A Dance with Walker and Broom
2024, Toronto
“QUIET PARADE” was a sensory-friendly parade that celebrated “accessibility and cross-disability solidarity.” For my float in the parade, I performed “A Dance with Walker and Broom” accompanied by performance artist James Knott.
For Quiet Parade I created an intervention and a performance.
The action of sweeping, as I walked with my walker, was my ‘float” in the Quiet Parade. I needed to negotiate a broom and my walker, to keep from falling, to find balance between the two. I was searching for the joy in the doing despite my disabling body. I wanted to celebrate the performance of sweeping, an act of maintenance, that is often invisible while in full sight.
I entered the parade as a hybrid creature, feathered and attached to a mobility device, a grounded bird no longer able to fly. I wanted to be the caretaker who walked behind and among, sweeping up the debris, the dust, the accumulations of human presence. I wanted to enter into the cleaning as a creative act.
“A Dance with Walker and Broom” was a play between the tools of daily survival, a dance between a broom and a walker and an evolving hybrid self.
Thanks to Churla Burla for costume design. Thanks to Clement Kent for photos, technical support and for helping make the inaccessible accessible.
QUIET PARADE took place at the University of Toronto Mississauga campus on Sept 18, 2024, starting at 1 pm at the Blackwood Gallery.
Initiated by Aislinn Thomas
Curated by Ellyn Walker
Commissioned by The Blackwood
