Scottish Dance Theatre works to integrate wheelchair dancers

The Scottish Dance Theatre has created a position called Dance Agent for Change, filled by wheelchair user Caroline Bowditch. Bowditch has a blog about her experiences. Here's what the artistic director Janet Smith said about the position in the Inverness Courier:

The Long and The Short of It", is the briefest piece they have ever done at just over three minutes and provides a feature for one of the company's newest development posts. Caroline Bowditch is a wheelchair user and has been appointed as Scottish Dance Theatre's Dance Agent for Change.

"Caroline has filled that new post and is here to shake things up and ask questions about dance aesthetics, about who can dance and what our expectations are of what and who we see dancing," Janet Smith explained.

"That is a bit of a follow-on from a project we did four years ago with Adam Benjamin and four guests who are wheelchair users. Her duo with Tom is only three minutes long but wonderfully complete.

"It features Caroline, the shortest dancer in our company at the moment, and Tom, who is the tallest at six-foot-five. It celebrates difference and the fun to be had from it. It came initially from Caroline and myself as a concept that we worked up through a play session, and then Caroline and Tom developed the work you will see together."