Choreography Crippling and Disability Aesthetics: Cristina Morales’ "Easy Reading" and Diana Niepce’s "The Other Side of Dance"

peer-reviewed article

Alicja Müller

alicja.muller@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian University (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3490-1419

Abstract

The article analyses the tensions between disability aesthetics, as conceptualized by Tobin Siebers, and crip dance practices, as well as between integrated dance and crip choreography. Although disability aesthetics offers an important critical perspective on official art history, its attachment to the category of beauty limits its emancipatory potential. Crippling practices, on the other hand, radically transcend normative frameworks, celebrating disability as a source of alternative knowledge and political resistance. The proposed analysis of Diana Niepce’s performance The Other Side of Dance and Cristina Morales’ novel Easy Reading employs the methodology of crip reading and research in disability studies. The article aims to show how crip choreographies not only activate the critical potential of disability aesthetics, but also transcend it, destabilizing normative models of corporeality, expression, and productivity. The article clearly emphasizes that crip practices do not seek legitimization within the dominant aesthetic, but rather projects its own epistemologies based on the experience of disability, on disobedience and audacity.


Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Keywords:

Diana Niepce, Cristina Morales, disability aesthetics, choreography crippling

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Published
2026-06-16

Cited by

Müller, A. (2026) “Choreography Crippling and Disability Aesthetics: Cristina Morales’ "Easy Reading" and Diana Niepce’s ‘The Other Side of Dance’”, Pamiętnik Teatralny, 75(2), pp. 9–27. doi: 10.36744/pt.4462.

Authors

Alicja Müller 
alicja.muller@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3490-1419

Alicja Müllera researcher in dance and choreography, a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology of Literature and Cultural Studies at the Jagiellonian University, and editor of Didaskalia. Theatre Newspaper.



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