Writing On this page you will find details of the dance book Making an Entrance, a list of published articles and the full text of five articles published in a variety of dance journals. Making an Entrance theory and practice for disabled and non disabled dancers by Adam Benjamin pub by Routledge. Includes 36 black and white photos. 

The first practical introduction to teaching dance with disabled and non disabled students, written by one of the leading practitioners in the field. A thought provoking and hugely enjoyable manual, essential reading for all those addressing difference through the medium of dance The book explores how improvisation can be better used to meet the evolving needs of dance education and includes over 50 exercises designed to stimulate and challenge students at all levels. The theoretical sections delves into the history of a 'dis-integrated' dance practice, placing it within the wider context of cultural and political change. The author also questions what is meant when we talk about 'inclusive' or 'integrated dance' - and what we might expect of it. Includes useful information on the practicalities of setting up workshops, covering issues of class size, the safety aspects of wheelchairs and the accessibility of dance spaces. Now a set book on numerous university courses across the UK. Reviews: 'This book revolutionizes perceptions of the dancer's body as well as dance itself'
Carrie Sandahl, Florida State University 'This is a path-breaking sourcebook and guide to the challenges and creative opportunities for integrated dance'
Carol Brown, University of Surrey To Order: By mail:
Taylor & Francis Customer Services,
ITPS,
Cheriton House,
North Way,
Andover,
Hampshire,
SP10 5BE T: +44 (0)1264 343071
F: +44 (0)1264 343005
Email: book.orders@tandf.co.uk Also available from amazon.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other Publications L'intelligence du corps published in Japanese by:
Aichi Arts Promotions Service, March 1999.
email: eri_karatsu@aac.pref.aichi.jp web: www.aac.pref.aichi.jp
the book looks at the work of Adam Benjamin and Wolfgang Stange

The Simpson Board a choreographic tool for students with profound physical disability. Simpson Board An Introduction to Community Dance Practice (Chapter 10) edited by Diane Amans Pub Palgrave Macmillan 2008 Dance Studies Reader 2nd Edition to be published by Routledge 2010 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Published Articles Articles in bold in the list are included on this page in full - scroll down below the list. article title publication issue The Contemplation of Space [Online] http://www.londondance.com/content.asp?CategoryID=2351 [2007] Building Dreams in Ethiopia Dance UK 49 Summer 2003 Beyond Difference　　　 THEATRE ART (Japan)　　 Vol 17 2002-2, Adam Benjamin Sotokoto Magazine(Japan)　　 Vol12 no.42Dec 2002 An Evolution in Practice　　 Animated　　 Summer 2002 Tshwaragano Dance Theatre Journal Vol17 no.1 Spring 2001 Le droit de mouvement CRHES (France) Collectif de Rechercher sur le Handicap et l’Education Spécialisée Spring 2000 Université Lyon 2 The Problem with Steps Animated Autumn 1999 What's the Problem? Dance Theatre Journal Spring 1999 Adam Benjamin is niet Dans no.8 (Holland) June　1998 geinteresseerd in invaliditeit New way of Dancing Nihon Keizai National Press Japan, 　　Winter 1997 African Diaries Animated Summer 1997 Levelling the Stage Animated Spring 1997 Physical Theatre and Physical Disability Total Theatre, Vol 8, No 4, Winter 1996/7 magazine for mime, physical theatre & visual performance La Compagnie CandoCo Marsyas No 39/40 Dec 1996 Revue de pedagogie musicale et choreographique Access to performance Spaces Access by Design Summer 1996 The Simpson Board Animated Autumn 1995 Danse et l’integration Presented at ‘Danse et Dissidence’　　at L’Opera, Lyon, France. Nov 1995 Unfound Movement Dance Theatre Journal Summer 1995 Vol 12. no.1 Access and Excellence. Forward Move Spring 1995 Flying in the Face of. Partnerships Magazine Autumn 1994 The Issue. Dance Matters ISSN 1351-3125 In Search of Integrity. Dance News Ireland Autumn 1994, Vol 7. No. 3 Able to Dance. Animated Spring 1994 In Search of Integrity. Dance Theatre Journal Autumn 1993 Vol 10, No 4 Loosing The Ties That Bind DICE Magazine, Issue 15　April 1991 Discontinued Dance Theatre Journal. Vol 17 No.1 Spring 2001 Tshwaragano By Adam Benjamin From the sky, the sheer reach of the African land mass stuns the uninitiated. Approaching Johannesburg the land below reads like a cubist patchwork. It is only as you fly lower that this strange terrain reveals itself. An endless spread of tiny houses, huts and lean-tos, a humanscape of over six million people, hanging like ragged skirts around the sparkling high rises of the city. A country that discloses itself cautiously to the outsider, South Africa is rarely what it first seems. The hills around Johannesburg are no such thing; they are unintentional and unglamorous monuments to the exploitation of those workers over the centuries who have dug into the earth and heaped up its guts in search for precious metal - a labour that has offered them little by way of reward but that has instead fueled the injustices of apartheid. Unlike virtually any other human metropolis of its size, the massive sprawl of Johannesburg has coalesced not around a coast line, river or trade route, but around gold. I was in South Africa as part of Britain and South Africa Dancing at the invitation of Gregory Nash (then at the British Council in the UK) and Nomsa Kupi Manaka his counterpart in South Africa. My path had crossed with Nomsa's in Dublin in 1994, when I had been joint director of CandoCo. Her desire to bring integrated work to South Africa was had been made all the more personal when, some years later, one of her sons became disabled in an accident. Nomsa and the dance consultant Jill Waterman brought together a vibrant group of thirty-four trainees from all across South Africa. Each was a leader or high achiever in some aspect of their lives, be it dance, disability awareness, sport or as teachers in the arts. This group was a mix of black, white and coloured, (1) people with and without disabilities. (2) The opening circle on the first day reminded me of the ties that are such a vital part of life in Africa. Each participant reiterated the sentiment 'I am here to learn and to take what I learn back to my community.' For the first two days the project was based entirely at the Dance Factory in Johannesburg where the trainees were introduced to the basics of integrated practice through set exercises and improvisations. Ideas and methods were introduced, usually demonstrated by my colleagues Tom Saint-Louis and Louise Katerega, before being handed over to the participants to adapt to their own bodies. Louise and Tom also led outreach programmes in schools in and around Soweto with small groups of trainees. This was a conscious decision which meant the children in the schools were able to see black teachers delivering the subject. It also proved an essential step in the development of the trainees themselves, confirming belief in their own abilities. For the disabled dancers, it was also a stage in developing their confidence alongside their non-disabled colleagues. All of which was not without its moments of humor. As one of the trainees put it 'At first I was intimidated by all the professional dancers, but quickly I realized we were all sinking in the same boat!.' (3) I needed little more information as to how the sessions went than the satisfied and smiling faces that rolled in off the bus after the first morning's visit. Each outreach visit was followed by feed-back and discussion, after which those who had stayed at the Dance Factory would show the work they had made that morning. These sessions were looked on not only as an opportunity to develop critical abilities but also to develop teaching and communication skills in what was a large group with diverse communication needs. The disabled and non-disabled people we met and worked with were powerful, talented young people working with minimal resources, all eager to learn and share. The connections we made will stay with us for a life time, as will the unintentional, sharp reminders that we were in a land divided by history. In a white neighborhood, I watched a solitary black student participating