February 7, 2025

Embraced Body was founded by artist and Disability Justice consultant India Harville in 2016.

Funded by the Mellon Foundation, How We Move is a dance intensive created for and by multiply marginalized Disabled artists from across North America; the program centers agency, multiplicity, interdependence, and creative power.

Bennington student Zen Spencer '27 has been selected for the program's inaugural cohort, which welcomes six artists in total and will include two virtual weekend gatherings, followed by a 10-day in-person intensive in New York City (June 2025), and culminating in a final virtual weekend. This hybrid gathering format intends to provide multiple access points to Disabled dance artists wishing to build and expand cross-disability community.  

"Zen is an amazing dancer, and it is our privilege to host her as a How We Move Artist," said India Harville, Executive Director of Embraced Body and How We Move Program Director. "Zen was selected because of her commitment to growing in multiple ways as an artist, equally emphasizing Disability aesthetics, technique, vulnerability, and authenticity. We were particularly struck by the way Zen challenges norms around beauty and ability through dance, incorporating unique and unexpected approaches to performance." 

Spencer is a multidisciplinary artist originally from Brooklyn, NY, and currently studying at Bennington College in Vermont, where she focuses on visual art and dance. Her work explores the intersections of movement, identity, and disability, using performance and visual mediums to tell stories that center Black female disability. Born with hemiplegic cerebral palsy, she has embraced her lived experience as an essential part of her creative voice.

Dancing since the age of three, Zen has cultivated a deep relationship with the body as both an expressive instrument and a site of complex meaning. Her choreography incorporates improvisation, emotional depth, and embodied storytelling. She draws inspiration from artists such as Mickalene Thomas, Wangechi Mutu, and Jerron Herman, finding resonance in their approaches to representation, abstraction, and disability aesthetics.

Her work is expansive and evolving. She’s currently working on Breakthrough, a multimedia dance piece incorporating stop-motion animation and digital art, which builds on her earlier works, Maiden Voyage and Trapped. These creations reflect her growth as an artist, each layering new skills while centering themes of self-realization and liberation. With kindness and openness as her guiding ethos, Zen seeks to foster community within her art practice. She envisions creating work that challenges narratives about disability and expands possibilities for artistic expression, both onstage and in visual form. Zen’s commitment to storytelling through movement and image positions her as an emerging artist with a unique, powerful voice.

Photo by Aiesha Turman.