In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews dance artist Elisabeth Motley, a New York City-based choreographer, scholar, and teacher whose work is concerned with disability as a framework for creative practice.
In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews dance artist Elisabeth Motley, a New York City-based choreographer, scholar, and teacher whose work is concerned with disability as a framework for creative practice. Elisabeth describes how her journey began in rigorous normative dance practice and how she came to disability by way of a recurring brain disease that impacts her physical and cognitive abilities. Her pedagogy revolves around her own experience and her dreams of a curriculum that is not fixed and that centers disabled students. She pushes boundaries as a teacher with a disability in higher education and works in ways that refuse the system.
Elisabeth Motley has a PhD from University of Roehampton in Dance Studies focusing on choreography and disability dance, an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College, and a BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School. Elisabeth is a 2025 Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) Artist in Residence. She has been a 2023 Movement Research Access. Movement. Play. (AMP) Artist in Residence, a 2019-2021 Movement Research Artist in Residence, a 2020 & 2021 Dance/NYC Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance and Social Justice Fellow and is a recipient of the 2018-2019 Fulbright US-UK Scholar Award. Elisabeth is the co-creator of Crip Movement Lab (co-created with Kayla Hamilton), a pedagogical framework centering cross-disability accessible movement practice. Her writing has been published in Dance Chronicle and Choreographic Practices Journal.
Silva Laukkanen: Okay. So tell me, how was your week.
Silva Laukkanen: Elizabeth? I want you. What is what is happening next week?
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): Well, yes, next week I'm I'm headed to my graduation for University of Roehampton.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): getting my, you know, doing the official ceremony, although it's it's already been delivered. My, my! Ph, d. So
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): that's that's super exciting. And just like, honestly, when starting that that program, I just would imagine myself
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): in that ceremony, and what it means
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): for a disabled person to be moving through that process and and receiving that reward. So it's just it. Just it's really, really, I'm I'm excited about it.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): yeah, and that that focus. It's a dance. It's in dance studies. But it it's my focus was in disability studies and disability dance and choreographic practice.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): So it's I'm really excited about that. I'm I'm gearing up for that. But then I I started teaching this week, too. I teach at Marymount Manhattan College in the dance department. So it's been a full week this week. I'm quite tired.
Silva Laukkanen: Well, thank you for taking the time to to chat with me and welcome to dancecast
Silva Laukkanen: So, Elizabeth, tell me a little bit about how? What was your journey to this point to getting a Phd. next week. How did it start?
Silva Laukkanen: And what.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): Yeah. Oh.
Silva Laukkanen: Then? And how how did you end up here.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): Yeah, what happened? I know. So I was reflecting on this leading up to what? To this conversation today and and what what you. You know you invited me to sort of have a conversation with you about, and it's you know, my my journey began in really really rigorous normative dance practice. I attended the Juilliard School, so I have a Bfa. In dance from the Julliard School. I have an Mfa. In interdisciplinary arts, and I've just finished my, my Phd. In dance studies
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): focusing on on disability dance. But I came to disability. I identify as a disabled person by way of a recurring brain disease that
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): impacts
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): on and off my physical ability and my cognitive ability. So I have a non apparent disability other than some tremors and tics that I have at times but this this occurrence happened right after I graduated from Juilliard and was entering
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): my career, my professional career. And so I was really in a place where I was, seeing that I could not reconcile my disabled experience with the Normative Ableist tradition of dance
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): and although I attempted for many years to fit in inside of it, and really really struggled and tried it. I it became a point where I realized I couldn't breathe anymore. And I needed to explore new avenues for my disabled experience to be celebrated and recognized. In the way that I think
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): it's all of us are due.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): So so that's that's my my odd odd bird of a journey.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): is really steeped in a lot of normativity, and a lot of ableism. So it's in in many ways.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): you know, there's I. There's there's spots where I'm I'm able to to see a lot of different
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): perspectives. Put put in play.
