Expanding intersubjective awareness: the anthropology of kinaesthetic diversity Gili Hammer The Hebrew University of Jerusalem When people with widely diverse bodily characteristics collaborate in dancing together, an exploration and communication of movement and embodied knowledge takes place through dialogue and shared practice. Engagement in these activities develops participants’ awareness of and appreciation for kinaesthetic complexities and diverse embodiments, promoting an understanding of bodily difference as contributing to, rather than detracting from, the realm of physical arts and society as a whole. Based on fieldwork conducted in Israel and the United States with integrated dance projects bringing together people with and without disabilities, this article offers an ethnographic analysis that continues the anthropological endeavour of revealing the ways kinaesthetic knowledge (awareness and knowledge of the movement and spatial orientation of one’s body) is fostered. Introducing disability into movement theory, I offer an understanding of movement/stasis as a spectrum of ways of moving, looking at what happens when individuals who are different from one another engage in shared, critical reflection upon their movement practices. I just really want to push that boundary of physicality and human strength . . . to push non- disabled dancers’ sense of familiarity with their habitual movement. Marc, a 37-year-old disabled artistic director and choreographer, Interview with author, October 2014 1 The case study of integrated dance, an art form arising from the collaboration among dancers with and without disabilities, allows a mutual discussion to take place between ethnographers’ explorations of what and how dancers know (Parviainen 2002: 13), and disability studies’ critical examinations of embodiment (Garland-Thomson 2013: 925; Henderson & Ostrander 2008: 3): that is, individuals’ bodily way of being-in- the-world that both shapes and reflects cultural norms and ideas. In modern Western cultural imagery, dance is typically associated with ability, strength, and physical capital, while disability is associated with weakness, dependency, and lack of physical strength. Moreover, dance is traditionally identified with aesthetics, beauty, youth, and sexuality, while disability is identified with sickness, old age, death, and asexuality (Broyer 2017: 332; Cooper-Albright 2013: 287; Houston 2015: 37; Kuppers 2001: 26; Morris 2015: 143; Siebers 2010: 27). Thus, by bringing into a shared space two categories considered oppositional and in conflict with each other – dance and disability – integrated dance Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 00, 1-21 C  Royal Anthropological Institute 2020