Integrated Dance
Integrated dancing has become more popular in Seattle and other cities. It allows people with disabilities to express themselves by dancing with able–bodied people. But those involved in that style of dancing want to promote it with more access to instruction and performance. KUOW's Joy Ma tells us the story of Charlene Curtiss. She's an integrated dancer in Seattle who teaches and performs.
TRANSCRIPT
In a dance studio at the University of Washington, 15 people are gathered in a circle. Five of them are in wheelchairs. Charlene Curtiss is leading them in a dance workshop. She's moving her wheelchair to the rhythm of clapping. The other people in the studio, both those who are in wheelchairs and those who are not, begin dancing together.
Curtiss: "We try to insist that everybody participate in the workshop even if only in a small way. But some people would be adamant, 'no I'm just gonna watch,' but before we were done, they were dancing, and thrilled and marveled at how could they ever thought that they couldn't do that?"
Curtiss was injured in a gymnastics accident when she was 17. She's been in her wheelchair ever since. Years later, an experience overseas inspired her to dance.
Curtiss: "It was an interesting moment, it was an extraordinary moment. I was in Brazil, I was at the top of a mountain listening to musicians that I had met, and I found as I listen to the music that I found it coming into my arms, and I rediscovered movement in my upper body just by improvisationally moving to the music in this extraordinarily beautiful place."
In 1992 Curtiss founded a dance company called Light Motion to perform and to teach. Her goal is to promote integrated dance. She encourages people with and without handicaps to dance together.
The dancers move slowly on the dance floor, then they lean against each other. One dancer turns her wheelchair in circles. When she stops, her partner holds the arms of the wheelchair. He puts his head down and lifts his legs until he's completely upside down.
Curtiss is seeing more people participate in integrated dancing. One of the difficulties disabled dancers face, she says, is access to training.
Curtiss: "Dance studios are famously not accessible, and many dance instructors have very little experience or even exposure to integrated work. There are some places, even though they're wheelchair accessible, you have to educate them that it's okay for a wheelchair to be on your dance floor, it won't leave marks, it won't ruin your dance floor because someone with a disability wheeling around on it."
Another concern is about the dancers' injuries. Mark Tomasic is a researcher at the University of California, Irvine. He's studying health issues related to integrated dance. He says there's a lack of research in dancers' movement.
Tomasic: "But if we have the research to start with, we can say if you are dancing this way we found through biomechanical analysis and physiological testing, we found that if you do a turn this certain way you might be less likely to get injured, so the practicality comes in, in the training aspect of it and to keep people safe while they're dancing."
Tomasic is an able–bodied dancer himself. He says integrated dance is more than just dancing in wheelchairs — it's for people with mixed abilities.
Tomasic: "The world of physically integrated dance is inclusive to people with any kind of disability. So I actually prefer the word inclusive, because we are including everybody: different kind of disabilities, people who are able bodied. It is not leaving anybody out, so that is where the art form is going, it just continues to expand people's perceptions of what is capable and what is possible."
Near the end of the workshop, Charlene Curtiss joins her dance partner in the middle of the floor. They hook arms, then slide back, holding hands with their arms extended. Curtiss whirls slowly and gracefully around her partner.
Curtiss: "I think becoming disabled added to my life rather detracted. I may not have explored dance. My life could have been completely different, and I think the life that I've had has been very rewarding. Dance is giving me an incredible sense of freedom."
Ma: "Free from what?"
Curtiss: "From being grounded on the planet."
For KUOW News, I'm Joy Ma.
© Copyright 2010, KUOW
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