Have You Tried Wheelchair Dancing?

Ballroom dancing is yet another form of wheelchair dancing. Even such dances as the waltz, foxtrot and rhumba are possible. Wheelchair dancing is an international competitive sport involving athletes with a physical disability that affects the lower limbs. There are classes for adaptive dancing "combi -style" (standing) partner or duo-dance with two wheelchairs. There are also formation dances for four, six or eight competitors.Traditional wheelchair dancing involves moving the wheelchair across the dance floor, while wheelchair tap dancing concentrates on the movements of the limbs while in a seated position. People who have movement in their feet can tap dance wearing tap shoes. Those with no foot movement can clap their hands instead wearing gloves with taps attached. The bbc.co.uk site has some tips on how to get started in this style of wheelchair dancing.

Those dancers who have movement in their arms and legs but not enough strength to dance standing upright can do so seated on a chair or lying on the floor.

Many wheelchair dancing groups exist to encourage people with disabilities to dance. One such is Third St. Ensemble Co. The young performers range in age from eight to twenty-three and include children from many different backgrounds and with many different problems. Wheelchair dancing usually features in their performances and all company members are skilled in dance chairs.

Another such wheelchair dancing or adaptive dancing programme, amongst many, is a community programme of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. To quote "This program is for children ages seven years and up with mobility challenges whose primary mode of transportation is the wheelchair. The focus of the class is the development of a variety of locomotor, rhythmic and creative skills using enjoyable dance experiences. Children have the opportunity to explore a variety of dance forms such as ballet, jazz dance, and creative dance and to gain confidence through performances and workshops."

Very exciting developments are taking part in the world of wheelchair dancing. In a project called Feileacan (Gaelic for "butterfly") a mixture of able-bodied dancers and the avatars controlled by children in wheelchairs the dance is the heart of the project that combines complex machine interfaces and virtual-reality computer graphic tools.

These particular developments wonderful as they are will not form the basis for any further discussion on wheelchair dancing. Of course, there are young people who are highly competitive and will be attracted to dance as sport. There are others who want and are in a position to go to a class and learn regular Ballroom or Line dances.

Dance classes of any kind can be marvelously therapeutic but they do require that participants strive to attain certain specific standards of movement. This can itself create tensions and anxieties for the child. Dance therapy is different in that there is total acceptance, encouragement and no criticism. Also the methods and dances described maybe beyond the skills and resources of a parent or other career working with a child in a wheelchair. As a dance and movement therapist I am in favor of using inspirational dance.

I have constantly emphasized that my dance and movement therapy experiences have been with children who have very profound physical, emotional or learning difficulties. In some cases the children had all three. Our sessions were limited to one hour once a week during term time.The children in wheelchairs were totally integrated with those who did not have mobility problems. None of the children in wheelchairs were capable of maneuvering them on their own. In fact, some of the children had no controlled movement. So the chairs had to be maneuvered by helpers. Depending on the weight of the child and the design of the wheelchair this could be very tiring indeed. But no matter what fun was had by all!

If the dance therapy session at home consists of just you and your child then you won't have the opportunity to interact with a number of other wheelchair dancers. It will be a threesome of you, your child and the wheelchair. Of course, any number of people can dance and interact with the wheelchair dancer. As with any dance attention should be paid to choice of music and the dance itself needs to reflect the ryhthm and mood of the piece. The chair can be wheeled so that there are sudden punctuation stops, turns that are sharp, gentle, slow or fast, changes of direction at various speeds, changes of height by tilting the chair. The wheelchair dancer should be encouraged to move as much as possible interpreting the music. Changes of facial expression should be encouraged especially in children who are not normally very communicative.Adaptations of line and square dances are often easily undertaken or you can create you own wheelchair dances. To start you off here is a simple little circle dance for approximately six wheelchair dancers.

1. The wheelchairs are positioned in a large cicle at equal distances from each other.

2. Then the chairs are pushed clockwise around the circle until each person is back in his or her original position. The person pushing can skip, gallop etc.

3. Repeat same move counter-clockwise.

4. Facing forward the dancers are pushed to the centre of the circle. Stop. If possible the children then hold hands with the person on either side of them.

5. Repeat steps 1 and 2 in the centre of the circle.

6. Dancers are pulled out of the centre circle facing backwards until they reach their original positions as in Step 1.

7. Tilt chairs onto the rear wheels, then turn the chair to the left and drop it onto all four wheels.

8. Repeat move 7 to the right.

9. Repeat moves 1 to 8. You can count the steps, make sounds, or sing etc. while doing this dance.

I hope this will give you some ideas of your own.

In the future I shall feature a series on wheelchair dancing in my newsletter "Dance to Health".


Bruce of Berkeley California writes on CONTACT IMPROVISATION: A DANCE OF EQUALITY

"At the age of 17, I broke my neck while diving, which resulted in paralysis affecting my body from my chest down. While on a March for Peace in Central America, I learned about contact improvisation and discovered through it that people with and without disabilities could dance together equally. Contact improvisation allows someone disabled to become so engaged in the contact and balance with another dancer, that the sensation supersedes the superficial image. Even though I have limited voluntary movement throughout my body, I can create coordinated movement, using the sensation in my body and skeleton.

