ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s Steve Paxton and Anne Kilcoyne pioneered a training programme for blind and visually impaired dancers. At the time they wrote 'the teaching of Contact Improvisation to a mixed disability group compounds communication problems, and we prefer to work with specific disability along with the able-bodies within each workshop' (Dance Research, 1993 XI(1)). (It is interesting to see how language has changed within the last decade.) Anyone who has struggled to teach groups in which too many needs begin to compete with rather than complement each other, will appreciate the clarity that can come from such a decision. It was just such a realisation that led to the development of what was to become known as the Simpson Board.