Silva Laukkanen: Right? And so you are now a dance educator in a higher education institution, and you identify as someone with the disability.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): I was. I was also leading, leading up to our our discussion, thinking about like when I when I
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): when I entered higher, Ed as as a teacher.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): and I also entered as as a disabled person that was
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): knowing that they were disabled students in the program that weren't identifying or weren't disclosing right? So it's sort of like my pedagogy revolves around my own experience and the ways that I was forced to to closet my experience at times.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): and also dreaming of. You know, a program where disabled students are centered. So so it's been really really
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): meaningful to me to to bring my disabled experience and my disabled dreams into a normative education, dance, educational environment, and and be forced to reconcile the tensions, or at least be exchanging with them. I don't know that they're reconcilable, but at least be forced to to be exchanging with them in a in a way
Silva Laukkanen: Alright, that was my kind of question is around the fact that how much you think that the representation of you being there actually matters, and what the impact is going to be
Silva Laukkanen: for your students.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): Think it. I think it is impactful because
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): because part of my journey in acquiring
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): more knowledge. You know, crossing the stage next week is insisting on my presence there right and sort of having the the, you know, taking hold of that power in the classroom and saying, I am a disabled woman.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And and
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): like
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): that, I hope impacts their experience.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): and I hope that the ways that I teach
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): opens up a way for students to learn through difference, to to develop their learning goals together with them through their individuality. And to think about
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): difference in the classroom.
Silva Laukkanen: Right.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): I'm I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful.
Silva Laukkanen: I, you know, I'm thinking that actually, maybe the ripple effect is bigger in a way that you are putting yourself in a system that is not welcoming, that you're doing something that is not being done. We don't have a formal dance education that is welcoming, and for people with disabilities, or let alone welcomes educators with disabilities. So I think the ripple effect is actually much bigger.
Silva Laukkanen: You know, when I started doing these podcasts, and I was trying to look for that I couldn't find. And actually I have only spoken with Danielle Sanchez, who was asked to like, not participate anymore as a dance educator. Once he acquired his disability.
Silva Laukkanen: So you're really doing a pioneering work in a way.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And and I can certainly say my my career. I have had career setbacks as a result of disclosing it has certainly had its.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): It's a negative impact. And I think that was a big reason for me to push through.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): being. You know. You know, I continue to to return to Harney and Moten's the Under Commons, which is a text that was really helpful for me and working in in higher education in the university, setting this idea of being in it, but not of it.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And really working, working in a way that refuses the system. This has been critical to me. For to my personal survival, because it it has really been hard. It has not been easy. And and I'm I know there is just a handful of us that are in the Academy that are identify, that are disclosing and identifying as a way to make space for more students to do so.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And you know this is not to fault professors that don't disclose or identify. There are key reasons to not do it. It just became a place for me where I was like.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): If I can be in this place, place of privilege and power.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): with a Ph. D.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): I might be able to to say that I am disabled. I might be able to activate this this space in a way that might actually hopefully create some change. But I I do want to just also disclose it is not, it is not. It has created some some pain in my career. It has definitely made it harder for me, and created some some ruptures in my my work environment that have been really, really challenging.
Silva Laukkanen: I I believe I believe you. I hear you. I believe you.
Silva Laukkanen: Is there any how would you name the mindset shift that are necessary to sort of move from this adapting outdated models and outdated models of who can be a dance educator to embrace like an in this entirely new, inclusive dance education. And I'm thinking this in the context of our conversations in the topic groups for the research report and the gathering. What are the like mindset mindset shifts that could be easily achievable like, maybe tomorrow. Is it like that? We how do we consciously deconstruct the biases of non disabled dance educators.
Silva Laukkanen: Is that one of the things like. Can you name some of the things that you feel like would move the the as education to be more open and acceptable and accessible.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): It's interesting as I I was. I was thinking about this, too, ahead of time.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): the same ways that I think we're thinking about shifting the criteria and assessment for students is the same. That would be for the development of pedagogy and the development of the professor or the teacher. So it's sort of like I can see them all speaking, speaking to one another, if if that makes sense. So the way that even for example, we might think about
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): Assessment, then opens up a space for the way the the professor is in the space, or the teacher is in the space right, and they really do all, all speak, speak to one another.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): I'm thinking a lot about you know, making plural the way that we assess makes the professor allows the professor, or invites the professor to also feel plural in the space to also feel adaptable.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): So if I'm as a professor, thinking.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): I'm going to invite students to develop their own learning goals and have individual meetings with them.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): That might mean that as a teacher I show up with my different learning goals that day, too, and that those things shift. So I am shifting too. So if if I grant my students, I don't use that word my anymore. But if I grant the students that I work with the kind of grace that I want to grant myself.
