Inclusive Dance

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 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.