People Dancing

Ken Bartlett, Director, Foundation for Community Dance

Building on the last issue of Animated this issue focuses on disability dance. It celebrates the achievements of disabled and non-disabled artists, animateurs and teachers over the past twenty or more years. More importantly, using the keynote speeches from the Dancing Differently? conference held in February 2002, it pulls together the threads of the current debates in the field, together with the aspirations and ambitions of disabled people as dancers, dance artists, managers and leaders in the future.

There are very tangible achievements to celebrate, with 22 disability focussed/led dance companies and 23 per cent of all community focussed dance initiatives concerned to engage disabled people in many roles within dance in England alone. However, to paraphrase Raymond Williams, 'if we take seriously the idea of making dance, as practice and as works more accessible to more people, we have to accept and indeed welcome the fact that as part of these changes there will also be changes in dance itself'. This was an overwhelming message of the conference as disabled artists and practitioners made their presentations and contributions, challenging the aesthetics of dance, the definitions of who is a dance artist, the roles and rights of disabled people within dance, the roles and responsibilities of non-disabled animateurs, artists, companies, venues and organisations in the ways they choose to engage with disabled people and their dances.

There can be no doubt that Disability Dance has made a difference to the dance ecology across the United Kingdom and the articles in this issue of Animated demonstrate the growing demands of disabled people to engage with dance on their own terms. There are clear challenges to the Education system and arts providers and organisers at all levels to ensure that entitlement and accessibility to dance is truly available to all, together with a call for the embracing of a widening aesthetic frame that includes the dances of disabled people. Those of us who are not disabled and who choose to work in this field still have much to learn to ensure that when we work with disabled people the issues of purpose, access, quality and value raised by these articles are addressed and crucially, how we get to a place where to quote Annie Delin, 'Initiatives which affect disabled people should be led, staffed and supported by disabled people'. Or when disabled people, as Ruth Gould urges, can 'dance in our own way, can speak for ourselves and present our lives, through the beauty of dancing differently, or is it not just dancing...?'

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Animated: Summer 2002