So at Hampy Hamp (pretty sure I’m literally the only person who has ever called Hampshire Hampy Hamp….) we have this thing called the Daily Digest. It’s an email that appears in your Hampshire webmail account every week day and features information on all these cool events happening on and around campus. Well this week I was able to attend an amazing dance workshop, and I heard about it via the Daily Digest. (Also, shout out to one of my best friends from high school, Celine, who goes to Smith College and forwarded me an email about it, too!)

Below is the description that appears in the Daily Digest:

“The Olimpias present: Asylum: Movement Hollows. A Social Somatic. The Asylum Project draws on the personal histories of poet/dancer Stephanie Heit’s experience as a psychiatric system survivor, and performance artist Petra Kuppers’ experience with art practice as a mode of inquiry in disability culture. In this workshop, we will taste some flavors of the Asylum Project, an international disability culture workshop series. Our Asylum collaborative inquiry explores multiple meanings of “asylum:” from asylum seekers and the limits of Empire, to psychiatric asylums and queer sanctuary space, to temporary places of security and refuge. In this experimental community arts project, we invite participants to use movement and writing to investigate how bodyminds inhabit, touch and intersect asylum space.”

Now, I’m not a dancer. You can probably tell that by looking at me, and if not by looking at me, then by watching me play soccer. I have a tendency to stumble over my own feet. Even bruised my own ribs one time before of it. What fun I am. However, even not being a dancer, I have taken a dance class at Hampshire. My Division II chair, Junko Oba, convinced me I should take a dance course with Daphne Lowell and she was right. I’m totally happy I did. (I’ll let you in on a secret: Junko’s usually right about everything. If she suggests you try something, try it. 98% chance you won’t regret it.) So I took this modern dance with Daphne in Fall 2014 and it was incredible. We explored space and our bodies and just letting go and getting out of your head.

Then, a year later, along came this workshop sponsored by the Five College Dance Department.  And it was totally incredible. As you may know by now, I’m studying disability rights and discourse, so combining dance and disability was a fascinating way to explore that to me. When we got to the space, Petra and Stephanie made it very clear that it would be a completely accessible space. They checked in with folks on what their needs were and every move we did involving another person involved asking consent. We were encouraged to explore what our bodies and minds were telling us, and if we spoke to ourselves more than whatever directions were given to us at the time, to listen to ourselves.