Ballroom Dancing The Handicapped And The Disabled

Ballroom Dancing - The Handicapped and the Disabled

Ballroom dancing is very good for your general health, for losing weight and for mental relaxation. Everyone loves dancing, even those people who happen to be deaf, blind, confined to a wheelchair or missing limbs. Many groups have established classes to teach these people line dances, ballroom, jazz ballet and everything else they may want to learn.

The Malta Wheelchair Dancesport Association is just one of those groups. Wheelchair dancing has been operating around the world since the 1970's but did not begin in Malta until 1999. The group runs classes to teach disabled people to dance using a style similar to that applied to teach non-disabled people. The classes are available to people who only want to learn to dance and those who aim to dance competitively.

For competitive dances there consists two groups, Combi (one in a wheelchair the other is standing) or Duo (both partners are in wheelchairs). They will learn all the Standard Ballroom dances and also the Latin American Ballroom dances. For those whose only interest is social dancing, they are offered courses for solo and line dances.

Wheelchair dancers utilize their arms and upper bodies to achieve the same movements in the same way as non-disabled dancers. Also, as with non-disabled dancers, some are good and some are not but all dance because they enjoy it. The dance classes also include the benefit of teaching both the wheelchair occupants and their helpers to better use their chairs encouraging them to be more independent

The Gallaudet Dance Company is made up of about fifteen students all of whom are hard of hearing or deaf. Gallaudet is the worlds one and only accredited Liberal Arts University for the hearing impaired. The dancers are taught to rely on many different things - using their sign language and vision to communicate.

For years hearing people have believed the theory that the deaf "hear' by feeling vibrations through the floor. This can work when they are standing still as the surface will conduct the vibrations, but it will not be much help when you are jumping, moving, or standing on a concrete floor. The Gallaudet Dancers practice for many, many hours to develop an inner sense of the timing for every dance. This is achieved in part by observing an instructor counting out the rhythm of the dance. The instructor indicates a sign for each step in a similar way hearing dancers will get a vocal count from their dance instructor.

Hearing-impaired and deaf dance students work had to keep "in time" with or without music. Vital things for teaching these students to dance is the high quality sound systems, visual count, and use of sign language.

There were hundreds of viewers that watched captivated as Heather Mills competed for some weeks on Dancing with the Stars with, of all things, a prosthetic leg. It was difficult to tell which leg it was most of the time, but then she performed some very difficult moves that the some of the other dancers would not even attempt!

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