SYNERGY OF DANCE

This project unites continents. DanceAbility was invented in 1987 by two dancers from the USA who decided to experiment with dances for people with disabilities. As the time passed, the founder of DanceAbility, Alito Alessi, began to teach them to enthusiasts from other countries. Now the movement is promoted worldwide by 700 people. Among them is Nigar Sultanova, artistic director and director of DanceAbility Azerbaijan.

Accept your body

She's very good with her body. It took years to build the relationship. Sultanova believes that dances accept us as we are. "DanceAbility is not just a project, but a practice. It is for everyone who wants to learn to talk to their body, and people with disabilities are no exception. That's what makes them unique," she says.

Nigar Sultanova's personal story motivated her to teach dances and DanceAbility practices. Since childhood, it was important for her to find a way of self-expression that would not restrict her free nature. After all, traditional dances set certain limits, which is not the case with the DanceAbility. As a teenager, self-expression helped Nigar to find and accept her inner self. And now, years later, she encourages her students to accept their bodies as they are, accept their emotions, their thoughts...  

According to Nigar, these practices are based on one very important truth. The more we think, the more we want to change our bodies. We constantly compare ourselves with others, thereby willing to change something in ourselves; we then become unhappy with ourselves.

"I enjoy these practices as they make it possible to leave my thoughts of myself, to get into my body. Because the body is a very important tool, which for some reason we often try to silence. We are afraid to transmit our emotions through our body. All body practices, including DanceAbility, allow us to put our thoughts aside and gain experience through bodily emotions," says Nigar.

She teaches others and learns herself. For her, learning is an endless process that allows for complete transformation into a different person. "I often compare an individual to nature. He changes and transforms in the same way as everything changes and transforms in the nature. It is beautiful," Nigar believes. 

Dance as an incentive

During the pandemic, Nigar completed a special course and became a master DanceAbility teacher. She now can teach these practices to psychologists, psychotherapists, specialists in rehabilitation centres, anyone who wants to know their body and unlock their potential. Every graduating professional receives a certificate and can safely implement the knowledge in their daily practices.

By constantly developing many different projects, Nigar Sultanova develops DanceAbility's activities in Azerbaijan. One of them is the initiative called Every body has its own story, which creates equal opportunities for self-expression and physical activities for everyone. The initiative is conducted online. To make the information accessible to all, the participants were divided into groups. Special methods are used to train the blind, people with hearing disabilities, etc. 

"During the pandemic, we started developing and conducting exercises online. Currently, there are over 200 of them. We started to analyse the exercises to choose the ones we could easily demonstrate remotely."

DanceAbility has also developed a special manual to help teachers choose the right exercises for people with different disabilities. 

"Imagine you can't see me, just close your eyes. You are my partner. I am performing certain actions. I say that I raise my right hand and place it on my head and then touch the floor. You do not see it physically, but you visualise it as I am talking about it. A failure of one of the human organs eventually leads to the strengthening of sensibility in others. This is the way we conduct training sessions in our classes."

Surprisingly, dance is not the main incentive in Nigar Sultanova's life. She believes it is important to enjoy a good and complete life. This is what dances at DanceAbility help her to achieve. "DanceAbility is one of those methods that allows you to do that. Because it brings us back into our body. It helps us find a balance of body and soul." 

It is possible to learn all the DanceAbility practices completely free of charge. Nigar Sultanova raise funding for the project through various projects that she offers to NGOs, governmental organisations and the private sector, which then cooperate with her in the future.

She admits that she does not divide people into sick and healthy, happy or unhappy. At the end of each lesson, she and her students sit together in a circle and share their emotions and thoughts, draw conclusions from the lesson.

"Life is beautiful when we create together. To have the opportunity to meet, to be energised, to share energy, to create synergy with such different and unique people, to be with them all the time is a great happiness..."