in a rhythmic gymnastics class. This talented youngster inhabited the periphery of the group, and although she received tuition from the teacher it was clear that she was an outsider, and was allowed to remain so. Despite this, here at least, I felt, one local girl was making her way on merit in this otherwise white enclave. It was only as the students left the gym that I overheard her confident American tones calling out to her father. This was not a township youngster, but one privileged by money - the new apartheid in South Africa. A performance by a youth group from Pretoria also left a lasting impression. I am never at ease with youth dance that promotes the most technically accomplished at the cost of other students. My belief that dance has greater lessons to teach than this was certainly one of the reasons I was invited to South Africa. It is clear that offering opportunities to talented youngsters to excel is important, but when the most talented youngster is a black student placed out of sight at the back of the group, the whole ethos of privilege becomes transparent in its ugliness. Rarely has a dance performance by a professional choreographer left me with such an acrid taste in my mouth. It is of course possible that this student was simply the most recent to join the group; the desire to place blame is a strong and sometimes misleading one. Another white teacher's work in the townships left us feeling so disturbed that we were virtually speechless by the end of class, a class that we had endorsed by our presence. My solitary applause was for the children who had performed, with gusto and spirit, material that was divisive and inappropriate on just about every level possible. (My black colleague had not been able to stay in the studio.) The question posed to me afterwards of 'whether it might be feasible to tie some arms onto one of the disabled boys so he could compete in ballroom competitions' was asked in all seriousness. We then went to see another an ‘all-white’ integrated dance group in a leafy suburb of Johannesburg. Speechless did not sum up my feelings when we discovered her all-white dancers performed under the name of Goose Steps a title that I feel sure Mel Brooks would have been proud to have come up with. A meeting with an English journalist living in Johannesburg, who allowed her guard dogs to prowl around us while we talked, left one of my black colleagues traumatized. Despite her repeated comments about how uncomfortable they made her, no attempt was made to remove them. Later in the safety of the car she explained that many who had grown up as students in Soweto had been savaged by dogs during the apartheid days, and as adults carry lasting fears. The same journalist expressed surprise in a later interview when I said that I thought the workshops touched deeply on racial issues and that this was part of their power here in South Africa, even though there was no explicit mention of race during the sessions. 'Oh', she assured me, 'that's all behind us!' (3) Somewhat taken aback by this response, I asked her if she did not consider a white man in a wheelchair approaching a group of black dancers touched on issues of power, race and equality? For me it was a moment that brought so many issues into sudden and startling focus, as I watched the dancers making new and entirely spontaneous responses, something that spurred a photographer to comment: 'This is like a metaphor for the new South Africa.' Elsewhere too the work was received with excitement and with genuine hope for the future. In The Star, a national paper, the journalist Adrienne Sichel wrote: 'Tshwaragano may not have the high profile of the Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre outreach projects. Yet in so many ways it outstrips those undeniably historic happenings. This is particularly true of its national networking reach and its already proven ability to trigger, like wildfire, a whole new era in developmental, community and professional dance.' (5) I saw talented black African dancers brought into white schools, not to teach their own dance skills or even contemporary or creative dance, but a watered down Euro-centric dance-in-education programme - as though indigenous dance had nothing to offer. In South Africa, black, white, Asians and coloureds continue to dance around each other in an improvisation of unrecognized slights, cautious alliances, tenderly offered guidance, unaccountable acts of forgiveness and long-awaited repatriations. The problems in the country are enough to paralyze thought, and make one question everything one sees and thinks. I know I have never felt so confused and uncertain of my position or my interpretation of events and still am wary of oversimplifying or writing about what I have experienced. I have a growing respect for those South Africans who, conscious of the past, daily seek ways to negotiate a peaceful and respectful path through the ethical minefield they find themselves in, while others seemingly heedless of the past, step with boots on the naked feet of those around them. At least in the studio and in our showings so far, we have let the work speak for itself and allowed those who come to see make their own interpretations. Perhaps, without proselytize or insisting, dance may provide some new visions and new possibilities in a country that, despite its complexities and overwhelming problems, seems yet to foster an undeniable optimism, joy and inspiration within its dancers(6). Adam Benjamin is a freelance dance artist and dance writer. His book on integrated dance practice ‘Making an Entrance’ will be published by Routledge later this year. 1 The South African term for people of mixed race, still commonly used as a cultural delineation. 2 'People with disabilities' is the term preferred by those we worked with in South Africa (as opposed to the term 'disabled people' favored in the UK). 3 Anecdote from Louise Katerega. 4 A few days later the story broke in the national press of the 1998 unofficial police training video of dogs being used to savage suspected immigrants. 5 Sichel, Adrienne. The Start. 4 October 2000. 6 Adam returned in Feb 2001 to make a piece for FNB Vita Dance Umbrella 2001. Dance Theatre Journal Laban Centre London Laurie Grove London SE14 6NH Tel: +44 (0)20 8692 4070 Fax: +44 (0)20 8694 8749 Email: I.Bramley@laban.co.uk Excerpts from an African Diary By Adam Benjamin In April 1997 I led the CandoCo Education Team led a one week residency in Senegal. The project was initiated by Handicap International and supported by the Ministère de la Culture in Senegal and The British Council. Friday. Arrival in Dakar The poverty hits you like a punch in the face. In the darkness on our first night we head out into the streets of Dakar. During the festival that has just passed the pavement in front of the nearby mosque has become temporary home to some of the most wretched people I have ever seen. Dreadful poverty and disability that we walk past as if in shock. There seems nothing to do or say. I think Tom's big heart will break. Sunday We are told that the project is to take place on Isle de Goreé.....once the centre of the slave trade across the Atlantic, and very probably the site where Tom's own family were transported from four hundred years ago. It is an exciting discovery rendered somewhat daunting on our first recci visit when we have to lift Tom plus wheelchair from dock-side to boat over three feet of open water. On Monday we will do the same but with five wheelchair users, two blind, and four deaf students. Goreé is a small island paradise a stone's throw from the madness of Dakar. Bright painted houses, old Portuguese architecture, wandering goats, fish being cooked on open grills and everywhere people and children eager to talk. The floors of Museé Historique where we are to work are stone or concrete of varying degrees of un-flatness. The Museé is a circular building of inter-connected rooms, each opening via a white wooden door onto the central courtyard. Above turquoise sky and drifting eagles. The building speaks dance. With no wooden floors available anywhere we agree to do a site-specific piece. Monday I arrange for all the students to meet on the key side in Dakar so boarding the ferry becomes part of our daily practice; teaching us more about trust than anything I can possibly organize in a studio! We all make it safely on board along with the daily shipment of vegetables, bread and assorted hardware needed by the islanders. Thus laden we head out on the first of our many crossings to Goreé. There is not a single smooth path or ramp on the island but we eventually all arrive at the museum. There follows an hysterical half hour of organizing who wants 'poisson' or 'viande' for lunch. It is an opportunity for me to see the difficulties that lie ahead as people try to communicate in French, English, Wolof, French sign, English sign.....and what do you mean "vegetarian!"