Kym McDaniel

Kym McDaniel is an experimental filmmaker, choreographer, performer, curator, and educator. After suffering a head injury, Kym expanded her horizons from a performative dancer to filmmaker. She has an MFA in Cinematic Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an Advanced Certificate in Disability Studies from the City University of New York. She has screened her films in Cellular Cinema, Ann Arbor Film Festival, SlamDance, and the Society for Disabilities Conference. She has been a part of the film and dance departments at the  University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Binghamton University, University of Utah, and is now an Assistant Professor in Dance and Film Technologies at Ohio State University.

Kym has created many short films that explore themes of dance,choreography and disability. A few of her films include Invisible World,a story that doesn't have to do with me,Exit Strategies,and Press Play.

This interview was conducted via Zoom meeting on May 6, 2024 at 1:36 PST

Audrey: Ok, so, my first question is how did you get started in film?

Kym: I was a dancer and had a head injury while I was performing in my early 20s. And that injury is the origin story of my filmmaking practice, because I was in too much pain to dance or choreograph. A couple of instructors at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, where I was finishing my undergrad degree, encouraged me to think about film as a way to continue my creative practice, while being injured and disabled. I was just trying to figure out how to continue making work, because I was in too much pain to continue anything that had a really physical component, like dance or choreographing usually does. 

Audrey: How does your injury influence your filmmaking?

Kym: I think that when I applied to graduate school, I was in my mid-twenties—it also took me a very long time to graduate from undergrad, it took me 8 years, because I kept having to drop out due to injuries. So [I] talk about my head injury as the catalyst for a lot of things that have led me to where I am at in terms of my practice today. 

But I think that my story, in terms of disability and pain and injury, goes back way before that. I needed hip surgery, I needed a lot of different things due to overuse and dancing and chronic pain. So by the time I had this head injury, that was kind of like the final straw for my body. When I went into graduate school, I had been thinking about and dealing with pain for probably a good 20 years of my life. So I think that it informs my early works, like these Exit Strategy films, because I had kind of lost a lot of faith in the medical model of health and Western medicine. I had gotten pretty used to physical therapists getting tired of working with me, and tossing me aside when they felt they couldn’t help me anymore or they couldn’t fix me. 

And I had a team of neurologists and rheumatologists, I had a team of Western medicine doctors, who couldn’t really figure out what was “wrong” with me anymore, and yet I was still having a ton of pain. So I think that from there, I kind of had to ask myself: if I was going to stop pursuing a Western model of healing, or trying to think about healing, then what was I going to do? And there were things that I tried, like acupuncture, and things that were more kind of  Eastern-centered, more holistically-centered, but I think that my practice ended up being the answer to that question. I kind of turned it around on myself. Instead of looking outward for solutions, I started looking inward, and started trying to uncover things within myself that came out in my artmaking, that informed me about pain and how I dealt with pain, and maybe why pain was even there in some scenarios.

Audrey: Yeah, that’s a big step. I probably should have introduced myself beforehand, but the reason I am really interested in you and your works is that 7 years ago, I had a brain injury. I think I mentioned it in the initial email to you. So talking about all of these things like neurologists and PT, I can really relate to you on that level. It's very frustrating sometimes, especially if you are trying to do something. And I was also a gymnast for about 10 years, so looking at this through dancing, I can feel it for sure. That frustration— it sucks. I think it’s really interesting how your healing process is your filmmaking experience. Looking inward takes a big step. It took a while for me to look inward—it took a while to get that going.

Kym: Yeah, it was kind of like the last thing. You know, I had gone through all of the doctors and the therapists, and, at the end of the day, it was kind of like, ok right. The only thing that’s left, the only thing I haven’t tried, is turning inward and asking myself why. What was my role somehow in all of it?

Audrey: That’s great, that’s healing for sure. 

Kym: It took work.

Audrey:  So, how was your transition from being a dancer to becoming a filmmaker? I know you implement dance in your films as well, but how was that first transition of becoming somebody else?

Kym: Yeah, at first I was very resistant. It was very hard my first year of graduate school. I was in this MFA in cinematic arts, that was the title, and I think that there was this huge process of grief and loss for me, because I always wanted to be a dancer. I built my life around wanting to dance, and I have that as my career trajectory. So I think I was really angry that first year of graduate school, and just dealing with a lot of grief and feelings of loss, about  what I felt like I had to do to survive on some level. I was in graduate school for three years, and the first year was really  really hard. 

