In the early years, an interpreter was provided for signed translation of music during school productions. Later, a song was requested which did not lend itself to a sign language interpretation (Johnson). Instead, it was danced, and a new art form was born. Inspired by a vision of integration between deaf and hearing cultures, it uses visual language, the basis of deaf culture, and fuses that with expressive dance and live music (The Company).

Almost every School for the Deaf has a dance program. The only ones that don’t are only because of budget dilemmas. Gallaudet University is the most famous of deaf institu

Some deaf persons develop a sort of inner rhythm, which allows them to dance to music even if they don’t hear the music. Other deaf persons prefer drums to guitar or piano. Why is that? Many people have the misconception that deaf people “hear” by feeling vibrations through the floor. How is this possible, especially if a person is moving and jumping so that they do not keep in continuous contact with the floor? What if the floor is not wood, but solid concrete? They need hours of practice in order to develop an inner sense of timing for a specific dance. Some dancers who have some residual hearing may pick up cues from the music to assist them in knowing where they are supposed to be in a dance, but this does not happen the first time they learn a dance, but rather after countless hours of practice and counting all the movements in a dance step. Whether the dancer can use his or her residual hearing will also depend on his or her type of hearing loss (high or low frequency loss) and the music (bass or treble tones). Many deaf dancers can discriminate bass tones better than treble.

Heather was six years old when she began ballet lessons at the Dothan (Ala.) School of Dance. It was hoped that Heather might learn to hear the changing pitch and tone of music so that she could understand the changing pitch, tone, and inflection in spoken language. Wearing hearing aids, Heather can detect certain sound frequencies. Dance training became something Heather did out of sheer joy. She loved it. She developed self-confidence, becoming convinced that “she could dance just as well as anyone else in her class--maybe better.” On September 17, 1994 H

Some topics in this essay:
Miss America, Dance Imagine, Ambrosio Sign, School Dance, Lord’s Prayer”, Johnson Instead, Besides Dance, Martha Graham, Nobel Prize, School Deaf, deaf persons, art form, music deaf, changing pitch tone, residual hearing, pitch tone, sign language, deaf dancers, changing pitch, deaf dance, inner rhythm,