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About Integrated dance

Courses
Dance 235/525
Dance 336/536

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Integrated Dance

Instructor: Jürg Koch
Office: Meany 258
Office Hours: Wednesday 10-11am or by appointment
E-mail: kochj@u.washington.edu
Telephone: 206 616 75 61

About integrated dance
...an interest in the diversity of human expression

Integrated Dance strives to finding ways of teaching and creating dance that is suitable for a diverse group of participants with regards to their previous dance experience as well as their range of physical and conceptual abilities. The emphasis is on training dance skills and setting creative tasks that access and challenge each individual dancer's facilities and abilities.

Integration Dance is no hard and fast term and needs to be defined for each context. There are various established Integrated Dance companies who use very different dance and teaching styles. CandoCo in London and AXIS in San Francisco are both Contemporary/Modern repertory dance companies working with established choreographers such as Bill T. Jones and Stephen Petronio. Light Motion in Seattle creates and performs its own work. Alito Alessi and Emery Blackwell from Joint Forces Dance Company work via Contact Improvisation, while Infinity Dance Theater's work in New York is rooted in the principles of Classical Ballet and Modern Dance.

While the majority of the companies above work with non-disabled dancers and those with physical disabilities and sensory impairments, Amici Dance Theatre Company from London integrates performers of all ages with sensory impairments, intellectual and physical disabilities.

Methods of teaching, ways of creating access and inclusion therefore vary from company to company or from teacher to teacher according to their artistic vision or educational set up. What unites integrated practice is the principle of working with diversity. Maybe it can be summarized as an interest in the diversity of human expression and a commitment to engage in creative processes that allow for this diversity to be heard and seen.

There are currently two integrated dance course on offer in the UW Dance Program. Both courses are suitable to all students. Previous experience in dance is welcomed but not a prerequisite.