? "Hands up if you want meat!" Shouts our coordinator in French, by the time this has been translated and signed, half the group are voting for fish...We have arrived in Africa and I begin to understand why the first dates of the project simply passed by and that we were indeed lucky to have made it before autumn. A great first day despite the difficulties of working in four inter-connected spaces, but with Tom, Lu, Katie and Deb all hard at it, the basics of 'leading and following' were eagerly absorbed and the afternoon sees the first duets arising from support and counter-balance work. Tuesday Though talented and athletic performers neither the disabled nor non-disabled students have any experience of contact work and we have to watch like hawks to make sure everything is safe. The blind students in particular have never been stretched and it is in this area that we have most to offer. Today's session ends with groups showing traveling sections over the bumpy courtyard...only one spill! The challenge now is to bring the students own dance style into the performance. Wednesday On the ferry I sit with Eugène, Aida and Papa Oumar Faye and they teach me how to sign some words I have written. "Seulement si je ne te tiens pas trop fort, tu peux retourner vers moi." Only if I do not hold you too strongly can you come back to me The words reflect a 'movement principle' that we have been working on but also speaks about our lives, about the fact that we will be leaving soon, about Tom and his extraordinary journey into dance and through dance to back to Africa. Later we teach it to the rest of the group. First translating into Wolof and then shaped in the hands of the two blind students Matar and Mar Sow. The piece is taking shape. The building itself suggests so many images. In the afternoon we begin working with the idea of 'leading and following' but using our hands to cover each other's eyes. Thus linked couples emerge from the doorways into the courtyard, they appear to be charged with meaning and significance. We discover that both Martar and Mar Sow are able to locate the doorways independent of guidance... I find myself calling to the others, to give them the time and space to make their own decisions about where and how they travel. They are both responding with a determination and resolution that is inspiring and full of dignity. Thursday We get Tom and his wheelchair up on the flat roof of the building for the first time. We approach the edge together until Tom gains confidence and makes his first solo traverse in his chair. It is an extraordinarily, moving moment as he passes for the first time high above the courtyard, framed by the intense blue sky. The cassette player arrives......it's eccentricities perhaps explained by its age and by the host of tiny creature that seem to be living inside it and who wander across the dials and panels like citizens of a miniature electronic metropolis. I point out as politely as I can that the machine is not going to be usable. Late afternoon, the piece is near completion. Sandwiches and cha are brought out and a few minutes later out come the djembes......within minutes the courtyard is alive with drumming and dancing. There is simply no barrier between the Senegalese and dance, no inhibitions to overcome, no false modesty, simply an un containable delight in life that erupts spontaneously at the slightest invitation. The disabled dancers spinning on their hands or balancing on sticks and crutches. Martar dances with white eyes open to the sky, skin glistening with sweat, arms raised, palms down, turning and stamping to the drums, dancing like and eagle. We decide to rename our quartet Seulement si je ne te tiens pas trop fort. and to retain the signing that we had introduced for the performance here when we return to England. Friday Last day. Hurrying in, a student strides out purposefully in the opposite direction. It is not until several minutes later that I stop, shocked by the realisation that the confident, upright figure was Mar Sow. In the afternoon the courtyard fills to overflowing with an estimated 150 spectators, from local shop keepers to local dignitaries. The show goes wonderfully. The mainly African crowd showers the performance with bursts of applause from beginning to end. The finale sees the courtyard alive with dancing, laughing people as the audience join in the final celebration. Coda Our departure is delayed by three days due to the vagaries of Air Afrique known locally as Air Peut-etre (Air Maybe.) In between fruitless visits to the airport we schedule a rehearsal at Ecoles Nationales des Artes in Dakar for our forthcoming performance in England. It is also a chance to say goodbye again to M Martin Lopy, the director and his excellent students. The school consists of one tiny studio with a concrete floor. In a corner I recognize a battered cassette player......it is the one I sent back, now in use again at the school.....it is their sole technical resource. A timely reminder of how much we take for granted and how far we sometimes stray from the true heart of dance. A heart that without doubt still resides in Africa. Our thanks and love to everyone involved in the project. This article, first published in the Summer 1997 edition of Animated magazine, is reproduced by kind permission of The Foundation for Community Dance: LCB Depot 31 Rutland Street Leicester LE1 1RE By email: info@communitydance.org.uk Published in Dance Theatre Journal. Summer 1995 Unfound Movement Integration in dance training, it's potential pitfalls and prizes. By Adam Benjamin Despite my resistance to the phrase 'integrated dance’, I have fallen into its usage as a short hand or recognizable term for describing dance that involves both disabled and non-disabled people. Interestingly 'integrated' is a word that is rarely used amongst the members of CandoCo, where we tend to view ourselves simply as a dance company. Ironically, a word that means complete and whole has come to be used a bit like a road sign warning the unsuspecting of the presence of wheelchairs. As I wrote when we applied for our first funding, the need to describe the company as integrated is a reflection of a society that is itself in many ways dis-integrated. However much we may dislike labels ‘integration’ ( bringing together the separate parts of a whole) continues to be something we need to understand on many levels. My hope is that this paper will throw some light on the relevance of integration in dance, why I believe it to be such an important development and how it is to be more fully accomplished As my interest has shifted towards dance provision in higher education, I have begun working with others in the field to develop an 'integrated dance degree'. Our aim is to provide students with physical disabilities and or sensory impairments a viable, accredited pathway through existing courses. This is to be accomplished through the range of techniques offered and the flexibility of departmental programming. The resulting degrees will be in Dance or the Performing Arts and not, it should be stressed, in a new hybrid, 'Integrated Dance', a development which would once again only serve to segregate disabled students. As dancers and dance teachers our medium is the body and our mode of appreciation, aesthetics. Put simply, our business is bodies; we more than anyone else define and redefine who and what is beautiful. This places those who challenge everyday prejudices about human physicality not in a separate and safely labeled category of their own, but somewhere very near the top of our philosophical agenda. Discussion that concern the body and aesthetics cannot proceed without an understanding of how we perceive, describe and treat different bodies