Inclusive Dance by Katy Dymoke
Inclusive Dance is an ethnography of disability arts, and historiographic overview of the 1980s when many new disability arts groups came to fruition. Touchdown Dance was the research 'ambition' of dancer Steve Paxton and theatre maker and psychotherapist Anne Kilcoyne, involving visually impaired and sighted adults in Contact Improvisation - a dyadic movement form requiring physical contact. Katy Dymoke took over Touchdown Dance in 1994 and refers here to archives, accounts and personal experience to share the learning that has been shared over the years to today. Touch and movement are vital for accessibility and inclusion and modality specific approaches were devised to ensure a democratic process towards the inclusion of visually impaired people in a pro-touch activity. The continuum of movement based methods fills the gaps in polarities of visual and nonvisual and a two-way membrane interlinks all the participants in a body focused learning experience. The mutable membrane becomes a heuristic device for the relational realm, a locus for debate, for change. Touch deprivation, exclusion and inequality are the consequence of an inaccessible 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 sociocultural inclusion is imperative.
Within the broad sweep of dance histories, we can overlook the complexity of how truly innovative practices emergeThis is a wonderfully in-depth account of Dymoke’s journey and the network of people (Paxton, Kilcoyne et al.) and events that led to the formation of Touchdown Dance and its concomitant breakthrough in inclusive pedagogy and praxis (which reached far beyond work with blind dancers). In a post pandemic era, it is also a timely reminder of the importance of touch and of the responsibility and role of dancer as researcher to question, explore and extend the boundaries of what we are told is possible. -- Adam Benjamin
Katy Dymoke is a dancer, dance teacher, dance-movement psychotherapist, dance film maker, working with all ages and abilities, infants to elderly. Katy makes dance films, writes books and walks in nature.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781789388367 |
| ISBN 10 | 1789388368 |
| Title | Inclusive Dance |
| Author | Katy Dymoke |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Intellect Books |
| Year published | 2023-08-14 |
| Number of pages | 380 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |