Disability Stereotypes and the Dance World: An Introduction

By Jade Fraser

Hello dance community!

My name is Jade, and this is my first article for the Dancewear Center blog! I’ll be writing for Dancewear Center this year, so you should be seeing more of me in the coming months. For now, I’ll explain who I am and what I’m doing here.

I’m sixteen years old and a junior in high school. I’ve been dancing for at least nine years, six of those at Cornerstone Studio. I began at Cornerstone when I was eleven years old and in sixth grade. I did classical ballet that year, then switched to contemporary and hip hop dance the next year. I’ve done those two styles ever since.

I did pre-level dance at several different places when I was very young, and then I stopped so I could focus on other things. I’d wanted to go back for several years before I actually did; that was after trying artistic gymnastics and finding that it wasn’t my thing. I know I’m not the only one who went through an American Girl phase, and their 2014 Girl of the Year, Isabelle, was a dancer. I watched that movie and was reminded of how much I loved to dance, and then and there I decided I wanted to go back.

I started dancing later than most people I dance with, and I’ve also always had trouble picking up certain techniques. I’ve always needed to work harder and longer than a lot of other people to be able to do even the most basic skills. I also have a habit of comparing myself to other people, and this leads to discouragement. I’ve always been far too hard on myself, and when I feel like everybody is better than me, I beat myself up about it. Even so, I continue to dance because I love it and it brings me joy. I have found a community at Cornerstone Studio – it’s a community of people who love to dance as much as I do. These are the people who help me when I’m having trouble with a skill or with choreography, who encourage and support me, and who understand my obsession for dance (and BTS, in some cases).

I was invited to write blog articles for Dancewear Center earlier this year because I wanted to share with the dance community as a whole what the words disability and mental illness really mean, and why they’re important to me. I want to break down stereotypes around disability and mental illness piece by piece and give my perspective about disability in relation to the dance world. As somebody who is legally disabled and mentally ill myself, I want to be a voice for the disabled community, a community often unheard and underrepresented. I want to be an advocate for the people who are disabled and mentally ill that are unable to advocate for themselves. I want to educate the nondisabled community on the reality of disability, as well as shed some light on why somebody like me with “invisible” disabilities is in fact disabled. In addition, I want to help everybody understand what ableism is and why it is hurtful, not only to people who are disabled themselves, but to the nondisabled community as well as the society that we live in.

Finally, I want to show how stereotypes around disability and mental illness are relevant to the dance world, and what needs to be done so that people with disabilities can have the opportunity to show their full potential, not only in the dance world but in every aspect of life. I want to bring focus and discussion to important and uncomfortable topics like these, because I think a lot of the crucial understanding is missing. My ultimate goal is to bring awareness to this topic, as well as promote education on disability.

Now that you’ve read everything I’ve written so far, you have some background information of who I am and what I’m doing here. I’ll be back in the near future elaborating on the last bit, and I look forward to sharing with you all!