IN Vulnérables

A dancer's body: superhuman and glorious, capable of extraordinary movements that are essential to their dance. Out of the ordinary, excessive. And heroic: dancing despite dance-related injuries. A vulnerable body: fragile, old, female, trans, racialized, undocumented, sick, disabled, fragile, proletarian: resistant to performance Out of the ordinary, by default. But heroic too, as we often hear: not a normal body, an extraordinary one. Men and women share the art of dancing; some make it their profession, or their therapy, their escape, their glory, their secret, their struggle, their power, their community, or their solitude...  In our societies, they most often live apart: in the world of professional “dance,” in shelters for asylum seekers, in hospitals, prisons. And yet we will listen to their voices as they form a common circle where power and vulnerability appear as the same substance, the same physical quality, and the same strength.

Isabelle Ginot

Isabelle Ginot is an academic working in Université Paris 8, and the co-founder of Association d’individus en mouvements engagés (A.I.M.E., with Julie Nioche as its artistic director). Her work focuses on the emancipatory powers of dance in the performing arts, stage pieces, and the socially marginalizing spaces of care, poverty and various forms of imprisonment.