The focus of the dance is on the conversation of body movement between two people. Each person listens through that person's own body to the other dancer's movement. As well, each person is responsible for his or her own safety in the dance and trusts that the other will always be in the present moment, listening.

For me, it's important to create motion and dance that naturally emerges from a disabled person's body. I encourge people with disablities to find their own personal expressions of movement from their own bodies rather than imitating dance styles like ballet or ballroom dancing and movements that come from non-disabled bodies. When persons with disablilities try to perform in contemporary dance styles typically performed by the non-disabled, audiences judge them as making a nice effort. However, when persons with disabilities create dances which present the authentic movement of their own bodies they will find that the audience will appreciate them as true artists. "

I have just come upon the following blog by Wheelchair Dancer

dated Sunday, March 2, 2008. It illustrates the appallingly ignorant and crass attitude of some so called Able Bodied people towards dancers with disabilities. I reproduce the piece in its entirety.

Wizziwig

Perhaps better known as "WYSIWIG" - what you see is what you get." Except that sometimes, it isn't.

This afternoon, I was on the phone with a friend who came to see us perform on tour, my friend is a disabled artist and performer (among many things); she's smart, funny and deeply perceptive. I was keen to hear what she had to say. A LOT, as it turns out, most of which I haven't figured out how to blog. But one of the most intriguing parts of our conversation concerned her experience with the people who were sitting behind her.

The people yakked all the way through the performance. Annoying, yes. Even more irritating was the content of their conversation: disability and the dancer. In our programmes, West Coast publishes dancer bios; we use the space to declare our training, experience, dance education, employment, people we've studied with ... Many of West Coast's disabled dancers also use the space to provide their disability stories. I hadn't really thought about this, but the brief paragraphs we provide can end up being lenses through which the less-dancy, less-disability, more-ignorant audience members view our performance.

My friend listened in as one member of the group appointed herself the party's disability expert. She began instructing the others in the politics of disability. Amazingly, despite the fact that we in person and in our publicity materials stress the point that we are a physically integrated dance company - that is, a company with non-disabled and disabled dancers - Ms. Expert decided that our non-disabled dancers were, in fact, disabled. They HAD to be. There was NO way, otherwise. They just had hidden disabilities. She bet that this one had diabetes.

My friend was appalled and fascinated; she kept listening. Those of us with apparent disabilities were subject to a different kind of analysis. Out bodies "overwrite" our work. It was all about the tragedy of the disability. Whatever we did. Those of us with non-apparent disabilities HAD to be disabled whatever we did. And so on. They used visual inspection to assess our degree of impairment, and then used their impairment assessment to evaluate whether we should be moving differently. And then they used our movement to assess our degree of impairment. Seemingly unaware of the ludicrous look they had put themselves in, the conversation proceeded like this for most of the show.

This is really annoying.

But it has caused me to spend some time reflecting about some of the things I thought were obvious about West Coast. We do not do work that explicitly deals with our disability stories. We almost never do work that even addresses disability as a topic. I son's see any reason, currently to change those ideas. There are many reasons for this position, though; I thin the most salient is that idea that we are more radical if we do what we do simply because what we do and the fact that we do it subverts stereotypical assumptions about disability in general and dance and disability in particular.

At the same time, however, if we do offer our disability stories and/ or explain what's "wrong with us", we send a conflicting message. We allow people to make these kinds of judgments and we feed their stereotypical greed for knowledge about the spectacle of the disabled body. And this narrative satisfies that desire for people to know. But it puts at risk the project of our art. And it possibly enables people to reinscribe themselves and us in the mess of what they "think" they know about disability.

Should we satisfy people's desires to know? Does not acceding to their thirst have implications for how they view our work? Acceding clearly does, but does denying people that chance to know make it better of worse?

Contact Improvisation: A Dance of Equality

Shall we Dance?

REVIEW BY DR JUDITH LYNNE HANNA OF "DANCE TO HEALTH-HELP YOUR SPECIAL NEEDS CHILD THROUGH INSPIRATIONAL DANCE."

Dr Judith Lynne Hanna Senior Research Scholar at the University of Maryland writes: "To dance is human and through history humans have used dance to communicate, to heal, to enjoy. Cudjoe's manual for parents to help their children through dance is a welcome gift to be cherished and used. Trying Dance Movement Therapy at home or forming groups that meet outside is feasible for any parent. Dance Movement experience is not needed. Cudjoe's rich experience and sensitivity in working with children with special needs shines throughout the valuable manual. As she explains the benefits of dance movement therapy and guides the reader, she wisely urges individualizing dance movement activity to fit one's child's own situation".

Judith Lynne Hanna, Ph.D. is author of Dancing for Health: Conquering and Preventing Stress (AltaMira Press,2006) and Partnering Dance and Education (Human Kinetics Press, 1999) as well as other books and hundreds of articles. She was keynote speaker at the American Dance Therapy Association Meeting and serves on its journal's editorial board.

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