The Sound Pad Project: Co-Creation of Breakin', Dance Education, and an Inclusive Educational Technology

Abstract

This chapter discusses the experiences of Breakers, choreographers and those with visual impairments who worked collaboratively to develop a participatory dance education, educational technology and choreography project called Sound Pad. The project was constructed and evaluated using a combination of participatory and grounded methodology, a practice framework of the Rationale Method and the development of inclusive capital. This chapter explores the development of this co-created sensorially and intellectually inclusive education and performance through the experiences of dancers-as-teachers, and how this experience informs these dancers’ practice. The Sound Pad project had four objectives, these were to: develop a participatory dance technology, collaborative choreography and a method of teaching dance, movement and embodiment primarily through residual vision, sound and touch using rationale methodology; encourage people with visual impairment to move more, to feel more included in mainstream dance culture and develop a greater sense of inclusion; have a greater understanding of dance as a performative art form and a public art form; to examine the encouragement of artists in their use of a multi-modal pedagogy as a tool of teaching people with disabilities through different senses. The Sound Pad project has created a unique form of co-creating, choreographing and learning about dance sequences through imagining mobility and space, and through the co-creation of mobility. Furthermore, all the participants developed new negotiated forms of information that helped them bond, share ideas and subsequently evolve a form of mutual inclusive technical capital / inclusive capital.