Dance festivals are sacred places. They bring dancers together from all over, they reconnect local dance communities, and they bring in instructors that would otherwise be challenging to study with. As a professional opportunity, they are invaluable sources of networking and professional development—photo shoots, performance recordings, costume shopping. They’re important to all levels of dancers, both emerging and established. All that to say, we all need and deserve to enjoy belly dance festivals.

Before accepting that I was disabled, I didn’t pay attention to a lot of the toxic ableist nonsense that permeates the belly dance community. And to be fair, this isn’t unique to us—I spent several years living in gym culture as a personal trainer and lifting weights, and much of this rhetoric exists there as well. And if you have any significant experience with belly dance communities, you know it shares a lot of connective tissue with other various alternative/holistic/etc “wellness” communities where this ableist rhetoric is embraced.

In my last blog about my back pain, I gave the full run-down on what I went through to get diagnosed and treated. You can refresh on that here. I had just had my first rhizotomy and was enjoying the freedom of movement I gained from it, thinking my problems were solved for the foreseeable future.