SHIFT Dance

SHIFT Dance is a collaboration between Northern Ballet, Psico Ballet Maite Leon Foundation (Spain) and Misiconi Dance Company (Netherlands).

Funded by Erasmus+, the project aimed to:

• Develop new teaching practice for dancers with additional learning support needs (ALSN) underpinned by safe practice
• Share good practice, initially between collaborators and subsequently to an international audience of dance artists and teachers in community, education and professional settings
• Raise the profile and skills of dancers with ALSN across Europe

To ensure the new practice developed was underpinned by academic research, input and support from a dance science perspective was provided by the University of Edinburgh  and the impact of the project was evaluated by the University of Leeds.

Method

The project consisted of five residencies with three focusing on sharing practice and devising new teaching approaches to the following technical dance skills: 

• Strength and alignment
• Balance and co-ordination
• Elevation and locomotion

Between each residency, activities and approaches were tried, tested and developed over a ten-week period. Each partner worked with their dancers and used monitoring and evaluation tools to measure and chart their progress. Northern Ballet’s dancers were the Ability group. 

Visit the SHIFT Dance Toolkit to find out more and explore the Open Educational Resource developed through the project.  

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