Improv and the Angel: Disability Dance, Embodied Ethics, and Jewish Biblical Narrative

Disability dance lays claim to the provocative possibilities of the disabled body, raising profound questions about the politics of art, affect, and embodiment. For scholars of religion, disability dance is a powerful—and as yet unrecognized—site for probing the sacrality and ethics enacted in disab...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Belser, Julia Watts 1978- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell [2019]
In: Journal of religious ethics
Year: 2019, Volume: 47, Issue: 3, Pages: 443-469
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Old Testament / Handicap / Dance / Ethical conflict / Disability studies
IxTheo Classification:AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism
AD Sociology of religion; religious policy
BH Judaism
NCA Ethics
Further subjects:B queer ethics
B Dance
B Embodiment
B Feminist ethics
B Disability studies
B Jewish ethics
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:Disability dance lays claim to the provocative possibilities of the disabled body, raising profound questions about the politics of art, affect, and embodiment. For scholars of religion, disability dance is a powerful—and as yet unrecognized—site for probing the sacrality and ethics enacted in disability culture. This article brings the biblical tale of Jacob and the angel into conversation with a contemporary performance, "The Way You Look (at me) Tonight," an intimate duet between choreographer and performer Jess Curtis and Clare Cunningham, an internationally acclaimed dancer who explores the artistry of lived disability experience. Using dance as a hermeneutic invitation to draw out ethical insights into risk, consent, and intimacy, I offer a disability-sensitive reading of Genesis 32—reading the angel as a body whose presence attests to the brilliant shock of disability difference and probing the psychic and somatic transformation that unfolds when Jacob comes into kinesthetic contact with disability and the sacred.
ISSN:1467-9795
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of religious ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/jore.12283