ABSTRACT
Whenever we join a new group, just like those who entered the first residency in Leeds, we are each in some small way brought face to face with our own uncertainties: will we be accepted? Will people be open? Will we be able to give a good account of ourselves? When disabled and non-disabled people meet in the dance studio, especially for the first time, such feelings may be magnified. Each of us may be confronted with situations that are unique, unfamiliar, unsettling. Faced with creating something out of our meeting, and without yet knowing how our physical differences might lead to a dance experience, we must explore the unknown territory together and, rather like children, our research takes the form of play; we have to make it up as we go along, in other words we have to improvise: composing as one goes along from Latin improvisus, 'unforeseen', from IM-(not) + provisus, from providere to foresee.
