Navigating close to the ground

with Eli Clare and Claire Cunningham

Eli Clare

In this session Claire Cunningham and Eli Clare discuss their experiences and their respective relationships to navigation and the ground. Claire focuses on an embodied and choreographic perspective, emphasizing crip techniques of navigation and their potential in dance. Eli, a writer and social justice educator, shares his insights on moving close to the ground, highlighting the intimacy and sensory aspects of his experiences. They explore the political and personal aspects of ground-based mobility, the impact of ableism, and the importance of resisting shame through shared narratives and performance. The session includes a reading from Eli's work and a clip from Claire's latest dance piece, "Songs of the Wayfarer."

 

Eli Clare is white, disabled and genderqueer and lives near Lake Champlain in unceded Abenaki territory (also known as Vermont) where he writes and proudly claims a penchant for rabble-rousing.

He has written two books of essays, the award-winning Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure and Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, and a collection of poetry, The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion. His next book, a mixed genre volume titled Unfurl, will be released in July, 2025. Additionally he has been published in dozens of journals and anthologies.

Eli works as a traveling poet, storyteller, and social justice educator. Since 2008, he has spoken, taught, trained, and consulted (both in-person and remotely) at well over 150 conferences, community events, and colleges across the United States and Canada.

He currently serves on the Community Advisory Board for the Disability Project at the Transgender Law Center and is also a Disability Futures Fellow (funded by the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation). Among other pursuits, he has walked across the United States for peace, coordinated a rape prevention program, and helped organize the first ever Queer Disability Conference. https://eliclare.com/