Join DanceAbility, a welcoming and vibrant space for disabled Detroiters, caregivers, allies, and anyone exploring their relationship to disability. Together, we'll move, groove, and connect in a way that celebrates our bodies and builds community–no dance experience needed!

Schedule

Season 1: January - March

Season 2: April - June

Season 3: July - September

Virtual Fridays offered every other week during a season. Each season feature two or more in-person sessions at The LOVE Building or the Riverfront!

Cara Graninger

Have questions? Email Cara at DanceAbility@DetroitDisabilityPower.org

I discovered DanceAbility in 2004, when I was searching for training to teach and lead dance in community settings. I wasn’t specifically looking for disability-inclusive dance, but DanceAbility founder Alito Alessi pointed out I couldn’t effectively teach dance to the community if I exclude 25% or more of community members with ableist dance methods. 

He was right about that, and during my month-long DanceAbility teacher certification I also quickly realized that my fellow trainees with disabilities were as much my allies in dance improvisation research and practice as I was theirs. When they shared their experiences moving and living with disabilities, through talking and dancing with me, I learned new possibilities for moving and being that I’d never learned in normative dance spaces.  Twenty-one years later, I’m still engaged in DanceAbility practice. I love building community through movement. And moving in communities resourced by movers diverse in our minds, bodies, and senses–as well as in our cultural backgrounds and outlooks-continues to inspire and teach me. 

Who am I? I’m a middle-class queer female, married with English/German-roots, who grew up around the country and around the world before graduating from high school and college on the east coast then moving to Detroit in 1993. I participated in the first Detroit Summer the previous year, a grassroots intergenerational community activism project, and I decided to move back to continue working with the committed and compassionate activists who founded it.

Am I disabled? I’ve had some significant experiences with disabling depression and anxiety, and I experience the periodic injuries and joint challenges of an aging human mover as well as mild chronic directional dyslexia. At this point, I don’t identify as disabled, nor do others identify me as disabled, as far as I know. However, my experiences on the continuum of “dis/ability” and in disability justice culture help me weave community with people with varying disabilities. Sometimes my basically-for-now-”able-bodied”-and-”neurotypical” perspectives, or my socioeconomic or cultural biases, prevent me from connecting meaningfully or equitably with people rooted in disability culture and/or other cultures different from mine,  When that happens, I embrace constructive feedback, ask forgiveness, and evolve.

DanceAbility came out of contact improvisation, a dance form born in 1972-like me!-that forever changed what dance can look and feel like.  I practice DanceAbility to touch the magic that happens when a group of humans with various bodies, minds, and modes of sensing…from various cultures and social experiences...come together to co-create dance.