Gwyn Emberton from Jones the Dance on the importance of access and delivering dance workshops for deaf and hard of hearing young people (BSL)

My name is Gwyn Emberton, I’m the Artistic Director of Jones the Dance. We are a dance company based in Wales and our aim is to bring people together and move audiences and participants through our dance performances, international projects and Youth Dance company.

Our Youth Dance company is made up of two groups. The first one is Quiet Beats – which delivers dance workshops for young Deaf people currently in Cardiff but expanding to North Wales in 2025. The second is Jones Bach which delivers creative dance workshops in mid Wales.

We are a hearing led company, but since 2020 we have been working with Deaf dancers and creatives in our productions and with young Deaf people in and around Cardiff and South Wales. We are all learning BSL as a company and BSL is performed in our latest works.

A workshop that we are hosting on 30th November will be an extra special one for Quiet Beats as it is one where all d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing young people can join. The workshop will be led by Panos Paraschou, a Deaf dancer from Greece who is currently performing in Sweden for one of Europe’s major dance companies, Skånes Dansteater.

The workshop will be split into two parts, the first for ages 7+ and then the second part the older dancers 12+ who will get to stay longer to delve deeper into Panos’s workshop and material.

In the workshop led by Panos, participants will immerse themselves in a lively, creative, and high-energy atmosphere. They will explore his approach to movement, learn choreography and steps while also having the opportunity to create their own.

By the end of the session, they will develop a fun, personalised dance combination that blends their freestyle with the learned movements, empowering them to express their individuality and creativity.

For the older group, Panos will inspire participants to explore new and exciting movement styles that broaden their creative thinking. Through engaging activities designed to spark their imaginations, they will create original dances that encourage artistic expression and individuality.

At the end of the workshop the participants will get to share their work with parents, family, carers and friends in a relaxed friendly session.

We started Quiet Beats after doing some access work with Taking Flight Theatre Company when they asked the question, who are you not meeting in your work, projects and youth projects?

Young Deaf people was one group we felt we weren’t meeting, so we began to question why and looked around to see if anyone else was providing dance classes for young Deaf people in Wales. We then began to develop the project in Cardiff.

So over the last four years we have been developing our Quiet Beats project and model for the workshops, focusing on creating a tailored dance workshop specifically for young d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing kids to dance.

In the workshops we remove the barriers they might face in mainstream dance classes. We have devised these with the support of Deaf experts’ and colleagues such as Taking Flight Theatre and Jonny Cotsen as well as taking on board all of the input from the young people we’ve met. From this we have developed an ‘invisible access’ approach to the workshops.

The idea is that we remove the barriers that exist so that the participants can experience dance workshops freely and without limitation, in a way that is tailored to the specific communication needs of the participants.

These might be making sure that the participants can see the teacher’s face when speaking or giving instructions, not turning away as we speak, making sure there is plenty of light in the room, always working in a mirrored studio whenever possible, avoiding moving and talking at the same time (for dance teachers the most common moment this happens is when you go to switch on the music!)

We always have interpreters in the room in case any of the young participants are using BSL – which may not be many in South Wales but for those that do come they are now learning some BSL in each session and really loving it.

In 2022, we were granted funding for Quiet Beats for a whole year from Arts Council of Wales which meant we needed to find a regular teacher. The participants themselves selected a teacher called Amber.

As she is hearing, we felt it was important to get as much Deaf representation in the room so we try to always have either have a second guest teacher/artist who is Deaf in the workshop and invite international Deaf dancers to lead the workshops. Hence inviting Panos.

There definitely aren’t enough accessible dance classes for young people and we probably wouldn’t have started the project if there were. We are also really aware of how mainstream classes are not tailored to the needs of young Deaf people so we are planning on sharing our experience with other dancers and teachers in Wales.

Our aim is encourage teachers and dancers to think about access in their regular mainstream classes and to embed some of the tools we have learnt and use in our workshops in their own practices. This means that if they have any Deaf or Hard of Hearing people in their regular classes then their classes will be accessible for D/deaf and hard of hearing people.

The real aim of all of the workshops is that the young people get to dance, be creative and have fun. They also get to meet other young people who are Deaf when this might not be the case in other areas of their lives.

Panos’s workshops is going to be all of those things and more. We are also inviting the parents, guardians and carers to join us in the cafe at the Dance House for coffee and cake whilst the dancers are sweating it out in the studio.

There are two age groups for the workshops – 7 to 11 and then 12+ years. All start at 10 and from 12:00 the older ones get a break then start again from 12:45 to 15:45. So it is a full day of dancing. To book you’ll need to head over to our website.

We will have more workshops coming up in the February and May half terms in Cardiff, as well as our annual summer school. There we invite a choreographer to make a new piece of work with the group which they get to perform to family and friends at the end of the week. Last year we made a short film which has toured Wales with our main company production.

We are also expanding Quiet Beats to North Wales in the new year, so look out for workshops across North Wales.

If you’re interested to find out more about the workshops and other information about what we do you can sign up to our newsletter on our home page.  

By Gwyn Emberton