Epileptic Dancer

The British arts council has given an epileptic dancer £14,000 towards a 24 hour performance which she hopes will induce a seizure on stage. Rita Marcolo has stopped taking medicine to regulated her condition and her dance performance is billed as a study of the “conceptual and physical interfaces between dance, movement and epilepsy”. “Epilepsy charities said that the event turned a much misunderstood condition into a freak show and warned of the potentially severe dangers of coming off epilepsy drugs. Marcalo said that she wanted to raise awareness of epilepsy as ‘an invisible disability’ and would use next month’s adults-only show at Bradford Playhouse to explore ‘my other identity as a disabled person’.”