATING DIFFERENCE THROUGH MAINSTREAM STAGE AESTHETICS 171 7.1 The “Mother Metaphor”: Failing to Represent Inclusion as an Alternative Form of Sociality 173 7.2 Globaleyes - The Spectacle of Inclusion: Objectifying Visibility versus Performative Subjectivity 192 7.3 From ChickenShed to the G8 Summit and the Make Poverty History Campaign 207 CHAPTER 8 TOWARDS AN EMBODIED CRITICAL PEDAGOGY OF INCLUSION 210 8.1 The Critique and its Key Findings 210 8.2 Conceptual Undertakings of the Thesis 214 8.3 Tactical Choices and Limitations of the Research 218 8.4 Future Possibilities — Theories of Hope 221 APPENDICES 224 Appendix 1 224 Appendix 2 226 Appendix 3 227 Appendix 4 228 Appendix 5 230 Appendix 6 231 Appendix 7 232 Appendix 8 233 Appendix 9 234 Appendix 10 235 BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................................. 236 IV CHAPTER 1 THE STUDY OF INCLUSION AND INCLUSIVE DANCE - EXCLUSIVE CHALLENGES It is perfectly possible that what is politically progressive and opens up discursive opportunities... can become a form of closure - and have a repressive value - by the time it is installed as the dominant genre... it will run out of steam; it will become a style, people will use it not because it opens up anything but because they are spoken by it, and at that point you need another shift. Bailey, Hall, 1992, p. 15. 1.1 Theoretical Background, Aims and Objectives This thesis is situated within the context of a widespread and ongoing debate over the concept, definition, theoretical criteria, and practical implementation of inclusion. Social and educational inclusion has been a major focus of academic research and policies on an international scale over the last thirty years.' Existing literature on inclusion, nonetheless, is marked by the problematics of terminology and its complex relation to power.^ The discourse and practice of inclusion are continuously under construction and negotiation. Notions such as ‘handicap’, ‘disadvantage’, ‘disability’, and ‘integration’ relate closely to the concept of inclusion and together they constitute products of historical change and shifts in social theory. The heterogeneous concept of disability is of particular relevance to the ideology of inclusion under study. Different definitions of disability can have a direct impact on the way societies identify or not with the need for inclusion. In the past twenty years disabled people have chosen to interpret their collective experiences in terms of “structural notions of discrimination and oppression” rather than as personal stigma (Oliver, 1990, p.68). In the 1990s disabled academic Mike Oliver coined the term “social model” of disability; an idea which is central to the British ' Publications such as the International Journal of Inclusive Education are representative of “multi disciplinary research into pedagogies, curricula, policy making and cultures” that aim to “include all students in education” (stated aim of the journal, in www.francis&taylor.com). ^ The use of the term ‘power’ in the thesis integrates poststructuralist theorisations on discursive phenomena (Foucault, 1979, 1980) with notions of socio-economic oppression that derive from a tradition of historical materialism within sociology. disability movement and the discipline of disability studies. According to the “social”, as opposed to the “medical” or “personal model”, disability is a social category and should therefore be understood as de-medicalised and de-essentialised identity. Disability is not located in the individual’s

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