And then something just changed in the second year. It’s hard to know what exactly happened, but I think that I started realizing that I had value and worth outside of my body. Like the feedback, some of the feedback I was getting in graduate school—as a dancer, I relied so much on physical practice, like choreographing or movements, doing something physically on the stage. And then I totally needed to rethink how I was doing things as a filmmaker. 

It wasn’t just the body anymore, it was sound and animation, and it was images, and I started incorporating writing. I always thought of myself as a writer, but, when I was a dancer, I kind of let that fall to the side, because I was so interested in moving and dance. So I started incorporating my voice more in my practice, and I started writing, and I started doing voice overs. And that got a lot of very positive feedback. It seems like people were really interested in what I had to say, and that was shocking to me, because I  never felt that I was interesting. 

Basically, I thought that my movement was the most interesting thing I could offer as an artist, to be vulnerable and to express myself in different ways. And then to have that get fairly good feedback— I started realizing how toxic dance had been to me, like how pigeonholing myself into one medium, one thing, one type of art was really confining me. 

I was basing my whole self worth off of that, instead of being myself as a person, who is intelligent and thinking and can communicate in many different ways. I think that after I started realizing that, my experience as a filmmaker and in the program got much better and easier, because I started realizing that I was an artist, that I wasn’t just a dancer— that it was more nuanced than that. And I really loved that actually—that it was more complicated than that.

Audrey: Speaking of voiceovers, I have noticed that you use a lot of voiceovers in your films. One of my favorite clips that you shared with me was Invisible World because, as someone who doesn’t have a visible disability, I actually just did a video about visible disability for this class. I really liked what I heard from you, so I was wondering, what was that experience for you? I was listening to you and the doctor, and I thought: this is crazy! This cannot be something that is going on right now.

Kym: Yeah that happened a couple months after I moved to Utah. You know, this is a very conservative state, and I had gotten into the practice of recording doctors appointments a couple of years ago, when I had an appointment that felt… Yeah— I identify as being a woman, and I feel like, in a doctor’s office in particular, I feel very vulnerable. I think there’s a lot of things that go into showing up by yourself, as a young woman, as someone who identifies as having a non-visible disability, and so many doctors are not thinking about that. 

Like they are not thinking about  the intersection of  somebody’s identity and how that basically changes the way that you would treat them. So, yeah, I had an appointment a couple of years ago, where I realized I needed to start recording my doctor’s appointments. I just turn on the recorder. The last time I  had requested—I call them a crip pass— or an accessible parking pass, it wasn’t a problem at all. It wasn’t in Utah, it was in New York State.  Basically, I didn’t have to explain myself. 

The doctor was just like, “oh yeah.” And she just signed it and didn’t ask any questions. So I think there was a part of me that thought  this would be similarly easy like that, and then, at the last minute, I was like, why don’t I just record it? It’s just a voice memo on my phone, it doesn’t hurt to just record.

Audrey: It did really touch me listening to this doctor. I’ve never had that specifically happen to me, but I have had doctors be very confused and also cautious. Listening to that was really eye opening to me, as a person who still goes to doctor’s appointments like that. It was really interesting for me to watch that, and it felt really personal recording your doctor's appointments. When I got hurt, I was 15, so I had a parent accompanying me all the time. Now that I’m 23, I have to advocate for myself so there’s that transition. 

Kym: Yeah, it’s interesting, I feel like this sometimes— the recorder almost acts like a partner. So even though I am there by myself, the voice memo, the recorder acts as my companion in that situation. It’s a record of what happened, but it’s also there to support me. With film you can bend reality in some ways— so part of that film, for me, was like—I cried in the office after she left, but I did not actually cry in front of her. But I had kind of bent the narrative time. In my practice, I am interested in rewriting history in particular ways. 

It was true that I cried, but I did not cry in front of her, and I wish that I really did. I wished I said a lot of things, actually, to her. Yeah. Like I could have said a lot of things that were deserved. In the original recording, I spent a lot of time trying to defend myself to her. And I just decided to take all of that out, because I felt like I should not have needed to do that. So again, that was a way for me to rewrite the appointment in a particular way. Shine the light more on how ableist she is, and how I don’t need to defend myself. It was more about how messed up her way of dealing with it was. 

Audrey: I feel like I always feel like I need to explain myself, but I don’t need to. I’m getting to the point now where I don’t need to—you either get it or you don’t, and that’s just about it. Going off of that: for you, what does it mean to be a disabled filmmaker?

Kym: What a good question. I guess I can just talk about the project I am working on now, and how it’s informing how I am thinking about things lately. I think what I have been becoming more and more aware of  is the intersection between recyclable materials and disability. And so in a story that doesn’t have to do with me, there were  bright color flashes and broken technologies that was from a camera that had broken, but that still turned on and recorded. I first thought that, no, this camera is trash. But then I realized it could still work. 

