Dancing Right(s): Dance, Disability and Legal Empowerment in Post-War Sri Lanka

Hetty Blades

doi:10.3366/drs.2020.0319

Dancing Right(s): Dance, Disability and Legal Empowerment in Post-War Sri Lanka

Hetty Blades

Faculty Research Centre for Dance Research (CDaRE)

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

Sri Lanka's long civil war (1983-2009) resulted in large-scale personal, physical and social trauma. It led to a large number of deaths and many people became disabled due to the war. Disabled people in Sri Lanka are often marginalized and excluded from the public sphere. Whilst there are initiatives to support disabled people from both the State and Non- Governmental Organisations, support often adopts a charity-based approach which has been criticised for contributing to marginalisation and the dependency of disabled people on other people and organisations. Performing Empowerment (2016-18) was a research project that responded to this context by seeking to examine whether combining dance workshops with human rights education might lead to greater legal empowerment for disabled people in Sri Lanka. In this paper, I reflect on the experiences of five Tamil women who took part in the project, outlining how they gained confidence and rights awareness which enabled them to self-advocate and make changes to their everyday lives, demonstrating increased legal empowerment. I argue that this change arose in part through different forms of performance that they experienced within the workshops, which enabled a series of transportations from their daily lives.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	(In-press)
Number of pages	16
Journal	Dance Research
Volume	(In-press)
Early online date	Dec 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3366/drs.2020.0319
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - Dec 2020

Bibliographical note

Copyright © and Moral Rights are retained by the author(s) and/ or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This item cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

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Hetty Blades
- Faculty Research Centre for Dance Research (CDaRE) - Assistant Professor Research
Person: Teaching and Research

Cite this

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title = "Dancing Right(s): Dance, Disability and Legal Empowerment in Post-War Sri Lanka",

abstract = "Sri Lanka's long civil war (1983-2009) resulted in large-scale personal, physical and social trauma. It led to a large number of deaths and many people became disabled due to the war. Disabled people in Sri Lanka are often marginalized and excluded from the public sphere. Whilst there are initiatives to support disabled people from both the State and Non- Governmental Organisations, support often adopts a charity-based approach which has been criticised for contributing to marginalisation and the dependency of disabled people on other people and organisations. Performing Empowerment (2016-18) was a research project that responded to this context by seeking to examine whether combining dance workshops with human rights education might lead to greater legal empowerment for disabled people in Sri Lanka. In this paper, I reflect on the experiences of five Tamil women who took part in the project, outlining how they gained confidence and rights awareness which enabled them to self-advocate and make changes to their everyday lives, demonstrating increased legal empowerment. I argue that this change arose in part through different forms of performance that they experienced within the workshops, which enabled a series of transportations from their daily lives.",

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