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Fort Worth’s Texas Ballet Theater has announced a series of classes designed to include dancers with disabilities.
Ballet’s days of churning out little pink, carbon-copied dancers are over. A new wave of initiatives celebrating diversity and inclusion in dance are popping up all over the country, and Fort Worth’s Texas Ballet Theater is getting in on the action with an announcement of a series of classes designed to include dancers with disabilities.
The new program will provide custom curriculum in a safe environment designed to share the joy of dance while improving cognition, muscle function and spatial awareness for students with Down syndrome, according to TBT’s educational program’s manager Catherine Roe.
“Recently, we’ve looked into our community and seen a need for a dance class opportunity for students with disabilities,” Roe says. “As the largest professional ballet organization in the area, we felt a responsibility to begin to investigate the possibility of hosting Adaptive Dance classes.”
To ensure the safety and impact of these classes, TBT models its program after the industry leader in inclusive dance programming, Boston Ballet. Two of its instructors traveled to Boston for training in preparation for the program launch. A partnership with Cook Children’s will ensure a coordinated effort to maximize the therapeutic benefits of dance with a clinical therapist at each session.
There are around 6,000 children a year in the US born with Down syndrome, according to the National Down Syndrome Society. Roe says that TBT was contacted by multiple families looking to meet their needs, which helped inspire these new educational goals.
“Texas Ballet Theater’s three primary areas of focus are art, access, and education,” Roe says. “We’re constantly reevaluating how we might be able to grow in each of those areas, and Adaptive Dance expands our work in both the access and education areas.”
Classes began Feb. 2 in Fort Worth and will continue for three additional weeks with a second series of classes in Dallas set to begin in March. While the first set of classes are limited to children ages 5 to 7, Roe says that it is TBT’s intention to make adaptive programming a permanent offering. She hopes to expand the classes to include a wide range of ages and disabilities.
“We’re shifting our focus from thinking about who dance is or isn’t for to thinking about how everyone can experience dance,” Roe says.
Prospective students should contact Catherine Roe at [email protected] or call 817-763-0207.
