#ThisIsDance is Infinite Flow Dance’s 10-year anniversary campaign to challenge the status quo of disability inclusion being an afterthought and a box to check.
Dance is a universal language that belongs to everyone. Dance serves as a powerful medium for freedom, liberation, and reconnecting with our bodies.
16% of the global population (1.3 billion people) have a disability. Yet, disabled people are stigmatized and don’t have equal access to education, employment, recreation, and all other sectors of society.
What many people don’t know is that disability inclusion benefits everybody. Some of the world’s greatest inventions were originally designed for people with disabilities: the typewriter, touchscreen, email, and sliding doors.
However, disability inclusion is often viewed as an obligation, rather than an opportunity.
#ThisIsDance is Infinite Flow’s campaign to challenge this status quo of disability inclusion as an afterthought or a box to check.
We are using dance as a vehicle to advance disability inclusion everywhere: on stage, on screen, and in seats of power.
We launched #ThisIsDance Aug 4, 2025 with an innovative dance video: ENVISION - 350k+ views on Instagram in one week.
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Infinite Flow Dance is an award-winning Los Angeles-based professional dance company and nonprofit that employs disabled and nondisabled dancers with diverse identities, with a mission to advance disability inclusion, one dance at a time.
Since 2015, Infinite Flow has performed at over 350 events, from school assemblies to events at Apple, Microsoft, adidas, and Red Bull, and other brands. Infinite Flow’s dance videos have been viewed over 100 million times across social media, and we’ve been featured on NBC Today, Good Morning America, PBS, and other national and international media outlets.
Infinite Flow Dance was founded by Marisa Hamamoto, a spinal stroke survivor and late-diagnosed Autistic. Marisa recently became the first professional dancer named People Magazine's “Women Changing the World.”
Infinite Flow Dance is a robust social impact entity committed to radical inclusion, systems change, and producing transformational experiences. Infinite Flow Dance is available for performances, keynotes, panels, school assemblies, and accessibility & inclusion workshops, virtually and in person.
Here is a BTS Video of #ThisIsDance ENVISION.
I believe there is so much beauty in humans that doesn’t get seen or recognized enough, especially in disabled and unconventional bodies. Media and film shape how we see beauty, and too often, if you’re not tall, thin, and non-disabled, you’re seen as “less than.”
But what if we showed disabled people as beautiful because they are? What if disabled people became the source for creating new art that speaks to the soul?
ENVISION was first conceived before the pandemic as a bird’s-eye view piece with four wheelchair dancers. I brought the idea to longtime collaborator, genius movement designer and choreographer Phillip Chbeeb, who was already creating work from alternative vantage points. The pandemic delayed us, but when we came back, the vision expanded to nine dancers: four wheelchair users, four with nonapparent disabilities, and Natalie, a blind dancer, at the center.
Early on, Phillip and I imagined the formation as an eye, with Natalie as the pupil, the part that lets light in so we can see. Placing a blind dancer there flipped perception entirely. That “eye” concept evolved out of the final choreography, but the name ENVISION stuck.
Phillip’s choreography pushed the body into unconventional, sometimes uncomfortable shapes. It demanded trust, closeness, and a willingness to go beyond comfort zones.
Disability is often understood through different models.
Unpreferred models include the
- Medical Model: disability as an impairment that needs to be fixed
- Charity Model: disabled people as helpless recipients of charity
Preferred models include the
- Social Model: it’s the environment that disables
- Cultural Model: disability is an identity
I recently coined the Creative Model of Disability™: that disability inclusion sparks creativity and innovation.
Many revolutionary inventions began as disability solutions—the typewriter (for a blind woman to write privately), email (by a deaf engineer to communicate with his deaf wife), and the touchpad (by an engineer with carpal tunnel). For the past decade at Infinite Flow Dance, I’ve embraced this model, using inclusion as a driver for innovative art.
#ThisIsDance Envision is a true display of the Creative Model of Disability.
We all have insecurities about our bodies. But from a bird’s-eye view, what once seemed imperfect can become stunning. My hope is that ENVISION plants a seed: for audiences to take a moment, look at themselves and the world from a different vantage point, and see beauty, possibility, and creativity where they never imagined it.
Feature in the Los Angeles Times
