DanceAbility International is a dance company that trains inclusive dance teachers worldwide, as well as offering Youth Outreach and education programs, and performances. DanceAbility promotes contemporary dance performance that mixes able and disabled dancers in the same performances. This dance genre is often called "inclusive dance", "MixedAbility" or "physically integrated dance".
According to the Mission Statement of DanceAbility International, "The work of DanceAbility International helps decrease prejudice and misconceptions about diversity in the field of dance, and by extension in society". [1]
DanceAbility trains its dancers using improvisation techniques, mainly Contact Improvisation. This is "a forum in which able and disabled dancers learn to move together". [2] Alessi has described Contact Improvisation as a technique that evolved
from an experiment to a method with a very specific approach for any combination of people [...] At first, I thought inclusion was the issue, but the real problem for people with most kinds of disabilities is not inclusion but isolation. So we teach that every person can make movement and any part of a person’s body can express emotion—this form of dance is a heightened ability to communicate. It’s about not labeling, about creating language. [3]
Alessi has said that he was greatly influenced in his career by the experience of growing up with family members with disabilities: "I have three immediate relatives with disabilities—my mother was quadriplegic following a traffic accident when I was 7, my sister had polio, and my uncle had what I call 'unique mental capabilities'". Alessi was also influenced by the dance cultures of the various inner cities he was exposed to while moving often as a child. [3]
Dancers who have worked with DanceAbility include Alito Alessi, Emery Blackwell, Karen Nelson, Scott Smith, and Charlene Curtis. [2] Alessi launched DanceAbility with Karen Nelson in 1987, after reading an article about Contact Improvisation in Contact Quarterly dance and improvisation journal. DanceAbility began as a project of the Joint Forces Dance Company, giving a workshop on Contact Improvisation. DanceAbility became an international project beginning with workshops in Germany in 1991; teachers of inclusive and contemporary dance from several countries participated in DanceAbility gatherings annually during the early 1990s in Eugene, Oregon. [4]
In the early years of DanceAbility, the majority of inclusive dance teachers were self-taught. DanceAbility offered teacher certification in 1997. Teacher training remains one of its core projects. Teacher training is now given in several countries, including:
Following a major donation in 2007 from Marisa De Leon, founder of a school for children with disabilities in Montevideo, Uruguay, DanceAbility International has expanded into Latin America. Workshops have been held in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Puerto Madryn, São Paulo, and Montevideo. [4]
DanceAbility International has been the subject of three documentaries:
Alessi's writing on the topic of Contact Improvisation has appeared in Contact Quarterly dance journal, and in Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice—Dignity in Motion, edited by Naomi Jackson and Toni Shapiro-Phim. [5]
Alessi has performed with a partner in a wheelchair since 1995, exposing tens of thousands of children to physically integrated dance. Performances have been held in North, Central, and South America, Europe and Asia. [5]
Special education is the practice of educating students in a way that accommodates their individual differences, disabilities, and special needs. This involves the individually planned and systematically monitored arrangement of teaching procedures, adapted equipment and materials, and accessible settings. These interventions are designed to help individuals with special needs achieve a higher level of personal self-sufficiency and success in school and in their community, which may not be available if the student were only given access to a typical classroom education.
Contact improvisation is a form of improvised partner dancing that has been developing internationally since 1972. It involves the exploration of one's body in relationship to others by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness. It has evolved into a broad global community of social dancing around "jams" characterized by their welcoming attitude towards newcomers to dance, as well as seasoned practitioners, and is often found overlapping with ecstatic dance communities.
Inclusive design is a design process in which a product, service, or environment is designed to be usable for as many people as possible, particularly groups who are traditionally excluded from being able to use an interface or navigate an environment. Its focus is on fulfilling as many user needs as possible, not just as many users as possible. Historically, inclusive design has been linked to designing for people with physical disabilities, and accessibility is one of the key outcomes of inclusive design. However, rather than focusing on designing for disabilities, inclusive design is a methodology that considers many aspects of human diversity that could affect a person's ability to use a product, service, or environment, such as ability, language, culture, gender, and age. The Inclusive Design Research Center reframes disability as a mismatch between the needs of a user and the design of a product or system, emphasizing that disability can be experienced by any user. With this framing, it becomes clear that inclusive design is not limited to interfaces or technologies, but may also be applied to the design of policies and infrastructure.
