At Azara Ballet, dancers are not expected to maintain eye contact with directors and choreographers. If company members need an impromptu break from the bright stage lights during rehearsals, they take one. They also receive clear guidance on hair and makeup well in advance of the performances.
The priority at Azara is the health of the dancers. Founded in 2022 by dancers Kate Flowers and Martin Roosaare, who are both autistic (and are a married couple), the company, which is based in Sarasota and Bradenton, Florida, is a haven for neurodivergent artists. (The company is made up of 10 dancers, not all of whom are neurodivergent.)
“When I dance,” Flowers said, “as long as it’s in a good environment and a safe space, expression through nonverbal movement is something that helps me a lot.”
Azara addresses a gap in the dance world: the need for spaces where people with autism, ADHD, or other conditions that fall under the broad term “neurodivergent” can freely experience the art form. Evidence, both anecdotal and empirical, suggests that there is a profound connection between dance and these neurological conditions. In recent years this relationship has become an area of increasing attention for researchers, artists and performing arts organizations.
In November, Azara gathered for a rehearsal of her “Voices of Azara” program in the black box theater where the show would soon take place. The atmosphere in the theater seemed at once active – dancers warming up, reviewing steps, chatting – and calm: there was temperate lighting, pleasantly cool air and, among the performers, a seemingly innate awareness of volume of their voices.
To begin rehearsals, Roosaare gave the dancers a summary of the program for the next three hours. Then, they reviewed the four pieces, all written by members of the company, before receiving the notes. While the dancers performed, the music was never too loud and corrections were never shouted.
For the most part, though, the rehearsals didn’t seem much different than those of a small dance company. But what makes “a world of difference,” said dancer Rebecca Kimsey, who is autistic, is the level of humanity and consideration in the studio.
“Martin and Kate were very helpful and also very understanding of everything that happened,” she said, “like if I have a day where I wake up with a migraine from overstimulation.”
He added: “If we’re in rehearsal and things are moving really fast, they still don’t shout out the corrections, which can alarm or scare people if they’re focused.”
Flowers said she has always felt drawn to dance. “Particularly with autism, it’s really helpful to have structure,” she said. “Dance really provides that. It makes sense why I was drawn to dance and why I continued to be drawn to it.
Research validates these experiences. The findings suggest that dance may be unusually well-suited to complementing the strengths that come from being autistic or having certain neurological conditions, while alleviating some of the difficulties.
Dr. Jessica Eccles, a researcher at Brighton and Sussex Medical School in England, studies how certain conditions overlap with hypermobility (a wider-than-typical range of motion) and creativity. “Attention to detail, memory, passions, thinking outside the box — all of these things are probably useful assets for dancers,” Eccles said. “A high percentage of dancers may be neurodivergent, but may not be recognized; they may not have a diagnosis.
Julia Basso, director of the Embodied Brain Lab at Virginia Tech, has established further evidence of the link between dance and neurodivergence by measuring brain waves. In a group of musical theater performers, most with autism, dance and performance have been shown to increase intra-cerebral synchrony – that is, the neural connections within a performer’s brain – as well as intercerebral synchrony, or connections established between multiple people. This suggests that dance may play an important role in things like social connection and decreasing anxiety, Basso said, which are common challenges.
Roosaare and Flowers observed the positive effects of dance on a group of autistic preschool students enrolled in Azara’s Atypical Dance Initiative. Students normally struggle to concentrate in school during the day, Roosaare said, “but when it comes to dancing, they always pay attention and put in the effort.”
While Azara takes a dancer-centric approach to inclusivity, most companies focus primarily on the audience. The New York City Ballet, for example, recently hosted a sensory performance of “The Nutcracker” and has another sensory event (a Balanchine triple bill) scheduled for May. Other companies have also implemented this practice, largely as part of the “Nutcracker” season.
“The audience felt welcomed, supported, not judged,” Meghan Gentile, City Ballet’s associate director of education, said of a sensory performance last spring. “There are more and more discussions about how to make all our performances a little more accessible. There’s this new lens that’s been put into our work.”
At Azara all performances are designed with neurodiversity in mind. A similar approach has been taken by the Lumberyard Center for Film and the Performing Arts, in New York City, with its Seats on the Spectrum, an accessibility program designed for easy implementation in theaters. The pilot version, which debuted in October, is available at New Victory Theatre, HERE Arts Center and Roundabout Theater Company.
Adrienne Willis, Lumberyard’s executive and artistic director, said that “while separate shows and separate festivals are great and reach so many people, they don’t reach an adequate number of the population.” He added that Lumberyard was interested in making accessibility “more economically viable for movie theaters.”
At many of these events, audience members are offered sensory kits – fidget toys, earplugs, noise-cancelling headphones – and a visual and textual description of what to expect from their time in the theater. There are often designated, less crowded seating areas for neurodivergent concertgoers, and during the show, the house lights are never completely dimmed, lighting and sound effects are tempered, and patrons are invited to come and go as needed.
These may seem like big changes. But Azara dancer Kimsey said that when some of her friends attend these shows, “they tell me ‘I barely notice the difference; I didn’t know it was a sensory day.’”
However, he added: “For those who need these changes, it is a lifeline. It connects you with something you might otherwise never witness.”
The next generation of dance artists is also developing the tools to consider neurodivergence. At the University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, Patrick Corbin, associate professor of dance practice, has joined forces with a neuroscientist and an occupational therapist, as well as neurodiverse theater artists, to establish a course called Dance and Neurodiversity/ Autism.
By combining science, movement, and community engagement, Corbin hopes students will learn how dance affects the brain and also better understand these conditions as a whole.
“We develop dance-based strategies, using all these things, to see how we can learn more about how to walk in someone else’s shoes,” Corbin said. “Instead of trying to pull people with autism into our world, maybe if we entered their world we could find a bridge to connection.”
As Azara tries, it’s clear that connection is a goal. Each dance piece has a clear meaning or story, and the movements chosen by the choreographers are not too opaque to understand, nor so literal as to seem banal. The dancers move confidently, with a sense of abandon and flow; they are in their element.
“For me, choreography helps in terms of expression,” Roosaare said, “to be able to portray certain feelings, emotions and ideas that are normally a little harder to convey to people.”
“I feel like there are a lot of undiagnosed autistic people in the dance world who have found it as an avenue of expression.”