culturally and politically. Why for example has one group of people with a particular body type been given the stage, whilst another has been denied access to the theatre, and indeed kept out of public sight altogether? Why is it acceptable in dance to represent every kind of human disability, be it emotional, intellectual or physical yet only through a perfectly shaped and trained body, whilst those portrayed may only perform within the de-valued aesthetic of the circus or side-show? What do each of these observations tell us about our own sensibilities and about the politics of aesthetics, a field some would lead us to believe should not be muddied by such considerations? The history, social and cultural treatment of the physically disabled may not yet appear on the curriculum of our dance schools, but on closer examination this subject may prove to be in no small part the shadow or flip-side of the history of Western dance. No matter how much we all dream of quite and isolated studios in which to work, dance does not take place in a vacuum. There is at times a particular magic that takes place in workshops when trained dancers - the elite of the body world - meet and dance with their disabled contemporaries. This is not to do with our current limited notions of 'therapy' but to do with the healing of a wider rift that stretches back over history and that effects us all. The word 'segregation' evokes images of walls and barriers but its origin refers to being deprived of touch. Whilst the disabled community have been kept behind closed doors, the non-disabled have lost touch with a corporeal vision grounded in reality, the search for ever more perfect and unnatural refinement in dance has led in the more extreme cases to a new disablement of dancers minds and bodies. If we are to talk of a new dance ecology then we ignore these issues at our peril, for if the word ecology demands anything of us it is the responsibility to review our connections with each other and our environment, and this includes the environments we choose to place each other within, and exclude each other from. I would argue that disabled dancers continues an evolution of thought and action that reaches back through the experimentations of X6, to the post-modern and modern dance pioneers. The first dancers to cast off their pointe shoes began an investigation not only into the way that dancers had been trained to move, but into the settings and structures, both physical and political, in which they worked. This questioning has seen a progression of generations of dancers reclaiming ownership of dance, and in the process reclaiming their personal voice as dance artists. It was within the context of this search for new meaning and relevance that 'found movement' was introduced into contemporary dance, a phrase coined by Yvonne Rainer to describe ordinary movement of everyday people, (the term often used to describe this movement was, interestingly, pedestrian ; a person traveling on foot.) The innovation resulting from the entry of disabled dancers into the still-exclusive world of professional dance, is in direct line with this progression of ideas. The unique body movement that is owned by the disabled dancer was not 'found' at the time, perhaps because it was still not visible (there was minimal access to the majority of public spaces). Had it been found, it could not have been imitated or used by trained dancers, for disabled dancers too have had to find and speak with their own, authentic voice. The struggle to find a language to describe this 'unfound' movement today, our awkwardness and hesitancy around using the right words is in itself an eloquent expression of progress into a new field. One that speaks of readjustments and ultimately of re-visioning. It is only through shaking off the philanthropic notions and activities that have surrounded dance and disability, and replacing them with clear and well argued dance theory, that we will begin to establish the rational for providing access and training opportunities. Clearly if students with disabilities are given access to libraries and lecture halls, the academic curriculum should be capable of providing them the same headaches and highs it currently pose non-disabled students and there is little doubt that new perspectives will be thrown on the usual range of subjects such as dance history, politics, anatomy, choreography, notation etc.(of this more later) But it is within the practical realm of the dance studio that most concern is expressed amongst teachers and lecturers. This concern is “What constitutes ‘technique’ for a student with a physical disability, and how do you assess it?” The emergence of this issue coincides with recent moves to review techniques and teaching practice throughout the profession and to ensure and encourage an all round 'healthier dancer'. This increasingly holistic approach to dance training might be expressed as follows; To know how our bodies work, to know and be comfortable with how they may differ and to know how they may (despite differences) be the vehicle for the fullest expression of what it means to be human. This is a vision of dance training and dance education that incorporates the integrated philosophy that holism, by its very definition must seek to embrace. There is little doubt that release work and contact improvisation provide the most appropriate and accessible techniques for teaching integrated groups. Both place high value on the individual student’s experience whilst supplying and promoting profound movement principles; both therefore allow learning to take place across a wide range of physicalities whilst valuing all equally. Assessments could be made accordingly based on individual development and achievement, and an ability to fulfill performance requirements. Auditioning and assessment were two areas that prompted much discussion at the recent Access and Excellence conference in Coventry and will be the subject of further research and reevaluation. Many students entering a degree course will already be experienced in contact or New Dance, having encountered them through community dance projects led by such companies as Ludus, Motion House and CandoCo. New Dance and Contact Improvisation in particular, however, should not be considered a general dance panacea for the disabled student entering higher education, nor always the most appropriate technique for teaching or refining performance skills. On the contrary, every student's needs must be assessed individually in order to determine from which dance techniques he or she would most benefit. In this respect, disabled students' requirements of their tutors are no different from their non-disabled counterparts. It may for example be entirely appropriate for a wheelchair user to attend ballet class in order to improve arm and hand usage or a Humphrey/Limon class to learn the value of breath and about fall and recovery in the upper body.. At the same time it is important that we do not handicap students with disabilities by sending them to classes where the technique or the teacher is ill equipped, simply to satisfy some external appearance of ‘integration’. Selective and intelligent use of technique can be extended still further by asking what additional approaches can be used to facilitate the progress of students with disabilities in their studies. When we looked at the achievements of Celeste Dandeker, David Toole and Jon French from CandoCo Dance Company for example, it is evident that they possess not only a unique mastery of their bodies, but in addition a range of performance skills through which they are able to translate this physicality into outstandingly successful performance. There will of course be disabled students who are fully committed and equipped to specialize in dance, and they should be given every assistance to do so. However it may be that placing a student within a Performing Arts course with the option of specializing or transferring to dance will provide a more engaging introduction to the performing arts, one that would provide a greater range of involvement than would be available through a straight dance degree. It is in this light that I believe consideration should be given to extending disabled students’ skills into the area of theatre and the performing arts as a whole. This will allow