When I pushed on the screen and held the camera in certain ways, the color would change and move. I got really excited about that. This was just a different way to work with this camera. And that was an extension of how I think about my own embodiment as a disabled person.  It’s like… it's not what I expected. It’s not how I thought my life would turn out. But it’s more creative, it’s surprising, it’s improvisational. Not what I expected, but that doesn’t mean that it’s broken; and that’s how I felt about that camera. 

With this installation I’m working on now, it’s going to  go up here in Utah, Salt Lake. I’m getting a ton of extension cords and power strips from all over Salt Lake, but I also had some shipped from Daytona Beach, Florida and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. [I’m going to] plug everything into one another, and then I’m going to have them snaking up and connecting in different ways. I'm also working with analog and VHS tapes and other kinds of technology. 

My inclination and desire to be using recyclable materials is also another way of repurposing materials and transforming their use. And to me that’s also an extension of my disability, and thinking about disability and disabled filmmaking and artistry. I’m repurposing my body in ways that people wouldn’t normally think it would be used. I can see how it’s being used differently [to make] something unique, creative, and surprising. When I talk about my methods as a disabled artist, I’m thinking about how I’m using my materials as an extension of my own embodiment. 

That’s just one layer of it. I think the second layer is collaborating with other disabled artists and dancers and friends. Having a collaborative practice where I’m working in community and in collaboration, making films with others who identify as disabled—I think that’s also another part of that practice. And I think in both of these things, there's a DIY sensibility in my work. It’s experimental, it’s independent, it’s continuing to think about innovating what we are doing. 

Audrey: Wow, that sounds really amazing and so interesting.The extension cord project seems really awesome. Going back to your earlier projects, I want to talk about Exit Strategies. Exit Strategies is a film that I genuinely liked watching. There is a full length version, but there are also 5 sections. What was your journey with these sections and what were you trying to convey with them?

Kym:As a dancer, I get really excited about movement still, whether I’m in the studio or behind the camera. When somebody’s moving, I get really excited by it, and I’m just filming the whole process, because I’m just excited thinking about it all happening before me. I think also, the thing I was learning while separated from dance while I was in grad school was that filmmakers who were not dancers had a different idea about what dance was than dancers, like formally trained dancers do.

That was really true of me when I entered graduate school, where I was thinking: this is dance, and this is not. I had really black-and-white ideas on what it was. But then I would show a film like Exit Strategies 2, where it's just this hand snaking around on the table this whole time. I would show this to my film friends, colleagues, and faculty, and they would be like, “oh, you made this because you are a dancer, it’s a dance film.” At first, I was like, “not really—you don’t know what dance is.” But I really loved seeing that other side of what it is not to be a dancer, but still engaging in and still thinking of it as dance. 

It goes back to your question about what does it mean to be disabled and making films. In Exit Strategies,  a lot of the works are shot from the top down, and a lot of it has to do with rearranging things—or just hands in the frame. For me, that was just the amount of dancing and choreography I could do at the time. A lot of it was just with my hands, and doing these very particular movements and gestures. Once I started realizing that I didn’t have to go up on a stage and kick my feet up in the air in order to be understood as a dancer…like there are people who just watch my hands move on a table and know that I have an understanding of the body in a way that dancers typically do. 

Dance is so much more expansive than traditional choreography or traditional dancing, and that was exciting to me. Like the excerpt I showed you: I was filming a couple of disabled dancers in New York. As much as I still really love people flipping, and people running around, and people doing really exciting things with their bodies all over the place, I find a lot of joy finding the most minimalistic thing that we can do here, and see that as a way of embodying dance. So I think moving between these extremes is when my practice seems exciting to me.

Audrey: I like the idea of these minimalist methods. Looking at the dancers, it was very minimalist, but it was still very beautiful to look at and captivating to watch.

Kym: Yeah I think so too. I did a collaboration with a disability activist, Petra Kuppers, and I was just filming using my phone. It was kind of an impromptu dance film. She had gathered people in New York and had asked me to do these little movement sketches that she had come up with. I was really thinking, over the last couple of years I’ve been in Utah, teaching this Screendance curriculum…looking at what is screendance,  where whoever is holding the camera can be dancing as much as the people in front of the camera is dancing. This could mean dancing through people, or shifting up and down. Even if I am not in front of the camera, it doesn’t mean I am not engaging somatically with people through movement.