One of the neatest workshops I have ever been to was a workshop led by Scott Higgs at the 2011 Dandelion Romp contra dance weekend at my alma mater. During this workshop, he had people assemble for a regular duple improper contra dance, and then had each dancer take turns closing their eyes through iterations of the dance to simulate being a visually-impaired dancer. The charge then to the other three in the minor set was to find ways to help the person with their eyes shut and for the dancer with their eyes closed to gain some empathy about what is helpful to dancers and what isn't (e.g., a hand to guide is fine; a yank isn't helpful).
I was talking to Penelope Weinberger, organizer of the Contra Sonic series, this past weekend (and I interviewed her -- watch this blog!) and she mentioned that people who were hearing-impaired still went to clubs and could dance to the vibrations coming through the floor. While trying to translate calls into ASL might prove problematic with ambient half-light in a techno contra, it does raise an interesting point. Traditional contra music, by and large, isn't terribly bass-heavy; the traditional music certainly has some, and there are members of the contra community who are hearing-impaired (not all of whom are older -- one of my regular dance partners for a while was hearing-impaired and he is now in his early 30s), but I wonder if this might be an avenue to explore. Could this be an avenue for outreach into the hearing-impaired community? Could a similar workshop to Scott's be designed to simulate being hearing-impaired to create a similar sort of empathy and similarly strengthen the contra community as a whole?
Thoughts are welcomed, especially from folks who know more about these issues than I do. (I don't pretend to have all the answers, and just because something makes logical sense to me doesn't mean that it works in the breach.)
I was talking to Penelope Weinberger, organizer of the Contra Sonic series, this past weekend (and I interviewed her -- watch this blog!) and she mentioned that people who were hearing-impaired still went to clubs and could dance to the vibrations coming through the floor. While trying to translate calls into ASL might prove problematic with ambient half-light in a techno contra, it does raise an interesting point. Traditional contra music, by and large, isn't terribly bass-heavy; the traditional music certainly has some, and there are members of the contra community who are hearing-impaired (not all of whom are older -- one of my regular dance partners for a while was hearing-impaired and he is now in his early 30s), but I wonder if this might be an avenue to explore. Could this be an avenue for outreach into the hearing-impaired community? Could a similar workshop to Scott's be designed to simulate being hearing-impaired to create a similar sort of empathy and similarly strengthen the contra community as a whole?
Thoughts are welcomed, especially from folks who know more about these issues than I do. (I don't pretend to have all the answers, and just because something makes logical sense to me doesn't mean that it works in the breach.)