the opportunity to extend every performing skill ie., voice, mime, music and theatre - whilst using appropriate classes from the range of techniques and levels on offer in the dance department. This pathway became evident through the New Educational Fund research recently carried out by CandoCo with Hereward College, Coventry Centre for Performing Arts, and Bretton Hall. Acknowledging the dearth of accessible college buildings in the country, let alone courses, the aim of the project was to see how the existing resources of each of these organizations might collectively constitute the components of an integrated pathway in further and higher education. Rather than waiting for the first purpose-built campus and performing arts block, our intention was quite simply, in their absence to build a route ourselves. The initial pilot project in November 1994, led to a triangular relationship being established between the three colleges. Coventry Centre for the Performing Arts is now helping Hereward produce it's own BTEC ND in Performing Arts. Students who successfully complete this course will be able to audition for the BA (Hons) in Dance at Bretton Hall College of the University of Leeds. Until now the many highly talented disabled students we have worked with over the years have had no further avenue to pursue their interests or develop their skills. They have been participants, beneficiaries but ultimately captives of a community dance movement that has not recognized it's full educational imperative. Education means to lead out from . It is hard to imagine another field of dance or another section of the community where this function could be better used, or if ignored, more easily abused. Although it is possible for non-disabled students to study how to teach, help and care for people with disabilities through the medium of dance,there have as yet been no opportunities for the disabled and non-disabled to study and train together., as there have for example in the field of athletics. It is little wonder therefore that teachers graduating from such courses continue (albeit unintentionally) to reinforce attitudes of inequality, or that people with disabilities should, after their first dance session and the inevitable encounter bean-bags, parachute and squeezy foam balls, beat a dignified yet hasty retreat for the nearest door and become Olympic athletes. One of the reasons for CandoCo’s success and continuation is that it is a group jointly led by disabled and non-disabled dancers; it is not a project for ‘the disabled’ led by the able-bodied. Such leadership is not just about personality, but is a reflection of training and experience, it is access to this shared experience of studying and working together that will create the bed-rock for further development and future success. I am often asked what the prospects are, for disabled students following such a career path, when there is currently no guarantee of work even for the most talented students . To me this is a bit like asking why black students were given equal educational opportunities in the US South when no one was going to employ them when they graduated. It is a question of equipping young people with the tools to confront and change the future. In reality the arts are crying out for qualified, knowledgeable disabled practitioners, but in many instances are unable to find them. In all CandoCo’s travels teaching and performing throughout Europe, we rarely meet teachers who are themselves disabled. It is little wonder that students are reported to be achieving far above their usual levels when they are responding to examples set by disabled and non-disabled members of the company, all of whom share similarly high expectations. The shift in levels of perception that disabled students will bring, and the issues that they themselves will raise, will no doubt serve to stimulate changes within course structures. This is a natural and desirable function of any new student intake, and one that serves to promote changes within the institution itself. The passage of the first students through such courses will I think, be far from easy; they will likely feel ill-supported and ill-understood, and they will in all probability be right. A teacher at a college we were working at recently attempting to ask me how many of the company were disabled, suddenly caught sight of David behind me in his wheelchair, and from a promising start trailed off into "How many of your company are..um...have.........problems..?" My honest but rather unhelpful reply was "All of us." Problems there will be aplenty, both in establishing a common language and a meaningful dance practice, but only through the successful resolution of these problems will a pathway be secured for students and teachers to follow in the future. The role of CandoCo and other like-minded people working in the field will be to provide teaching input, INSET courses and support and encouragement to all those engaged on this shared exploration of dance. The change of a dance culture, takes place over time, and its influences, if real, permeate into society as a whole. The period of questioning and self-examination through which contemporary dance passed during the 60's and 70’s in Britain was seen by some as a necessary time of reevaluation, by others as a period of unforgivable self-indulgence leading to a dance culture that was irrelevant and inward-looking. Whatever the shortcomings of that period there can be no doubt that the potency which dance now has to reshape and re-vision our lives, owes much to those who were prepared to risk misunderstanding and even ridicule at that time. The early New Dance pioneers in this country met and worked in a space which physically excluded most disabled people. The studio that took up the mantle of X6, Chisenhale Dance Space, remains inaccessible to this day. Yet the exploratory and pioneering work of dancers at that time; Steve Paxton, Fergus Early, Emilyn Claid, to name but a few, has directly and indirectly, twenty years hence, led to the studio doors of our schools and colleges opening to those who could not before have even dreamed of gaining access. There are those concerned with the future development of professional dance in Britain who may still consider the issue of disability as remote and irrelevant, one that has no bearing on the 'high art' aesthetic. Perhaps it is worth remembering that two of the central British 'high art' choreographers today, Siobhan Davies and Richard Alston, were paint -dabbling experimentalists in the 60's and 70's. Both were part of an avante garde where contradictions were willingly embraced and uncertainties explored.... and if (and there currently seems some doubt) we are to achieve similar choreographic accomplishment in the future, then the unknown and the untried must once again be allowed to rub shoulders with established techniques and tested formulae, as it once did in the London School of Contemporary Dance under the patronage of Robin Howard. LCDT were not at any time prior to their dismantling accused of not being good enough dancers, quite the contrary (as their Olivier Award in 1994 proved. What they seemed to have lost was a lack of artistic direction. A lack of that excitement and expectation that comes from the meeting of new ideas. To quote Chris de Marigny from an article he wrote in 1993 in Ballett International. "It seems that the real excitement and energy is coming from the very edges of dance while the mainstream is struggling to reinvent itself in Great Britain." The entry of disabled students into the most exclusive world of dance raises issues of aesthetics, politics, personality, sexuality -- the list is endless and and on every level contested. The ground for new creativity and the potential for learning that this brings is therefore both profound and exciting. This a subject that has an extraordinary history, one which continues to affect us all today, the lessons we learn, therefore will be more than academic; they will have an impact not only on dance as an art form, but on the way we perceive, treat and respect each other on as human beings. Surely this, in the end is the test of a vital, effective and truly contemporary art form. Adam Benjamin @March 1995 First presented at Access and Excellence Conference - March 95 Published in abridged form