People Dancing

Stopgap is an internationally acclaimed contemporary dance company working with disabled and non-disabled dance artists; creating exhilarating dance shows to tour the world. The company has extensive experience of nurturing and working with disabled and non-disabled dancers to make inclusive works, and it is committed to sharing its expertise through professional training, community outreach, publications and now through a digital platform.

Replay has been created to distribute Stopgap’s inclusive dance practice with as wider audience as possible. Its creation was inspired when it had a number of dancers visiting the company from abroad. The dancers were all emerging, talented artists and in every case, the only dancer like themselves in their hometown, company or place of study.

Stopgap's Artistic Director Lucy Bennett says “Stopgap loves unique dance skills and original dancers. They feed into our practice whether within our company technique class or our creative process. We want to connect with all these individuals through Replay and support their development as dancers where we can. We really hope that they will come to us one day and share their discoveries about dance with Stopgap in the future.”

A new video will be posted fortnightly on Replay and can be found by visiting www.youtube.com/user/StopgapDanceCo. You can visit now to see Video 1: Inclusive Yoga (Integral Sun Salutation) with Amy who has been working to find translations for each Yoga posture. All videos include subtitles and movement translations for disabled people from Stopgap’s professional dancers.

Replay is in its early stages of development and its videos are currently being homemade by the company dancers. It is in need of additional funding to have more regular content and professionally filmed videos. But the company was faced with a great level of demand that it decided to get it up on its feet sooner than later.