Disability Culture and Community Performance Find a Strange and Twisted Shape

Performances in hospices and on beaches; cross-cultural myth making in Wales, New Zealand and the US; communal poetry among mental health system survivors: this book, now in paperback, presents a senior practitioner/critic's exploration of arts-based research processes sustained over more than a decade - a subtle engagement with disability culture.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction PART I: MAKING A HOME Landscaping: Spacings  Dancing Stories about Home: A Community Dance Residency in a Hospice in New Zealand Community Arts and Practices: Improvising Being-Together PART II: RHIZOMES/CONNECTIONS Toward a Rhizomatic Model of Disability: Poetry, Performance, and Touch Burning Butoh: Self/Community Rhizome: Choreography of a Moving Self  Rhizome: Collaboration Rhizome: Beyond Story, Community Performance and Somatic Poetics PART III: MEMORY TOUCH Introduction: Desirous History Performing Anarcha  Remembering Anarcha  The Anarcha Project Performative Lecture The Anarcha Project: A Process Report PART IV: SENSUAL HISTORY AND MYTH-MAKING Introduction Tiresian Journeys  Teaching Disability Culture: Reflections on Tiresias in the Classroom Epilogue Bibliography Index

Petra Kuppers is Artistic Director of The Olimpias, and she teaches in Performance Studies at the University of Michigan, USA. Her previous books include Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge (2003), The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art (2007), Community Performance: An Introduction (2007).