In a world designed for people six feet tall, dancer Leisa Prowd measures just three feet 10 inches.
She's spent a lifetime grappling with the idea that she doesn't fit in the world - or the world doesn't fit her.
Prowd, 56, tours internationally with dance companies in Europe, but has been returning to Melbourne periodically to develop an autobiographical solo show through a residency at Arts House.
The result, I Am (Not) This Body, has its world premiere on Wednesday, a story told using film, spoken word, dance, projection and sculptures.
"It's about my journey through life and how I ended up landing in my own skin basically," Prowd told AAP.
It's a universal story too, she said - finding your place in the world and experiencing self-doubt and even self-loathing are things everyone can relate to.
Everyday experiences that a person of average height would not even think about are a challenge for Prowd - even things like using an ATM.
If the coffee machines at 7-11 were just 10 centimetres lower, she would be able to make her own brew.
It's one of many situations in which she has to give up her independence and ask for help.
But at the same time, it leads to interesting interactions with strangers, she said.
Then there's finding clothes that fit.
"The world is made for the average-statured person," said Prowd.
"Everything you see in fashion, everything you see everywhere is made for whatever the average is."
In one scene Prowd performs in clothes that are too big for her, using scissors to cut away the excess fabric.
It's a statement that might mean different things to the audience but also a representation of what the dancer actually has to do to make her clothes fit.
You might expect Prowd to be frustrated by all this but most of the time, she isn't.
"I have rotten days where I go, 'Oh my gosh, I don't want to have to deal with that today'," she said.
"But most of the time, because I have been born into this body, this is my existence and if that's inconvenient, whatever."
At 117cm tall, Prowd can be descibed as short-statured or as having a form of dwarfism.
It's OK to use that term, she says, because people at least know what you're talking about.
But it's unacceptable if it's yelled from a car window, she added.
"People think nothing of yelling out insults in the streets," she said.
Hollywood actor Peter Dinklage, best known for his role as Tyrion Lannister on the television series Game of Thrones, once told the New York Times that dwarves were "still the butt of jokes".
"It's one of the last bastions of acceptable prejudice," he said.
Prowd agrees. Yet she has made a career as a performer and dancer over the past decade, and feels the discipline of dance is starting to embrace different bodies and ways of moving.
In workshops, she finds trained non-disabled dancers can gain insight into movement by watching dancers with disabilities move in their own innate styles.
It's an exchange that goes both ways, and as stigmas recede slowly, Prowse wants to bring audiences along for the ride.
Dance lovers are routinely blown away by seeing disabled and non-disabled dancers moving together onstage, she says.
"They've just been given a different way of looking at theatre and movement, and I hope that that's what I've done in my show."
I Am (Not) This Body by Leisa Prowd is on at the Arts House in North Melbourne from October 11-15 as part of Melbourne Fringe.
