Belonging in Dance, in Art, on this Planet

An Interview with How We Move cohort artist Assaleh Bibi

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT; PHOTOS BY WHITNEY BROWNE

Assaleh Bibi is a multidisciplinary artist and healing practitioner based on the sovereign lands of the Coast Salish Peoples in Canada. They were a 2025 cohort artist of How We Move, a program for multiply marginalized disabled artists to move together, collaborate, and build cross-disability community. Here, Assaleh reflects on the importance and rarity of cross-disability spaces like How We Move, how their own understanding of access has been transformed, and how they want to develop immersive sensory movement guided spaces, which they explored during the program.

This interview is part of a series on How We Move.

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What shaped you as a dance artist?

As a dance artist, I seek freedom of expression and movement. For me, dance is a continuous spiral of getting free from all the chains that seek to cage us. As a rainbow being, it’s important for me to be along a spectrum of expression beyond binaries and cages, similar to a rainbow. A lot of my artistic practice draws from cultural ancestry, activism, embodied dance, and is informed by a lot of relationships and mentorships, either from people who have many decades more time on earth than me, or Indigenous women and 2spirit friends who are native to this continent and do movement and theater work.

In terms of how I got into dance, when I was little I loved watching my family dance at parties. I watched a lot of dance on television, everything from South Asian Bollywood, vogue, hip hop, fly girls, and beyond. I was lucky growing up to witness in-person diasporic BIPOC break dancing cyphers and Coast Salish ceremonial dances. To witness the power of song and dance in unison infatuated me. I would have this unexplainable opening that would pierce in my chest, like a channel would open, and it would make me tear up, just by witnessing unified communal dance. I have this memory from when I was about four in a huge auditorium filled with refugees like me, and the whole auditorium was singing a poetic revolutionary song and a circle dance was happening onstage. I remember this feeling of being hit with an immense opening of my heart, lungs, and chest. It felt like a dam broke. I still feel that way as a witness and participant in dance and song, this emotional and spiritual release and opening.

I had never had traditional dance training or taken dance classes. It wasn’t until my early 30s that I applied for a BIPOC trans and queer mentorship on the other side of this continent that was taking place in a city near where my grandmother lived. At the time, my grandmother was in her late 90s, and I applied to create a dance ritual with her that would end sexual violation in our bloodline. At the time, I hated being watched while dancing; the gaze always felt exploitative. I felt shy and disconnected from my body when I was being witnessed. It was hard to stay in the pleasure of dance. I really wanted to take my power back and embody my pleasure, not just for me, but for all the people before me and after me who have been exploited or have been denied pleasure, erotic or otherwise. A lot of the three months with my grandma was spent watching soap operas and drinking tea. All my life, she expressed herself through her eyebrows and facial expressions. Her eyebrows would literally dance. That experience spending time with her was amazing and it was the first time I realized dance is medicine and can be activated with intuition and intention for healing.

The last day with my grandmother, after the show, she had a fall, and she decided she didn’t want to recover. She wanted to die. I ended up staying another three months for her last season on earth. A lot transpired in those six months of dancing for and with her. It was a beginning point in me unlearning exploitation of my body.

After that, I started taking classes with a Lebanese elder in dance that is similar to my ancestral dances, and having invitations to be in BIPOC creative dance spaces. All the spaces I danced in tended to be intergenerational, but not with an explicit disability justice framework.

A couple other things that inform me as an artist: I’m into multi-sensory performance and creation, like using audiovisual and tactile art forms with dance and theater. Because I come from cultural and communal spaces, the stage often trips me up, so I’m interested in breaking the fourth wall and having witnesses as participants.

I use trauma as a seed to find pathways that could be called healing. I’m obsessed with transformation and how one can take something horrific and have that inform what absolute pleasure and joy look and feel like, like what I explained, the ritual with my grandmother,

What was your experience of How We Move?

