JUTTA & THE HI-DUKES

Dance for folks with disabilities

Music, Movement, Socialization and more

Our programs are based on the recognition that folks with disabilities have the same interests and desires as everyone else – to enjoy music, to dance, to socialize, to meet new people and share good times with friends, and, simply put, to be part of the world. The fact that structured movement (groups moving in a unified manner in circles and lines to rhythmic music using all of one’s limbs, crossing one’s midlines, and more) happens to have powerful cognitive and physical benefits is frosting on the cake.

Over the years we have evolved ways of modifying and adjusting our education music and dance programs to meet the particular needs and varying abilities of our audiences. Our years of working with many different communities in Europe and America have taught us how to quickly adapt what we present to the skill levels of the folks in front of us so that everyone gets a chance to enjoy and benefit from dance.

In 2016, Jennifer Lasik of the Evanston Arts Council encouraged the band’s core musicians, Jutta Distler and Terran Doehrer, to apply for the E.A.C.’s Individual Artist Grant for the 2017 grant year. That grant helped us create a Summer Social Dance program for the Special Needs community of Evanston. The article below expands on that event. In 2018, The E.A.C. doubled the size of the grant and another Evanston institution, the Ridgeville Park District, decided to host the Social Dance, thanks to the work of Program Director Natalie Sallee.

We first became aware of how much power the combination of music and dance has after our first performance back in 1995 at a home for folks with developmental needs in Denmark. A teacher sent us drawings that two residents created in their effort to integrate their experience of our presentation.

She said we simply had to see what happened as a result of the program. The two residents were in a drawing class with a specific assignment but when the teacher turned her back, they flipped over their paper and drew us instead. Jesper drew very identifiable portraits of us that captured not just our images but our characters, too.

The experience of dancing to our acoustic music also affected the other artist so intensely that it inspired a breakthrough. We were told that for the first time ever he drew stick figures with eyes, mouths, and limbs.

Organizations in Switzerland eventually heard about what we did at that Danish residence and invited us to come to them, too. Most recently, the folks at Sonnhalde Gempen in Switzerland arranged for us to participate in a week-long annual conference of Special Needs residences and schools in Bucharest held at Pontelimon in May 2016, had us back in May, 2018, and invited us to return in May 2020 as well.