Silva Laukkanen: Wow! That is.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): Be on the mind.
Silva Laukkanen: Yeah. Tell me more about that. Where? What is that?
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): I'm learning. I'm trying to unlearn all the time, because it's it's a habit written into a lot of the discourse and the way we discuss it. This, my students, my dancers? So I'm identifying the ways that this goes into mccarthy Brown. Write, writes a lot around this around ownership of dance.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And this is something that is the her work is how dance is controlled and and whitewashed in the teaching of dance forms. So Mccarthy Brown really articulates white supremacy in relationship to dance teaching and the ownership and master narrative around higher education and dance, so sort of naming and claiming the authoritarianism over a student population is something I'm I'm actively trying to unlearn and encourage students to unlearn as as they're learning how to be in dance spaces.
Silva Laukkanen: Fantastic, you know. That makes me think because, you know, I told you that I just started my master's studies at the place, and I was looking at their descriptions of their postgraduate courses, and like they use words like student-centered learning seminars and personal tutorials pulled up on your ideas, interests, skills, and artistic practice, developing your artistic voice and agency, practice-led courses, guest artists—like, it’s all around me as a student instead of the institution and the teacher. And I was just thinking how much that language already drew me into applying to the program.
Silva Laukkanen: Because I'd been looking for six years for some MA or MFA in the US, and as a 44-year-old mother of three, there's just no way I'm gonna start doing ballet classes four mornings a week. There is no way. And, like, I had a really hard time finding a program that would actually cater to what I was interested in the dance world.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): I'm so—my heart is full that you are there. It is such a beautiful place. It is the place, but it is also a beautiful place for learning, for co-learning, for commutual, artistic, scholarly endeavors, right? It's sort of like we're all doing this together. And I think that's enough—that's the other bit about pedagogy that might open up to both the professor and the student: that we're doing it together. The teacher is learning with the students. It is not a fixed and rooted criteria for teaching and learning; it is always flexible.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And to me, this roots right back to what disability is. It is not fixed and rooted. It is always contingent. It is always shifting. It is always changing. So this automatically doesn't suit well for higher education, which has rubrics and boxes and checkmarks—at least in the US.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): I think they are really trying to shift in other spaces.
Silva Laukkanen: Yeah, I think we have two assessments that are graded; the rest either fail or pass.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): So I was thinking about this, and I want to talk to you about this, too—this fail or pass, which is also really, really... it does some unlearning to the rubric.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And I'm also thinking about the same scholar, Mccarthy Brown, who talks about the binary of yes or no, black or white, fail or pass, and the binary as a characteristic of white supremacy.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And so I sort of was like, "Oh, right, pass/fail—it allows for a yes or no, which might be better for some students." Some of the research that I've done has looked at Mind the Gap, which has a performance academy. Mind the Gap is a disabled theater group—they're absolutely brilliant and amazing. They have a performance academy that is accredited with St. John's University.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And the work that they do in their curriculum is improving, achieving, excelling. So they measure on these three criteria. So it's not two; it’s three. And it's—I think there's something... again, I'm still in the process of doing this research and forming my own opinions on it—but there's something about the three that feels a little bit more multiple than one or two, like pass/fail.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And, you know, you could maybe critique the word "excelling" a little bit. Maybe there's a better term that feels a little bit more supportive. "Excelling," in its relationship to "excellence," might not be so enjoyable.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): But there's a lot to be thought through in how we're inviting students into the power of their own education, into the freedom of their own education.
Silva Laukkanen: Right. This is what I was—like, even the fail/pass feels better to me because it does feel more like, okay, it’s really up to me.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): You.
Silva Laukkanen: Whereas I feel like—you know Danae Reese from Axis, years ago? So we talked about this whole hierarchy that comes with grading, and when the professor is like, "Oh, but my student doesn't have a body like mine, so how can I grade?" And then there's the fear of losing your authority because you don't know. And I think there’s a lot around access to dance education and what comes with the grading and assessing part that we don't talk about so often.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): It's really—
Silva Laukkanen: But.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): Relief—it’s a relief to know that you might be able to participate in the way you enter your assessment. I think just to have some of the air taken out of the tires around meeting a standard of—you know, an expected standard—with pass/fail, it does feel a sense of relief.
