People Dancing

Community dance practice as it has developed in the United Kingdom is regarded as pioneering and inspiring. It has been a model for developing similar work elsewhere in the world, with British dance artists in the field leading projects and training programmes in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

That being said I am increasingly interested in seeing how artists starting with similar values and commitment to art, dance and people have developed this 'community dance' practice in response to their own culturally specific contexts, and seeing what we have in common and what we can learn afresh from their experiences.

To that end I invited artist and writer Pegge Vissicaro, who I first met at an international conference on community dance in Lisbon some years ago, to curate a series of articles that reveal some of the issues and practices currently at play in the USA.

In addition Linda Jasper, Director of Youth Dance England presents her ambitions for the next ten years of development for youth dance which is set alongside an article by Jane Ralls calling for similar developments for the adult population, and an example of such work from Liz Atkins, based at Laban.

The benefits dance can bring to the health of the wider population have often been rehearsed in the pages of Animated, so it is good to see a major national charity, Diabetes UK, proposing to use dance as a major part of its development strategy in the coming months.