The sharing of movement is not determined solely by its outward form.
What matters is how qualities such as direction, weight, breath, and the emergence of movement are communicated, received, and reimagined within a different body.
These are questions that dance has always contained. Inclusive practices make them more visible and engage with them directly as part of the creative process.
This is not a matter of compromise or simplification. Rather, it is a way of reshaping the very quality of the work itself.
Not Reproducing Form, but Sharing Texture
One of the most striking aspects of Stopgap’s practice was the emphasis placed on sharing the texture of movement—its direction, breath, weight, and underlying physical qualities—rather than focusing solely on reproducing a particular shape or sequence.
Rather than copying a movement that feels natural in one body directly into another, movement is retranslated into forms that can exist within each person’s body.
What matters here is preserving bodily difference while sharing direction, texture, and intention.
What emerged as distinctly Stopgap’s aesthetic was not visual sameness, but a shared tactile quality of movement and relationship.
“How can we dance together through texture (…) rarely do we say, ‘You need to make the exact same shape as me.’”
— Lucy Bennett, Stopgap Dance Company
Language, Too, Is Something to Be Translated
What is translated is not only movement.
At Stopgap, what might be called open language—language that deliberately leaves room—was used as a way of avoiding assumptions about a single type of body.
For example, rather than saying Touch the floor, they might say Reach as low as you can go today.
In this way, multiple bodies are allowed to enter the same instruction.
Translation, then, does not begin as an adjustment made afterwards. It begins at the level of the very first instruction.
This is not simply about making things easier to understand. It is also about designing language that does not unconsciously position one particular kind of body as the standard.
Translation Means Preserving Intention While Changing the Mode of Realization
In the practices of DanceSyndrome and AMICI as well, movement and improvisational material that emerged from dancers were not simply arranged as they were. They were reorganized into forms that could live within the work.
What matters is not abandoning artistic intention. Rather, it is discerning what must remain, and what can shift, so that the intention can emerge within different bodies and conditions.
Translation, in this sense, is not an adjustment made to make something easier or more accessible. It is a creative practice—a way of reimagining and reconstructing intentions, relationships, and artistic material across different bodies, experiences, and conditions.
“The intention has to stay the same, the artistic intention still has to stay the same, but you might just alter the delivery of it.”
— David Darcy, DanceSyndrome
■ What Emerged
The forms of translation explored here appeared across three interconnected dimensions:
- Reimagining movement through a different body.
- Leaving space within language and instruction.
- Transforming improvisations and participants’ contributions into forms that can live within a work.
In each case, the goal was not to conform to a predetermined “correct” version of the material. Rather, it was a process of exploring what could be shared—and how it could be shared—across different bodies, experiences, and conditions.
■ Returning to Practice: Questions for Your Own Context
Within choreography and instruction, what kinds of bodies, speeds, and ways of understanding do we unconsciously assume?
And when we encounter bodies or conditions that do not fully fit within those assumptions, how might we share—and retranslate—the intention and texture of the work?