Trans, visually-impaired, a survivor—with a burning awareness of the suffering others face—iele paloumpis is fostering a more inclusive dance world.
AMAYA DRESSLER • June 11, 2021
Image description: paloumpis smiles wide as the audience at Mark Morris Studios applauds. paloumpis wears an eyepatch over their left eye and a deep sea blue velvet smock. They hold Anatolian wooden playing spoons. Collaborator, Ogemdi Ude, and audience members are smiling in the background.
“I think I’m on a path,” iele paloumpis says of their most recent, albeit unexpected, creative endeavor: embroidery. A memento of paloumpis’s Greek heritage, embroidery connects generations through an ongoing history. The movements come naturally: “There is a cellular memory,” paloumpis says. And just as they've successfully reimagined dance for excluded identities, embroidery’s “guided, embodied experience,” they say, offers not only societal relief, but a mode of healing.
Image description: Cross stitch of a pomegranate fruit in magenta and gold threads on a turquoise background.
“My maternal line has a long history of epilepsy,” paloumpis explains. And overlooked by conventional medicine, “they necessarily sought out alternative methods.” paloumpis spent much of their childhood immersed in this trauma, witnessing how and when injury was not manifestly evident.
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paloumpis’s experience today is not altogether different. Trans and disabled, their body’s very existence is limited by numerous establishments: “It's complex; nothing is simple," paloumpis says. "Costuming should be ‘simple,’ but for trans people it's so complex.” paloumpis’s visual impairment has exacerbated that exclusion: “I would go to concerts, and I realized I was missing a lot. There were gaps in what was being made available to me.” Where dance’s institutions failed to accommodate, paloumpis’s creations turned inward. “I necessarily integrate my disability with choreography. It comes from necessity, to reckon with the things my body has lived through,” paloumpis says.
While their practices may stem from self-accomodation, we need only turn to the production of paloumpis’s “In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky” to witness their intuition, extending far beyond any singular self. “We’re creating under a disability-justice framework,” paloumpis says. “Incorporating vocalization, audio descriptions, consensual touch—the audience is not just ‘how’ but ‘why’ we’re creating.” By accommodating their distinctive needs, groups marginalized across multiple spectrums are gaining access to dance, many for the first time. “We’re yearning for representation. We were so often added to a piece as an afterthought, but now we’re making work where we’re centered, from the very moment we begin.”
Image description: paloumpis wears black-rimmed glasses, a blue collared shirt and a green necklace with tassels. They have dark brown hair and eyes, and their curly hair reaches their shoulders, swept to one side. Their skin is pale, and their pink lips form a closed-mouth smile for the camera. An antique lamp and wall-hanging quilt are in the background.
Teaching is similar. “I developed these techniques, because I needed them," paloumpis says. "I would attend certain classes and understand, ‘Okay, I know what not to do.’” Their classes are uniquely trauma-informed. “We discuss accessibility needs—what is required to take back an empowered sense of body, and that doesn’t look the same on every person,” paloumpis explains. For example, “closing your eyes while dancing can be soothing, but for others, it’s disorienting, inducing past trauma.”
Observing paloumpis’s work, you cannot help imagining a conversation amidst their ancestors—as if paloumpis were processing a trauma which, after generations, is on the verge of resolution. “Your deep sense of bodily knowledge exceeds conventional expertise," paloumpis says. "You know your body better than anyone else, so don’t let anyone make you doubt that.”
AMAYA DRESSLER
Amaya Dressler is a writer, filmmaker and former dancer residing in southern PA. For her work in film, she's received a student Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and an award for ‘best music video’ from NYU’s undergraduate film department. She will expand her editorial work next year at Princeton University.
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