I’m still processing it and absorbing what happened. It was life changing. I’ve never been in a place that is dance centered and so resourced and nurturing around access. They really created an environment that brought us closer. There was such unity in our experiences as artists and dancers in dance places that are not accessible and that we have to contort to access. Many of us don’t even bother anymore. But How We Move was amazing. All the artists and their personal care attendants felt like a growing family vibe.

It was very New York-paced. It was an intensive. But within it there was a lot of spaciousness. I can’t be on a full-time schedule, but I felt like I didn’t miss too much if I needed to have a slow morning. I’m still processing it because it changed me on a cellular level. I don’t know how to go back to being in places without that level of access. It’s a little bittersweet knowing it’s possible. Cross-disability work is challenging because access needs can be in contradiction. There was a way that they were able to make space and something for everyone, and it didn’t have to be everything for everyone. It was like an ecosystem; everyone has their specific role that is necessary for the whole earth to flow.

Each of the participants taught a workshop, and when I was preparing for my workshop, I was really moved by a workshop I participated in by a friend of mine, Lindsay, from Kahnewake Mohawk Territories. She dances and teaches out West. She did a workshop in 2021 that impacted me. With her enthusiastic consent I adapted a similar workshop inspired by this experience. I facilitated a workshop that goes through various emerging and gradual prompts that invites participants to embody an animal and move and behave like it. The prompts invite participants to get to know the personality and specificity of the animal they’re embodying to encourage going beyond stereotypes of their creature. Then the animal dancers interact together and are curious about embodied forms of communication and consent. I felt influenced by this type of embodiment because my art is about shape shifting and dissolving binaries. It gets us to think about a different way of being in the world, getting to step out of who we are and curious about a different way of existing through movement and sound. I developed this workshop and did a trial run with a collective I’m part of and then realized what I actually wanted to do was different.

So I basically had two workshops. In the latter half of my time with the group, I tested this new thing I’m working on about dancing with the elements – water, fire, earth, air, and stars – and being immersed in each element through video, audio, and tactile. I tried out water. I wanted to hear back from disability peers in the early stages of this seed creation.

Why are programs like How We Move important?

They are so important because they offer blueprints and guideposts. I don’t know of much education or awareness about how to do cross-disability accessible dance, aside from or in addition to Embraced Body and the folks who have created How We Move. I don’t know how much it exists out there, especially culturally relevant for BIPOC artists. It takes a lot of work to learn. What’s important and needed are examples of how it can be done. We need accessible spaces, we need funding, and we need to be able to hold people while they are in these spaces.

At How We Move, I felt honored for who and how I am. There was no need for me to contort or feel excluded or suffer. If there were parts of it that weren’t for me, I was still happy they were there. I don’t need to belong everywhere, but I do belong in dance, and in movement, and in art, and on this planet. We need more of that – more belonging, more love, more listening, more witnessing, and more art.

Will your experience of How We Move impact your artistic practice going forward? If so, how?

It’s 100 percent changing my way of being in the world. I’m thinking more beyond my own access needs and thinking about others in a more relational way. Now I have people I can call up and ask what they think, and vice versa. There’s community to bounce ideas off of. It’s affected my self-esteem and boosted my confidence.

Before How We Move, I wouldn’t have expected anything from other artistic spaces. I would have taken risks around getting sick and brought extra supplies, like masks. Now I know I belong and deserve to feel safe. It’s okay for folks to ask not to be sick for six months. It’s changing what I want from myself and everybody else. How We Move set the bar so high.

What’s next for you? Do you have an upcoming project or focus you’d like to share more about?

I have some things I need to wrap up, including audio description on a cross-disability dance film. I have an upcoming artist retreat. I want to work on what was seeded in the immersive sensory movement guided space I led for How We Move. There will likely be some grant writing and new collaborations around that.

At How We Move was the first time I had resources for a personal care attendant. I’m excited to learn more about how having resources and support in my life will help me make more art and just live. I haven’t performed for more than a year because I’ve been so sick. But I performed during How We Move. When I have resources and support, I have capacity to participate and create more. Both my art and how I live are growing, percolating, and evolving.

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To learn more about How We Move, visit www.embracedbody.com/hwm.

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