Inclusive Dance

Inclusive Dance is an ethnography of disabilityarts, and historiographic overview of the1980s when many new disability artsgroups came to fruition. Touchdown Dancewas the research 'ambition' of dancer StevePaxton and theatre maker and psychotherapist Anne Kilcoyne, involving visually impaired and sightedadults in Contact Improvisation - a dyadicmovement form requiring physicalcontact. Katy Dymoke took over Touchdown Dancein 1994 and refers here to archives, accountsand personal experience to share thelearning that has been shared over theyears to today. Touch and movement arevital for accessibility and inclusion andmodality specific approaches weredevised to ensure a democratic processtowards the inclusion of visually impairedpeople in a pro-touch activity. The continuum of movement based methodsfills the gaps in polarities of visual andnonvisual and a two-way membraneinterlinks all the participants in a bodyfocused learning experience. The mutablemembrane becomes a heuristic device forthe relational realm, a locus for debate,for change. Touch deprivation, exclusionand inequality are the consequence of aninaccessible visually dominant society. Three point of view chapters - from two visually impaired and one sighted company dancer - further describe the performance work,revealing how lives are changed and why socioculturalinclusion is imperative.