in Dance Theatre Journal. Summer 1995 First published in Dance Theatre Journal Vol 10, No 4, Autumn 1993 IN SEARCH OF INTEGRITY By Adam Benjamin “We offer places to students without prejudice”. “ Unfortunately our premises are not accessible for people with severe physical disabilities” As this situation exists virtually throughout the country, it is no great surprise to discover that most schools “have never had an application from a disabled person, let alone anyone who uses a wheelchair.” It would have been inconceivable two years ago to think that CandoCo, a dance company of five able bodied dancers and three dancers with physical disabilities, would have opened Dance 93 at the Nottingham Playhouse and the Spring Loaded festival at The Queen Elizabeth Hall, having picked up a Time Out award en route as well as being selected for Dance for Camera. The company in 1991 was a small experimental dance class meeting once a week at the Mike Heaffey centre in Stanmore. It begs the question “Why should the company’s work have been so readily and enthusiastically recognized by both audiences and the dance community alike, and why, if the work of the company is being taken seriously, is there not better provision for dancers, able bodied and disabled, to train together?” Through Celeste Dandeker’s training at London Contemporary Dance Theatre and my own training in the visual arts, we shared a belief that if we were to produce work for performance it should meet the same criteria that we would demand of any other contemporary company, given that all choreography works within limitations and that we were to explore and maximize the potential interactions of dancers, ambulant and non ambulant, with and without wheelchairs. This formed the explorative material of all our early work in the class. “Given this limitation, where are your strengths? How can you connect? What can you do?” These were the questions we asked each other and which lead to the name Celeste eventually chose for the company.......Can-do-Co.....a company based on our individual and collective abilities. Our greatest desire was to avoid the kind of responses we had seen when attending performances of some integrated groups where, on the basis of what we had seen on the stage, the audience seemed to be applauding the disabled rather than the work produced. The belief that dance might embrace more than just the highly trained and super fit is not new; Wolfgang Stange and Amici, Fergus Early and Green Candle, Common Ground (to name but a few.) have preceded us making inroads into dance provision in the community, and creating dance performance with and for those with disabilities. What was evident from our contact with these groups was that they had each defined and were continuing to evolve their own particular approach to teaching and performing, and it was clear that we too would have to discover and elaborate our own style and ethos. The early experimental work, and the work in the class was strongly influenced by the respect all of us have for Celeste’s experience as a dancer with LCDT, and as a woman whose life was changed through the effects of spinal injury. Her ability to challenge herself and others through her re-involvement in dance engaged my own delight in teaching and conveying ideas through words. It was this combination that took us teaching and leading workshops across the UK during the whole of 1992. The company’s work has touched many people who have not previously been interested, or even seen dance before.....it has, it should also be noted, left some more formal dance critics cold, and indeed we continue to tread this deliciously uncertain ground between innovation and offense. Just as Celeste has had to re- find her own dance so too the company has begun to redefine dance itself and is demanding a new language and appraisal of language to accompany that process. We are for example still constantly asked if we “Do dance workshops for the disabled” Dancing with the company and in workshops has always been as enjoyable and meaningful to the able bodied dancers as it has been for those with disabilities, for two graduating students who joined workshops in Leeds and Leicester, it proved to be a pivotal experience; Sue Smith and Kuldip Singh-Barmi, both from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance now perform with the company. Being brought in to teach this kind of hybrid ‘disability dance’ to groups solely of disabled students was not a true reflection of our experience as a group of artists nor did it do anything to dispel the kind of institutionalization against which we were so firmly set. It was not long before we instituted a policy of encouraging venues to ensure places for both disabled students and non-disabled students. Non-disabled participants are often surprised at how much they are pushed physically and mentally in these workshops, and it is just this element that is so sadly missing in the ‘caring’ environments generated around disability dance and which allies it forever with dance therapy rather than with the performing arts. (Dance therapists know that excessive ‘caring’ amounts to the stifling of the clients creativity and growth). We are fortunate to have very talented disabled dancers in the company, this is unusual and will remain so until real training opportunities are provided for students with disabilities, and until the young disabled are a) given inspiring examples to emulate and b) given the right encouragement from an early age to develop their skills. The fear that performing arts (particularly dance) courses will have to be reduced to the slowest common denominator (a fear born out of ignorance and an absence of good teaching practice) is one of the major factors outside of accessibility that operates against disabled students . Producing work that reinforces this notion is one of the greatest disservices that is continually perpetrated by well meaning people in the arts and education.... it is just this issue that we aim to address through our performance work. We have seen work for example in which highly trained dancers ‘dance circles round’ those with disabilities who share the stage but little else, in which there has been no real attempt on the part of the choreographer to enable the performers to communicate with each other and it is then this gulf, this shared inability which is communicated to the audience. Worst still, dances in which trained, non-disabled dancers drift about inconsequentially, as if embarrassed by their own skills, used instead, merely to ferry about the bemused occupants of wheelchairs. This kind of work will never succeed in motivating theatre or school administrators to make the changes necessary to accommodate disabled performers; those who clap enthusiastically at the end of such productions only serve to blur the issues. It is literally a starting point for us that anyone can participate, enjoy and learn from the activity of dance, and gain confidence from the opportunity to perform through community and educational projects...but that the professional performer requires training, discipline, determination and above all .... talent. To suffice with less is to patronize and eventually hinder the real and lasting involvement of artists with disabilities in the performing arts. All the above however remains entirely academic until there is the will to translate the equality of opportunity which exists in the policies of all schools and colleges into a practical reality. This means actively pursuing funding to convert and design new buildings rather than relying on the fact that no one in a wheelchair is ever going to make it into the building for an interview. The arts, including dance, we are constantly being reminded, are in crisis. Mainstream dance we are told (and often witness) is losing its way. Art therapy, Drama therapy and Dance therapy seem however to be undergoing a renaissance perhaps because they are returning to their roots; the role of the arts after all, is to allow into our lives and into society those vital yet non rational parts of what it means to be fully alive, fully human. In this sense the arts are all about making us whole; allowing us access to our gods and our demons, our capacity to rejoice and celebrate, to experiment and destroy, to express our fears and of course our