Dance, dance, dance: discovering the danceability


Can you dance, with a motoric disability? Instinctively, you’d answer no. But, lucklily, reality is different.

In 1987, two US choreographers, Alito Alessi and Karen Nelson, created the danceability, a dance method based on the principle that everyone, including disabled people, has the possibility and the right to express his own artistic verve also through the dance.

About 30 years later, the method developed by the two choreographers has come a long way. Today, Alessi is the promoter of DanceAbility® International, an organization aiming to promote the method, and the philosophy it’s based on, all around the world (including Italy!), through workshop, courses and performances.


But who’s danceability for? Just disabled (motoric, psychic or sensory)? No, quite the contrary! During the classes, continuous interaction among disabled and “able-bodied” is encouraged, in the free expression enabled by dance. There are no schemes, nor right or wrong steps, or strict rules: it’s up to everyone’s creativity and fantasy to invent the choreography inspired by music, based on his own skills and capabilities.

Furthermore, this method is particularly useful also to those working directly with disabled people, since it enables them learning effective methods to hook up more directly and effectively with them.

Not to mention the fact that, since it doesn’t “ghettoize” disabled people in “dedicated classes”, but mixes them with “able-bodied”, the danceability successes where, many times, good purposes run around: promoting and creating, through the dancing experience, the effective inclusion of disabled people (who are, precisely, people beyond and before their diseases), undermining and, often, destroying prejudices and preconceptions – that are still far too widespread and rooted- surrounding disability.

So, what about launching ourselves on the dance floor?




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