Rachel is balancing on one leg, with arms floating overhead. She is wearing all back with bright orange socks. Photo by maura nguyễn donohue.

I am a visually impaired multidisciplinary artist-scholar based in Brooklyn, NY. I see life through one sighted eye. My work is an inquiry into the Disabled experience-aesthetic-identity, access as creative praxis, experimental audio description, and improvisation-based performance practices. I am interested in archiving and preserving the works of blind and visually impaired choreographers, past and present.

I received a BA and MFA in Dance from SUNY Buffalo State University and Temple University, respectively. Currently, I am PhD candidate in Dance at Texas Woman’s University with a research focus on the emergence of blindness in contemporary dance. I serve as the Advisor of Dance and Disability for the National Dance Education Organization, and was recently awarded as a Dance/NYC ‘Disability. Dance. Artistry.’ Dance and Social Justice Fellow (2023). I am on faculty in the Dance Department at Temple University, am an administrator for the Hunter College Dance Education programs, and serve as a Staff Writer and Editorial Board member for thINKingDANCE.  I founded and artistically direct RACHEL:dancers (spoken as Rachel and Dancers), a multi-modal dance performance company, as well as co-direct a collaborative performance arts project, Bashi Arts, with Enya-Kalia Jordan.

My artistic and scholarly work has been presented nationally and internationally. Some of my favorite venues include La MaMa Experimental Theater (2024), Dixon Place (2024), the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (2024), Movement Research (2022), the University of the West Indies Barbados (2018), the NDEO national conferences (2018, 2019, 2022, 2024), the Philadelphia Youth Dance Fest (2021), and more. I have worked with esteemed choreographers including Meriàn Soto, Heidi Latsky, Sidra Bell, Abdur-Rahim Jackson, Dr. S. Ama Wray, Awilda Sterling-Duprey, Carlos R.A. Jones, and as a principal dancer for Enya Kalia Creations, among others. 

I make dance about life through my eye. As a visually impaired choreographer, designer, and movement artist, I build performance worlds that advance the disability aesthetic and uplift accessibility and disability as creative praxis. My collaborative process is rooted in improvisation, postmodern and contemporary movement techniques, lived realities, vulnerability, and the joy of human connection.

At the center of my work, I uplift the Disabled body as a cultural site for embodied knowledge generation and aesthetic understanding. Using an interdisciplinary framework, I build performance worlds that are multi-sensory and explore traditional accessibility practices in experimental ways. My artistic work is interested in what aesthetic values and ‘senses’  emerge at the intersection of contemporary dance performance and Disabled ways of knowing. 
 
Choreographically, this work manifests as intimate, immersive, performance experiences that illuminate the joys of being together. Whether around the dining room table, lounging on the sofa, or indulging in something sweet at your local cafe, I illuminate the mundane as a means to uncover the extraordinary. In a process rooted in play, my work celebrates the ordinary, the unusual, and everything in between. I peer through the cracks of ‘difference’ to explore the connections of collective experience. What connects us? What disconnects us? What do we know, and how do we know it? What does it mean to be human? And, where do we meet?

Rachel wears an oversized pink t-shirt, cream cargo pants, and green socks. She carefully balances between two legs with feet in relevé as her arms float out to her sides. She finds her balance. Photo by Nir Arieli.

Rachel wears a white t-shirt and black pants with hands in the middle of gesturing. She smiles brightly and looks over her shoulder to a student out of frame. A list of community agreements is posted on the wall behind her. Photo by Stewart Villio.

My approach to dance education emerges as a practice of inquiry and embodied understanding. It is a process of both knowing and unknowing the world around us and ourselves. As a dance artist and educator, I guide students through this process at the intersection of theory and practice. Teaching students to move toward the unfamiliar, I center my philosophy on the pillars of collaboration and play. This educational practice does not consider accessibility and equity peripherally, but instead builds it into the roots of my pedagogy, disrupting traditional power dynamics to foster a true sense of community through which to learn. By honoring the experiences and knowledge each of my students walks into the classroom with, we create a collaborative space that activates students' openness to curiosity and exploration.

I encourage students to activate their agency within the dance classroom. As experts in their own right, students find meaning through collaborations with their peers and instructor(s) alike. This democratic approach seeks to dismantle racism and ableism in the dance classroom, valuing the lived and embodied experiences of those who share the space, and those who came before us. Through this approach, my goal is to guide students through embodied practices that connect them with the future, past, and present, and encourage them to build a practice of questioning into their own emerging processes. This student-centered approach underpins any class I teach, whether it be an undergraduate contemporary technique course, a graduate-level practicum course, creative movement with toddlers, or teaching non-dancers about simple somatic practices to improve their daily lives.

My commitment to this work intersects at all levels of my practice. As a member of the anti-racism and curriculum committees at the Hunter College Dance Department, I actively engage in equity-based work that manifests at all levels of the institution, beginning in the classroom and moving into administrative practices. In my research on the disability aesthetic in contemporary dance, I engage in a practice-as-research process which mirrors the playful and collaborative embodied approach I encourage my students to explore. At the core of my philosophy is that this work does not live in a silo. Rather, it seeps into the roots of every level of my work as a scholar, choreographer, and educator.

The success of this approach manifests tangibly through student feedback and career successes beyond the classroom. Regardless of course subject matter, historical understanding and practical experience remain central. Through this approach, students understand the context of the work they are engaging with, while also envisioning a new future for their dance practice and knowledge. It is at this juncture that student success and growth emerge.