visions. If however, we have separated art therapy from art, drama therapy from drama and dance therapy from dance then there can be little wonder that the mainstream is in crisis for it implies that art, drama and dance have been alleviated of their requirement to heal or make whole. (Wholeness emphasizes the expression of all that it means to be human.) And that the arts the rest of us enjoy are at best entertainment, at worst distractions that the government may chose to fund or not.... unrelated to the health and well being of society. Before continuing, I need to acknowledge the specific and non theatrical role of the above therapies in which a healing and usually confidential relationship is established, and make it clear that I am not suggesting the therapeutic process be transported to the stage, but that the arts reclaim their ability to heal, to move, and to make us whole. Despite opening the Dance 93 festival at the Nottingham Playhouse the CandoCo entry in the Dance 93 brochure was in the back under ‘Disability Dance’. The other one assumes, ‘proper’ contemporary companies being listed together at the front. This is not to detract from disability arts but to say quite clearly that CandoCo is not producing work specifically about disability. Our focus is, and always has been - how do we, as a group of tremendously different people living in society, produce dances together? Our focus is on the dialogue necessary to create compelling performance. We are at times asked “ Why is it you Adam, a non-disabled (white) man, who does most of the teaching? Wouldn’t it be more empowering for Celeste, a disabled woman to be leading?” Celeste of course leads in many other ways, particularly through her performance work, and unseen to many, through her administration and direction of the company. I teach workshops because that is where my skills lie and our responsibility when leading workshops is to teach well and informatively and not to demonstrate how “right on” we are. It is an ailment that besets integrated projects, that so much time is spent demonstrating an awareness of everyone’s special needs and tip-toeing around the mine field of politically correct terminology that no work of any note is actually produced.... again it is important to be clear whether the focus is on producing work or resolving/exploring issues on disability. In reality these two things go hand in hand, but in practice, and without clear direction, it is easy for work to be produced that has more in common with the Social Services than anything arising from the world of contemporary art or dance. I recently ejected two young people from a workshop, not because of their learning difficulties, but because, to use common parlance, they were at the time behaving like a “pair of little shits.” Some of the other workshop leaders on hearing of this, were surprised that I had effectively refused to work with these two difficult young men, and confessed that they thought , because it was a workshop for people with disabilities that they had to work with everyone; seeing it as some kind of failure if they didn’t manage this particular minor miracle. In the group I was leading there were also three visually impaired participants who needed to be able to hear what was being said and who weren’t able to because of the constant interruptions. As these three had made a choice to be in the workshop and the two young men had simply been brought along, I made a decision to send them back to the course organizers so that I could facilitate the learning of those who had chosen to take part. Integrated workshops are a nonsense without this sense of focus and shared pursuit. They are not about massing groups of people with disabilities together; this ironically is segregation. They are at there best when all involved have chosen to explore the central integrating theme or subject, without this shared sense of participation, the unifying principle becomes disability. Without choice, without the discriminative ability to chose to participate, the medium crosses so deeply into the realm of therapy that I would feel very uneasy about the use of such work for the stage. Using dance as a medium to enable an individual to ‘perform’ better in their life and to experience new avenues of creativity and growth is different to using dance as a means of presenting performance on stage. Dance itself refuses to be so neatly categorised, but for those of us who teach, such distinctions may at times help to make sense of dance projects rendered chaotic by the indiscriminate use of the principle of integration. In time, through our educational work we will produce teachers, performers and choreographers, some with disabilities some without. The one thing these people will have in common is that they will feel that it is entirely natural to work together. They will be able to learn from each other and train on courses that have opened up precisely because we were clear that although attitudes need to change, standards in performance, teaching and choreography must if anything rise to meet this emergent movement in the performing arts. Thrusting people with disabilities into dance teaching roles in the community without such preparation is a cosmetic act that should not be confused with real changes in dance education. This means we cannot allow ourselves to be satisfied with community provision, no matter how good, if it side tracks us from the job of providing full-time courses where choreography, accessible technique, teaching skills, dance politics, anatomy, etc are taught; in other words, all the subjects necessary to equip students with disabilities to the same standard as the dance animateurs already working in the field. There is no reason why one of the great choreographers of the future should not be someone with a severe physical disability, as long as they are given the opportunity to study and experiment and as long as the educational establishments take their wish to study seriously. This may require a degree of listening and integration on the part of the FE colleges and universities that they are not yet prepared for . Were they to rise to meet this challenge it might result in choreography as astonishing to the dance world as Christopher Nolan’s poetry and prose was to the literary world. Teachers who are unprepared/untrained for the demands of teaching across a range of physical abilities (Or more likely constrained by the demands of the national curriculum.) may see it as some kind of imposed moralism that dictates that they should ‘integrate’ their classes. Sometimes if one scratches the surface of these mild protestations one uncovers the attitude, that when all is said and done, this act of integration is after all to help those in need because, yes, everyone deserves equal opportunities, but wont we, the teachers of able bodied students be better off if we could continue unimpeded and leave Special Needs to mop up the rest? Time and again one sees the use, or misuse of this word ‘integration” to describe a group or activity that has opened itself up to include disabled people. To integrate a group of people in this way of course implies a norm into which they need to be fitted. If however, you’re using that word, integrate, from the Latin integratus, it forces you to acknowledge that they are already an integral part of the whole, even if you haven’t found them a place yet. It also forces you to reassess that norm because although it may have felt like ‘normality’, it evidently wasn’t as a vital constituent part was missing. Thus the norm lacked integrity, from the Latin integratas, the condition of having no part or element taken away or wanting. There can still be found a self congratulatory element in some of those institutions that are making themselves accessible, responding to a new moral climate, responding to changes in planning provision, responding to funding initiatives, but how many are responding to the desire to make themselves whole, to make themselves complete? How many administrators have this vision when they install their first ramp or their first accessible loo? Even with these changes made, attitudes are often slower to alter, and may be revealed in the most unlikely places. In promoting the alterations at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, where the