Seminar

CHAPTER VII – Accessibility, Disability, and Dramaturgy

This dramaturgical seminar will explore how accessibility tools can serve as artistic methods, focusing on Saša Asentić’s approach to the "aesthetics of access". Participants will learn from Asentić’s collaborative, disability-led work, which understands accessibility as a foundational material condition shaping a work's aesthetics. This approach incorporates accessibility and disability into the core of artistic creation, redefining time, form, and structure of artistic work, as well as transforming sociability and communication in public through performance. In doing so, it challenges traditional dramaturgy and invites us to envision practices free from ableist norms that often exclude disability from performing arts.

In the first part of the seminar, Asentić will present video, audio, photo, and written materials from his practice to provoke questions such as: how does visual accessibility both expand choreography and translate it into other media? What is the dramaturgical impact of vocal language translation and Crip time on dance? How do the poetics of sign language interpretation and performance function in dance? And what effects do captions have on narrative and dance expression? During this session, Asentić plans to engage dance artists Claire Cunningham and Elen Øyen in a conversation about the transformative potential of the aesthetics of access to fundamentally reshape the art form of dance.

In the second part, participants will engage in creative exercises and tasks to explore accessibility's relationship with dramaturgy. The exact examples and activities will depend on the number of participants and their access needs, ensuring an inclusive and adaptablesession.

Saša Asentić is a research fellow at the Art and Craft department with his research project on “Aesthetics of Access and Politics of Memory”.

Register for the seminar on the website of Dansens Hus: https://www.dansenshus.com/en/article/dramaturgiseminar-2025