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I am a dancer because I am disabled. At least I believe so. Although it's impossible to say, obviously. Certainly my disability and my choice of profession are tightly bound together, part of the same deal. While I may have become a dancer without the influence of disability, although I doubt it, it would have been a very different process and with a very different end result (that's me) because the raw material (that's me too) would have been different. Conversely while some level of awareness of disability was probably inevitable in whatever field I chose to enter, very few fields of study or work would have provided me with such a direct window into my own body, and my relationship to it, pushing me to define my terms or stance in relation to disability.

My arrival at dance came as somewhat of a surprise, although in retrospect there were signs. I was obsessed with the music video for Kate Bushs’ song Running up that Hill for one. Being essentially a classic geek (minus the glasses, but with a minor physical disability), and the shortest person in my year in a mixed school meant that my level of involvement in physical activities was close to zero, though never as close as I wished. I wanted to be a biologist, and sat around reading books on evolution while other kids played football. I'm not sure if I chose biology as an extension of my childhood dinosaur phase, or if bodies were even then offering themselves as fit objects of study, the endless permutations of living matter.

At an age too far back to accurately estimate, but definitely several years before beginning secondary school, my mother bribed me (with a book, I think), to go to a Shotokan karate class with a bunch of other neighbourhood kids. To my utter surprise I enjoyed it, and to my even greater surprise I was good at it; my geeky physique had been hiding unexpected levels of agility and coordination. This was a watershed event for me, and I began the process of reconnecting with a body that I had started to lose all interest in. I discovered that there here things my body was good at by virtue of it's construction (Aikido Rolls are an example. Because of my construction I was continually falling over as I learnt to crawl, and always to the side with the short arm, so I could do an aikido roll before I could stand) and other things that with a little creativity turned into advantages (a quick flick out to the side with my small arm frequently drew an opponents gaze for the split second required to score with a jab).

The dream of being a biologist (a palaeobiologist now) remained, but as school wore on I became bored and disgusted, and failed to perform to standard in my exams. Never having thought beyond biology as a profession I was a little lost and dance did not step into that gap immediately. Several years of random experimentation brought me to a free dance class which hit me like a revelation. A revelation that was a few years late (being about 20 years old at this point) but clear. I think that there was something about the way in which dancing and choreography engaged the physical and cerebral capacities in tandem that struck me. For possibly the first time I felt no conflict between the geek and the martial artist (actually I felt a little like this in fencing class too). Dance extended the half felt possibility of integration, and it was entrancing. I started attending regular classes with Counterbalance, an integrated dance company, in which the 'integrated' refers to integration of performers of varying levels of ability. Being accustomed to the gazes of others and somewhat skilled by now at guiding them (an essential skill for me when dealing with my difference), were qualities that translate well into performance.

Embarking on a career in dance at the age of 20 requires dedication, discipline, and considerable reserves of stamina and confidence, none of which are qualities I possessed in any abundance, although I faked the last one quite convincingly. My formal training amounts to no more than a year, which I could conveniently blame on an unforgiving academy, but which was really cut short to follow a girl to Spain. Consequently, I suffer from a terrible lack of technique as a dancer, I can't pirouette or do splits or any number of other fundamental elements of modern dance vocabulary. I am an amateur, a dilettante in my own profession. This presence on the fringes of dance was where I spent the best part of my 20's, working with people ranging from professional dancers to older people. Possessing a relatively impoverished dance vocabulary, I learned to regard my own body, and it's differences, as the primary source of my movement vocabulary, and justified this, rather than work very hard on acquiring an acceptable vocabulary, by referencing the work of post-modern choreographers in early 1960's New York.

So where do I find myself now? 33 years old, an undertrained disabled dancer, working on the fringes of a marginalised art form, using a aesthetic model more than 40 years old, hmmmmmm.....

Now I've been offered the possibility to try and unify this experience in the form of a PhD, so what one question have I equipped myself to answer? What is it from this journey that I feel is important enough to communicate?

I feel that it is this; Why are disabled people relegated to the fringes of the one art form that has the potential to be directly about bodies?  Why in an art form that has undergone several rebellions against elitism and hierarchy, does virtuosity still mute the voices of individual bodies? Is it possible to formulate a different idea of virtuosity, one that is integrated, one that consists of an intelligent exploration of the potentials of bodies rather than measuring them against a received vocabulary?

OK, so that's 3 questions, but I have 5 years to answer them.