Silva Laukkanen: Yeah. And I think there are times when the grading is just arbitrary. Like, I remember being at Laban, and I had a shaved head, and I feel like my ballet teacher just hated me.
Silva Laukkanen: It was like, I did not look the way he wanted me to look in a ballet class. And no matter what I did, he had all the power to grade me poorly.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And in a lot of absolutely Silva, and in a lot of settings, attire is one of the assessment criteria in ballet classes attire, and the way you know that you're attending the class the way your hair is pulled back.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And we can see that all of all of these things, especially hair is is related to racism. So I mean, it's a lot of this needs to be be UN undone, unlearned.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): But I think this sort of shifting benchmark is really exciting in terms of... And again, these are things that Kate Marsh, who has written extensively on, as well as as well as Sarah Watley and and other critical pedagogues. People like Dan Goodley, who do research on disability pedagogy.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): That individually set learning goals. Thinking about learning support workers, presence and the way that that co-work can happen. Is something to really think about that, that you're assessing throughout the term.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): Yeah, all really—I have, I have a lot to geek out about each of it. So I'm happy to talk about any. I'm just like, how, what is, how do we? But again, what this really means is that the structure that I'm proposing would—and many others have proposed—would support disabled dance learning.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): It doesn't fit inside the parameters of normative, traditional learning. So I think the question of like, what does it exist inside of or with is really one that needs to be thought of.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): I'm thinking a lot, too, about how, you know, why. Why, why am I interested in higher ed in dance? Like, why do I continue to return to this?
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And, you know, but we can really trace the ways that dance educators, all dance educators, tend to travel through higher education.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): So it seems that this is the place that forms what is valued as a standard in the field of dance.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): So if we can refuse that—right?—so if we can get in there and refuse some of those standards, then we can impact what the, what the quote-unquote standards in the field of dance are.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): So I think it's just like, I want to get in there to refuse, not to be with it. Right? Like, it does strike me as the site that most educators travel through and the ways that that impacts the field.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): And that if we can get disabled dancers teaching in there, if we can get disabled educators impacting that, it will impact the field.
Silva Laukkanen: Right. I so recognize this because I also feel like it's in the genres, like, you know, so many times I have had to say, "Oh, I didn’t fail in the mainstream dance." I never wanted to be in dance with disability because I failed in mainstream dance. This was a total choice, not a secondary option.
Silva Laukkanen: As a 20-year-old student in my BFA, that was my mindset. But there’s that hierarchy, like, so obviously in like little commons.
Silva Laukkanen: And the same thing, like where you teach, there is that huge hierarchy.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): It's really, really present. And I think if we're thinking through how to present this pedagogically, we need to think through—we need to trouble those hierarchies.
Silva Laukkanen: Right? Yeah.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): It's exciting. It's really exciting.
Silva Laukkanen: Yes, it’s exciting. I’m so excited to see folks like you in higher education. I think that it really gives me hope. It really, truly does because it’s time.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): It really is. It really is time.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): I'm thinking, too, of Cynthia Lee who—I’m forgetting the institution that she's at—but I’ve just been introduced to her work through a Dance Studies Association conference, but she is navigating experiences of long COVID and negotiating the way she is a professor in relationship to this.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): I'm thinking about Shada Café, who is also a professor and navigates her madness in relationship to higher education. So I think we’re beginning to make ourselves known in a way that is really, really challenging. But I think the more of us there are, the more confident we'll feel that we can advocate.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): Or the knowing of it.
Silva Laukkanen: Right. So, Elisabeth, my last question.
Silva Laukkanen: In 5, 10 years, with your PhD, where do you see yourself? What is your dream goal?
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): Yeah, I really would love to be with people building an accessible dance curriculum within higher education. I really, really would. And I imagine that this exists alongside my artistic, scholarly work.
Elisabeth Motley (She, Her): So I research and choreograph disability dance in ways that are non-normative and non-traditional. They don’t place me as the authority in the room. I work collaboratively. There are just a lot of people I want to learn alongside with. So I’d like to do this with some people. I imagine us building this dream space. And there are people that have been doing it, but I think it’s time for this to occur in the US as well.