Salsa initiation at Oogatelier Varsenare, light and love - Inclusive or exclusive dancing?
On May 24, Gerald Nijenhuis from Oogatelier Varsenare asked Light and Love to once again provide an exclusive salsa initiation for the people at the day center. My joy was immense when I saw many familiar faces. Pjel I now see as my regular dance partner, hahaha, and I had also seen Dimitri the week before, among other places, in Oogatelier Ostend and at the G-sport day of the city of Bruges. I love those guys because they can laugh at my jokes. I was happy to see them again. Dieter, Barbie (alias Melissa), Maria, and Marleen were also there, and what was so nice was that they still remembered the concept of salsa. Thanks to the different workshops they had attended off-site, I could go a bit deeper into the lesson content this time.
About the room:
Room setup:
My surprise was great when I saw cords and tape laid all over the floor. When I asked Gerald about it, he told me that it was placed to guide sighted people in the workshops they provide to help them experience the world of the visually impaired. I know that there is a kind of branch under the name Xinix within the non-profit organization, and being curious, I went to peek around the corner where I saw various technical gadgets with many glasses on a table.
In any case, it was handy that the cords were already there, so I didn’t have to do any preparatory work myself. I just had to start the music and we could begin. The cord and tape (line) are used to define the horizontal direction in dance (via foot touch).
I could spread the dancers nicely across the room, with a meter of distance between each. Eagerly, everyone began with their salsa steps. To the line, behind the line, and in the center. Everyone was still following along and had retained the information from previous lessons in their minds.
Inclusive or exclusive dancing? What would be most practical for blind and visually impaired people?
Some believe that exclusive dancing is harder than inclusive dancing. I believe that inclusive dancing requires more effort than exclusive dancing. This idea came about through a discussion I had with the sports department of Ostend about the way point scoring works within recognitions and how exclusive lessons score higher than inclusive lessons for subsidy applications.
Inclusive requires more from the person than exclusive:
At first glance, one might think that having one sighted person dance with a non-sighted person provides more structure and that learning would be easier. It should, in theory, go more smoothly. But there are several things to consider.
1. Safety
2. Confidence
3. Perseverance
4. Avoiding collisions
5. Breaking stigmas
6. Being accepted
7. Being seen as an asset
I will come back to this in a later article, but this is what I wrote in 2022.
I can guarantee you that being blind in a group of sighted dancers is not just hard, it is extremely hard! The pace is faster, you must keep up with the flow, there is no room for many questions, not everything is explained 100% in detail, and everything must move forward with all faces toward the mirror. So I completely disagree with the idea that inclusion is easier than exclusion. Additionally, it remains a huge challenge for sighted dancers to accept blind and visually impaired people or people with disabilities in their own free time. This is something that shouldn't be talked or written about too often, but it is the daily truth.
I truly believe in simplification through exclusive lessons. As a trainer, you are only focused on your target group and can move with their rhythm, not the other way around. I find the workshops very rewarding. So, thanks to the Oogateliers Varsenare and Ostend for their trust, goodwill, attention to what their people love and want, and their open attitude towards improving the general motor skills of the participants.
Coming soon: videos for trainers within exclusive lessons as part of the “Visual Impairment and Inclusion” project by the King Baudouin Foundation 2023.
Gerald had booked me for an hour and a half, but after an hour it became clear that everyone was tired.
Therefore, I came up with something new and discovered something very special: I had all the participants sit down on a chair and worked as a real teacher. I started with one careful question:
1. On how many beats is salsa danced? I pointed to Dieter and without a second's hesitation, he shouted: 8 beats! I dared to continue and asked Barbie (Melissa)
2. With which foot do you dance 1, 2, 3? She immediately shouted: with the right foot! The next questions piled up
3. Which beats don’t we dance?
4. Which beats does the leader dance on the right?
5. When do you move your feet within a measure of 8 beats?
It continued like this, and in no time, you could feel the energy rising. The eyes moved, back and forth, and the brains were working, and I was in seventh heaven because I was amazed by the speed and accuracy with which their memory assisted them. What a tool!
And what a revelation as a trainer.
The memory as a dance tool!
For the first time, I could personally experience how inventive and focused blind people are in using their brains to systematically organize things, name them, arrange them, move them, comprehend them, understand them, and so on.
I had observed this a few times with my regular dancers but never on such a large scale and with such speed.
Absent-minded professor: I sometimes get told: Michèle, you’re an absent-minded professor. And that’s true! Sometimes there’s so much in my head that even though I know the material inside and out, I might have a blackout or literally become distracted over a detail, an adjustment, or a concept. And when I teach blind students, I sometimes have to wring my brain out to explain things as clearly as possible. On several occasions, I experience aphasia. I know it may not seem that way, but it is the truth. The signals are sometimes so overwhelming, and actions move so quickly at the same time, that it takes all I have to express myself as quickly as possible. When I see how quickly blind people organize information, I am in total admiration.
And this is what the workshop in Varsenare has taught me, and I dare to send this statement into the world.
“As a trainer, you need to work more with the brain, the brain of the non-sighted.”
The foundation of their abilities lies there. As a trainer, it is your task to use this tool, apply it, and make the most of it, in order to enhance overall motor skills.
Last year, I had a long conversation with Professor Greet Cardon about motor development in toddlers and preschoolers. The University of Ghent is fully committed to motor research in young children.
I believe that for blind children and youth, motor development must be stimulated from the brain and through a repetitive framework where recognition and memory can become the main information processor in the general motor development of young athletes. In other words, I dare to say that the brain must be utilized in its entirety for sports practice, and not the other way around.
First, store, and then execute, not first try to execute and then store!
Something to work on.
Image Description
Photo 1: Group photo with the participants of Oogatelier Varsenare
Photo 2: Michèle in the middle of Pjel and Dimitri
Photo 3: Michèle and Manuel at the “Light and Love” booth at the Revabeurs Autumn 2023
