ROTATIONS is a collaborative movement practice centering  disabled wisdom and the process of access. Led by and  for intersectional, multidisciplinary dance artists,  ROTATIONS centers the knowledge and wisdoms of Mad,  Deaf/deaf/HoH, chronically ill, sick, and disabled dancers– cultivating the ways we create in our wholeness,  challenging dominant perceptions of dance-making, and  celebrating the ritual of being together through the  Internet. ROTATIONS is founded by queer, immigrant,  artists of color Pelenakeke Brown and Yo-Yo Lin. 

Covid-19 brought dominant life together on the Internet,  yet living and building community online is nothing new for  disabled folks. As the pandemic continues and cities  proceed with re-opening, chronically ill and disabled  wisdom continue to be further invisibilized. With ROTATIONS ,  we are committed to honoring and archiving the expertise  of our crip communities. 

ROTATIONS is in-motion, a process of turning, an energetic  cycle, an orbit of celestial bodies, a movement that circles  all of us. Led by and for intersectional, multidisciplinary  dance artists, ROTATIONS serves as a collaborative  movement practice in deepening and challenging our  understandings of artistry and access. ROTATIONS moves in cycles. Each cycle is a series of 8 movement classes  taught by different practicing, disabled dance artists. 

We work to honor the needs of all body-minds and  identities across disability, race, class, gender, sexuality,  and immigration status (among others) with nuance and  humility. Learning from our disability justice ancestors, we  understand access is and will always be an ongoing  process. We understand leadership belongs to those most  impacted. 

ROTATIONS acts as an exploratory online workshop space  where the priority is being together and learning from one  another. We seek to dismantle predominant notions of rigor, centering perspective-driven explorations, generative  aesthetics, and disability justice praxis. 

We aim to create a collective resource and living archive  of our teachings and learnings. All techniques and classes  will be open-source, accessible, and shared on the web at  rotations.dance. 

The project’s pilot served 118 disabled participants,  Zooming in from 7 countries (US, Canada, Aoterea (New  Zealand), Australia, Taiwan, Greece, Germany) for a series  of classes taught by 9 disabled movement-based artists  and coordinated by a core team of 4 disabled artists. All  materials are shared as an online resource for disabled  dance communities.