Inner Rhythm

This is an account of a search for ways to teach dance to the profoundly deaf in a variety of schools and settings. The author describes the methods and games she devised with the children to heighten their awareness of rhythm, music and the breath inherent in every dance movement. This work shows the author’s gradual realization that knowledge of music is the basis for dance teaching, and that this knowledge can also enhance the training of hearing dancers. This concept led the author to the conviction that, for the hearing as well as for the deaf, dance and music can be an alternative way of knowing, and an opportunity for children to learn to express their unarticulated feelings and thoughts, to communicate, to socialise and to explore the world in which they live. A video cassette is also available.

Author Biography

Naomi Benari danced with Ballet Rambert and with the Israeli Opera. She formed Dance for Everyone, the first dance company in England set up solely for work in education. She now lectures on the Performing Arts and teaches dance to profoundly deaf children in a number of schools and units using Inner Rhythm and also gives therapeutic dance sessions to children with learning difficulties.