auditorium, bars and box office have all been made accessible, a delightful photo in the April issue of Equity shows Equity Council member Frederick Pyne, Sue Timothy from the London Arts Disablement group and Sue Brown from the London Borough Grants Unit “joining” Priscilla Meredith, former Equity organizer ( and wheel chair user) as she “tries out the new disabled facilities”. All four are pictured smiling nervously in the WC with Priscilla washing her hands at the sink. Obviously the developments at the theatre are excellent, particularly those plans (yet to be realized) to improve backstage access for performers. Yes loos are important, but with all these new changes to the theatre, why chose to photograph these people in the toilet? There is sometimes a feeling that in the rush to support and promote the company’s work that funding bodies, arts administrators and particularly journalists are quick to disregard the contributions of the able bodied people involved. This is galling to all who share in the company’s work, not only because of the very real contributions of the able-bodied dancers but also because it aligns us with a ‘faction’, disability arts or disabled dance or this new all purpose category ‘integrated dance’, all of which categorizations we are uneasy with, wishing instead to maintain our identity as a group of artists and our integrity as individuals, able-bodied and disabled. If contemporary arts and contemporary dance in particular is to reflect contemporary society, it must , just as it did when black dancers first appeared on stage in this country, open it’s doors and its eyes to perceive beauty and worth where it had hither-to been unable. If it fails to do this, it will in a sad and blissfully ignorant way, be continuing to support an apartheid as ugly in its fashion as any this country has ever known. Integration then is to do with integrity, of being not compromised and yet being included. It does not , leave us in the position of saying that every dance company that seeks to be whole and entire must therefore include a dancer with a disability,any more than it must include a black, a gay or a Jewish dancer. What it does mean is that our perceptions of who can dance/study/work/live together may and must always be stretched. The need to describe the company as integrated is a reflection that we live in a society that has grown accustomed to an inherent dislocation, in which the arts have been disassociated from people and people from each other . I sometimes think when I watch the company perform and see an audience respond, that we have not so much added a new element to contemporary dance as much as we have inadvertently reinvented folk dance. Certainly our language is inherited from contemporary and new dance vocabulary, but our dances are accessible to all those who enter the theatre; no one is left sitting on the side. This is contemporary dance given back to folk, to society, to people, and danced with integrity. From an article published in DICE magazine issue 15 April 1991 Loosing the ties that bind. Who's Integrating Who? by Adam Benjamin The short vertical is weak and in need; it cannot stand alone as a sign or a letter but it helps other letters come into being.... Thus that which began as weak and in need, ends by providing support for others... I call it the "helping hand". Joel Rosenberg, Scribal Arts It is a quiet snowy Saturday morning as I re-read this entry in my note book dated October 1990. I am again struck by its clarity and it's relevance to the work in which we are engaged. A perfect analogy for the transformative principle at the heart of integrated dance. The enabling process so often seen as flowing from able-bodied to disabled is here up-turned and we who are able bodied, now mysteriously supported and strengthened through the activity of dance, must reassess our role and our preconceptions. For the latter part of 1990 I was working as artist in residence at the Mike Heaffey Centre, an integrated recreation centre attached to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital; part of an initiative to introduce the arts into an otherwise sports orientated environment. It was here that I met Celeste Dandeker a committee member of ASPIRE (Association for Spinal Injury Research Rehabilitation and Reintegration.) the organization that had funded the building of the centre. Celeste had worked with Graeae as a designer and prior to an accident in the 70's had danced with London Contemporary Dance Theatre. Before our meeting I had harbored growing doubts as to whether truly integrated work could be achieved via the framework of competitive sport. The skill of the wheelchair sports players was something that repeatedly drew me away from my painting yet it seemed that once a player had developed sufficient skill, he or she would then take part in competitive sports but for the greater part with other players in wheelchairs. The integration existed in the opportunities to use the facilities (access) to train and compete, but not within the activity itself. These remained segregated. Celeste and I began to discuss how dance might be used in a truly integrated way involving people of all levels of physical ability facing the challenge of moving and dancing together. For a number of weeks we exchanged ideas, articles and books, talked to people working in the field, and eventually, though not without trepidation, decided that between us we had the skills and experience to initiate something ourselves; to start our own integrated group. There followed six weeks of experimentation to see if our ideas held water; a time in which I was to get to grips with the disabling effect a wheelchair has on a non-wheelchair user. I could remember as a child being told not to stare at people in wheelchairs. But to a child, to stare is to look with interest, a sign of curiosity that proceeds investigation, play and learning. I am sure that that message so widely and unthinkingly given to us as children stays with us and continues to colour our attitudes and our behaviour as adults. Thus when we meet someone in a wheelchair it is we the able bodied who act as though paralysed in thought and action, we who appear disabled by the encounter. As our work progressed we became increasingly excited by the material and the techniques we were developing. The chair which initially separated us as dancers began to be involved as an extra element which we could choose to use or leave behind as we wished. Much of the early work pointed uncompromisingly toward choreography..... the act of a woman physically supporting a man is always an eloquent dance statement and one that cuts across the conventional male/female roles; how much more so when that woman is in a wheelchair. And so we started playing with social stereotypes not the least that which assumes that the person who is being looked after is necessarily the one seated in the chair. This early experience encouraged us in our belief that what we were to establish would be a dance company that would work towards performance rather than as a therapy or disability awareness group.... awareness would come to those involved as it had to us through the joint venture of dancing and creating work together. Until now the wheelchair has been the leitmotif of our work but gradually through writing, through talking, through images and through performing, other people facing other physical challenges will I hope get to hear about us and make us all as dancers grow, extend and develop our physical language still further. It is certainly not a group for those wishing to help disabled people dance. Those who come with such an intention will be quickly disabused of any such notion. Everyone who comes is expected eventually to dance to his or her own limits, encouraged to find their own movement vocabulary, usurped as carers only to find themselves unexpectedly supported as I have been by a helping hand. mailto:book.orders@tandf.co.ukmailto:adam@adambenjamin.co.uk?subject=email%20subjectmailto:eri_karatsu@aac.pref.aichi.jphttp://www.aac.pref.aichi.jp/Simpson_Board.htmlhttp://www.londondance.com/content.asp?CategoryID=2351%5Bmailto:I.Bramley@laban.co.ukmailto:info@communitydance.org.ukshapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4shapeimage_1_link_5shapeimage_1_link_6shapeimage_1_link_7