Inclusive Dance: The Story of Touchdown Dance

Personal accounts of the work of Touchdown Dance and inclusivity in dance performance projects.

Inclusive Dance offers a concise ethnography of disability arts and a historiographic overview of the field in the 1980s when many new disability arts groups emerged in the UK. It focuses in particular on the inclusive teaching modalities of Touchdown Dance, which was the work of dancer Steve Paxton and theater-maker and psychotherapist Anne Kilcoyne. It involved visually impaired and sighted adults in a dyadic movement form called Contact Improvisation. Katy Dymoke took over Touchdown Dance in 1994, and this book draws on archives, participant accounts, and personal experience to detail the work of Touchdown Dance and its effects on its participants since its founding. Three guests from Touchdown Dance contribute eyewitness accounts of the methods and performance projects.

Katy Dymoke is a touch specialist, dance practitioner, somatic movement educator, and dance-movement psychotherapist. As director of Touchdown Dance she directs projects for people of all ages and abilities.