Choreographies of Care: Disability and Relationality in Performance

Author

Kiera Bono, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Date of Degree

9-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Theatre and Performance

Advisor

James F. Wilson

Committee Members

Patrick McKelvey

Bertie Ferdman

Amber Musser

Subject Categories

Dance | Other Theatre and Performance Studies | Performance Studies | Theatre and Performance Studies

Keywords

Disability, performance, dance, diaspora, race, ethnicity

Abstract

My dissertation explores enactments of what I am calling “choreographies of care” in interdisciplinary performance practices in the 21^st century. Working across disability studies, race and ethnicity studies, queer theory, and performance studies, I investigate the ways in which chronically ill and disabled artists have generated multisensorial movement, sound, and performance works that resist normative understandings of time, space, bodies, and interactions between bodies. Focusing mostly on performances and events that I have attended in New York City or virtually over the past decade, my project engages directly with disability arts communities in which I have been deeply embedded during this period both as a fellow disabled artist and a disabled audience member. To supplement my firsthand experiences of some of these performances, I consult written transcripts of events, written performance scores, video recordings, sound recordings, and the artists’ own public descriptions of their processes. This dissertation makes an intervention into existing scholarship on disability and contemporary performance in that it explores the ways Sick and/or Disabled, Queer, Trans, and/or Gender-Nonconforming Black artists, Indigenous artists, and/or Artists of Color have facilitated queer, cross-disability, cross-diasporic collaborations that unearth more livable relationalities, temporalities, and materialities. Tuning into choreographic practices as care practices and care practices as choreographic practices offers an opportunity to move beyond representational analyses of disability and performance and instead toward relational inquiries into disability and performance.

Recommended Citation

Bono, Kiera, "Choreographies of Care: Disability and Relationality in Performance" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6439