The lived experience of university students with visual impairments and their sighted partners' participation in inclusive social ballroom dance

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT : Ballroom and Latin American dance appear to be gaining popularity among people with disabilities, as a form of exercise and leisure activity. However, the majority of research conducted in this field seems to have focused on the physicality of dancers' movements, while overlooking their unique interpretations of such an experience. Furthermore, there appears to be a dearth of literature on the experience of dance for visually impaired individuals. The aim of this study was to give a voice to the lived experience of visually impaired dancers and their sighted partners who participate in inclusive social ballroom and Latin American dance. The participants were members of the Differently-abled Dance Class that was held by the dance society of a university situated in the Western Cape, South Africa. This qualitative study was conducted within the theoretical framework of the social theory of disability.Method: The processes of data collection and data analysis were conducted according to the principles of interpretative phenomenological analysis. The sample consisted of nine participants (i.e. four visually impaired dancers and five of their sighted partners) with whom I conducted semi-structured, in-depth, individual interviews.Findings and discussion: The experiences of the visually impaired and sighted participants in dance consisted of the accumulation of findings discussed herein. The dancers described many physical, social and psychological benefits of, and challenges from, their participation in inclusive social dance. Such benefits appear to have encouraged and promoted the dancers sustained participation in the class. Ballroom and Latin American dance were described by both the visually impaired and sighted dancers as being a setting in which heteronormative, stereotypical gender roles were reinforced, regardless of a dancer's (dis)ability. The visually impaired dancers expressed a desire to look good and to fit in with their sighted partners, as well as to disguise their impairment as far as possible when performing for an audience. As such, these dancers appear to believe that there is an expectation imposed on them by society to appear sighted when they participate in the visual spectacle of dance. The concerns of inclusion and accessibility seemed to be a point of contention between the visually impaired and the sighted dancers, with the latter holding the belief that the dance society may have achieved a higher level of inclusion than was described by the former. However, the participants agreed that more could be done to establish the further inclusion and integration of all of the dancers in the society, regardless of their (dis)ability. Dancing with a visually impaired partner appears not only to have challenged and changed the sighted participants' preconceptions of their visually impaired partners, but also of the people with disabilities with whom they came into contact outside of the dance society. The changing of such preconceptions, however, might lend itself to the admiration and idealisation of visually impaired individuals, which was evident in the sighted participants' reports. Insights into the world of disability were discussed in terms of the reports given by the participants.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University