This paper brings together two different terms: dance and disability. This encounter between dance and disability might be seen as an unusual, even conflicting, one since dance is traditionally dominated by aesthetic virtuosity and perfect, idealized bodies which are under optimized bodily control. However, recently there has been a growing desire within dance communities and professional dance companies to challenge binary thinking (beautiful-ugly, perfect-imperfect, valid-invalid, success-failure) by incorporating an aesthetic of difference. The traditional focus of dance on appearance (shape, technique, virtuosity) is replaced by a focus on how movement is connected to a sense of self. This notion of the subjective body not only applies to the dancer's body but also to disabled bodies. Instead of thinking of a body as a thing, an object (Körper) that is defined by its physical appearance, dance is more and more seduced by the body as we sense it, feel it and live it (Leib). This conceptual shift in dance is illustrated by a theoretical analysis of The Cost of Living, a dance film produced by DV8.

In this article dance improvisation and children’s physical play events are considered organizational practices. Both activities organize and reorganize our lived and embodied experience. Even more, both activities are socially shared and culturally shaped – and thus highly relational. According to the enactive approach, sense-making evolves out of self-organizational processes in which brain, body and environment are linked. In this article the concept of participatory sense-making is used as a stepping stone to describe underlying mechanisms of both dance improvisation and children’s physical play. It is argued that the participants in a dance improvisation and physical play event coordinate their movements together and meaning is created and transformed through a shared intercorporality. The first part of the article consists of a theoretical exploration of several related concepts such as enactive account, embodiment, autonomy, experience, emergence and (participatory) sense-making. In the second part the theoretical concepts are applied to dance improvisational practice and physical play. Artistic research is used to shed light on underlying mechanisms that children’s physical play and dance improvisation share with one another, specifically how meaning is co-constituted in the direct embodied interaction.

This article addresses the notion of touch and its constitutive role in the participatory sense-making process (de Jaegher and Paolo 2007) of play and dance improvisation. It is argued that touch is always relational, as it continuously changes the contours of self, other(ness), and world(ing). It is therefore surprising that touch traditionally has received little attention in philosophy. Phenomenology and the enactive account however do hint to the vital role of touch in embodied interaction. The first part of the article consists of a discussion of key concepts, such as the duplicity of touch, the enactive account, participatory sense-making (de Jaegher and Paolo 2007), and intercorporeality. A short research overview is provided on the role of interpersonal touch in daily life. In the second part of the research I shift to the artistic practice. I discuss the Touch Project, a play|dance improvisation project that is part of my artistic research and that explores the notion of touch in a creative and experimental setting. Through an embodied inquiry, I explore how touch contributes to an embodied, relational knowing. The article concludes with some practical suggestions on enhancing body-mind awareness and encouraging playfulness through the use of interpersonal touch. It offers touch exercises that can be used in an educational setting to promote interconnectedness and a sense of community.

This multiple-case-studies research explored a multimodal approach to teaching music to pupils (from 4 to 18 years old) with severe or multiple disabilities. By combining music with, for example, tactile stimulation, movement, or visuals, meaning-making processes in music of these pupils was stimulated, helping them to understand the internal structures and expressive qualities of music. Three music teachers and a social worker participated in this study. Individual and collective video reflections and microanalysis were applied to gather data about their multimodal teaching practice. The data were analyzed through Schmid’s framework (2015) of “multimodal dimensions of children’s music experiences,” developed for general music education. This framework consists of four dimensions: narrativity, sociality, materiality, and embodiment. Based on the findings, Schmid’s framework could be revised for special education, thus providing music teachers with a tool for designing multimodal music lessons for pupils with severe or multiple disabilities.