Mainstreaming, in the context of education, is the practice of placing students with special education needs in a general education classroom during specific time periods based on their skills. This means students who are a part of the special education classroom will join the regular education classroom at certain times which are fitting for the special education student. These students may attend art or physical education in the regular education classrooms. Sometimes these students will attend math and science in a separate classroom, but attend English in a general education classroom. Schools that practice mainstreaming believe that students with special needs who cannot function in a general education classroom to a certain extent belong in the special education environment.
Inclusion in education refers to all students being able to access and gain equal opportunities to education and learning. It arose in the context of special education with an individualized education program or 504 plan, and is built on the notion that it is more effective for students with special needs to have the said mixed experience for them to be more successful in social interactions leading to further success in life. The philosophy behind the implementation of the inclusion model does not prioritize, but still provides for the utilization of special classrooms and special schools for the education of students with disabilities. Inclusive education models are brought into force by educational administrators with the intention of moving away from seclusion models of special education to the fullest extent practical, the idea being that it is to the social benefit of general education students and special education students alike, with the more able students serving as peer models and those less able serving as motivation for general education students to learn empathy.
AXIS Dance Company is a professional physically integrated contemporary dance company and dance education organization founded in 1987 and based in Oakland, California. It is one of the first contemporary dance companies in the world to consciously develop choreography that integrates dancers with and without physical disabilities. Their work has received nine Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and nine additional nominations for both their artistry and production values.
Disability in the arts is an aspect within various arts disciplines of inclusive practices involving disability. It manifests itself in the output and mission of some stage and modern dance performing-arts companies, and as the subject matter of individual works of art, such as the work of specific painters and those who draw.
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Contact Quarterly (CQ) is a contemporary dance magazine established in 1975, with a focus on improvisation and performance. In addition to its periodical publications, the magazine sponsors symposia, workshops, and other programmes to support of contemporary movement arts. It is recognized for its role in supporting the "contact improvisation" dance movement.
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Uma Tuli is an Indian social worker, educationist and the founder of Amar Jyoti Charitable Trust, a Delhi-based non-governmental organisation, working for the rehabilitation of physically disabled people. She was honoured by the Government of India, in 2012, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri.
Disability Studies in Education (DSE) is a field of academic study concerned with education research and practice related to disability. DSE scholars promote an understanding of disability from a social model of disability perspective to "challenge social, medical, and psychological models of disability as they relate to education". A DSE perspective situates disability within social and political context and is concerned with the civil and human rights of students with disabilities, including issues of equity, access, and inclusion in educational settings, curricula, and activities. DSE emerged as a part of the broader, interdisciplinary Disability Studies movement and as a critique of special education. Special education (SPED) in the United States emerged after the signing of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975, marking the shift in educational rights by explicitly making the refusal of educational access illegal. Over the past few decades, special education has grown into an established academic curriculum and program which aims to enhance individuals with disabilities’ performance by focusing on changing their given educational environments and the limitations placed on them to foster growth and opportunities. SPED aims to build a caring society that accepts and celebrates different abilities without stigmatizing individuals with disabilities. Through SPED, students should be able to engage in learning and have opportunities for growth through education each and every day. Though SPED has good intentions for creating learning opportunities for students, there is a constant tension between DSE and SPED, primarily around the idea that disability studies in education should be inclusive of students with and without disabilities in order to best foster awareness and understanding of disability studies. SPED lacks the challenge of the social model of disability which is seen in DSE.
Poper Scientific Stand Up is the first Latin American stand-up comedy group that is engaged in the popularization of science. It is an independent continuation of an early 2015 initiative by Diego Golombek, which was made in conjunction with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Tecnopolis and TECtv. The proposal was to invite university students and graduates of different science fields to participate in a Scientific Stand Up comedy course given by renowned humorist Diego Wainstein, for them to create monologues with scientific content. Using the Stand Up format as a resource, they speak about scientific topics to all age groups, whether they have previous knowledge or not, and they also talk about scientists as people and about the perception of science in society. The name "Poper" is a pun on the initials of "Popularización Entre Risas", and a tribute to Epistemologist Karl Popper.
Kitty Lunn is a ballet dancer, actor, disability activist, and founder of Infinity Dance Theater, a company that features performers with disabilities.
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