Arts4All Florida provides webinars during the school year so that teaching artists, classroom teachers, cultural arts organizations, parents, and adult artists with disabilities can keep up-to-date on the latest information in arts and disability.
Essential Skills for Including Students with Disabilities in Dance Classes
In this webinar, we will explore useful skills for educators to possess when teaching a dance class that includes students with and without disabilities. We will address the preparation, implementation, and reflection dimensions of teaching an accessible class, attending to such questions as, “What are several preparation techniques that can support your own creative flow, groundedness, and mindset?” Presenters will offer tools and approaches from their experiences and invite participants to engage in discussion around their own experiences. We will discuss how we place value, relinquish assumptions, enact access within the classroom, empower all learners, find comfort with not knowing, adopt a curious, flexible and collaborative mindset, and evaluate our choices. Then we will practice putting some of these skills in action.
Presenters: Merry Lynn Morris, MFA, PhD is a dance educator, researcher and choreographer. She is currently a professor in the University of South Florida Dance Program and has served on the faculty for twenty-five years, serving in prior roles as Assistant Director and Interim Chair. She holds an MFA degree in Dance Performance and Choreography and a PhD in Dance Studies. In 2002, she began exploring the area of integrated dance and as caregiver to her disabled father over a 21-year period, her interest in disability has been integral to her dance and life journey. Dr. Morris is active in the dance and disability community at local, regional, national and international levels through teaching, research, leadership and activism. She collaborates frequently with Arts4All Florida, a statewide arts and disability organization and serves in Dance/USA’s Deaf and Disability Affinity Group. Her work with older adults in assistive living facilities, young students with disabilities and professional dancers with disabilities has informed her approaches to integrated dance programming in addition to a variety of teacher trainings in integrated dance. Additionally, she has spearheaded collaborations with engineers to invent new mobility devices for use in and outside of dance. These initiatives have received national and international recognition and several patented prototypes have been developed. Her publications include five U.S. Patents and over 25 print publications.
Silva Laukkanen is a passionate advocate for integrated dance. Inspired by teaching at a rehabilitation center in Finland, she shifted her focus to community dance. Her work spans from senior centers to professional dancers, aiming to broaden perceptions of who can dance and where dance happens. These questions led her to create DanceCast in 2016, a podcast spotlighting non-traditional dance artists, and to co-author “Breadth of Bodies, Discussing Disability in Dance” in 2021, translated to Korean in 2022, featuring interviews with dance artists with disabilities globally. As Director of Integrated Dance at Art Spark Texas, Silva Laukkanen leads bi-annual intensives, performance projects, and monthly classes. In 2020, she co-founded Tractus Art with a colleague from South Africa. Together, they produce videos highlighting artists with disabilities and are working on a children’s book about a Deaf dance company founder, set for publication later this year. Silva also collaborates with other integrated dance companies, providing support in arts administration. Her research includes the 2018 study on Mixed Ability Dance: Gaps in Pre-Professional Dance Education for Students with Disabilities and the 2021 publication Refocusing Dance Education, addressing accessibility for dance students with disabilities in the USA. Silva holds a BFA from North Karelia College and a postgraduate degree from Trinity Laban Conservatoire. A certified DanceAbility teacher since 2003, she has trained with prominent choreographers and companies like Adam Benjamin, Axis Dance Company, and Dancing Wheels. Currently, she is pursuing an MA in Dance: Participation, Community, Activism at the London Contemporary Dance School and serves as board president of Kaaos Company, Finland’s leading integrated dance company.
Dwayne Scheuneman is Co-Founder, Artistic Director, Integrated Dance Educator, and Dancer with REVolutions Dance. Shortly after becoming paralyzed in a diving accident in 1995, Dwayne began competing in wheelchair track and field. In 2002, he was looking for some cross-training activities when a friend suggested he try taking a dance class. After this initial introduction to dance, Dwayne began searching for and taking dance classes and workshop wherever he could find them. Most often, these classes were not very accessible, however Dwayne found that the local dance community was very much interested in collaborating with him to solve this issue. In 2005, Dwayne set out to introduce the Tampa Bay community to the creative and artistic contributions of artists with disabilities and so began the mission of REVolutions Dance. He soon filed as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and REVolutions Dance became more than an idea; it became a living organization that would eventually grow into a cornerstone of the Tampa Bay Arts community. Dwayne began by collaborating with local dancers and choreographers to gain visibility and access to performance opportunities for dancers with disabilities. In 2008, under Dwayne’s artistic direction, REVolutions Dance produced their first full length concert at Ruth Eckerd Hall Performing Arts Center. Since that time, REVolutions Dance, led by Dwayne, has maintained a steady and consistent performance schedule and has established a national and international performing presence. Over the years, REVolutions Dance has performed nationally throughout the United States and internationally in Russia, Italy, China, and Palestine – to mention just a few. In addition to performing, Dwayne discovered a strong need for community outreach and education that encouraged include new efforts that went beyond the stage and focused on creating opportunities for children with disabilities to take dance classes alongside their non-disabled peers. In 2010, Dwayne began to conduct a variety of community outreach and education programs. His education and community building efforts provided by REVolutions Dance now extend beyond Tampa Bay to other areas of the US and around the globe. Dwayne continues to provide such opportunities in the Tampa area with weekly integrated dance classes for children and adults. He also continues with his national and international efforts.
