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Every Body is a Dancer

Patrick Duplin likes to play the piano. He’s also an altar server at his church, something the 27-year-old has done for so long that he helps the younger kids when they start, looking after them and making sure they know what to do when. He goes to the gym a couple of times a week, often with his dad, and he likes to help his mom with the shopping.

His parents say that, as someone who is normally a quiet person and who also has Down syndrome, Patrick is often overlooked in a crowd. Or sometimes, people avoid him because they’re not sure what to say or how to act around him. There are times when he feels invisible.

But not when he goes to dance class.

“His dance bag is always ready to go. It has his shoes, his bottle of water. If there’s another activity and dance, dance always gets top billing,” says his mom Mary Jane Duplin. “I think it’s because he’s quiet. He’s quiet in the dance sessions as well. He’s verbally quiet, but he’s expressive in his movements. Normally, he’s low-key, but not in the dance sessions. It is where he shines, and that is because he is accepted.”

The Duplins say that feeling of unconditional acceptance and joyful expression is carefully cultivated and nurtured by Kerry Kincy, an expressive artist who specializes in dance and movement. A core faculty member at the New Haven Ballet, where she leads the Shared Abilities Program, she has been named a Connecticut Arts Hero by the Connecticut Office of the Arts. She also is the director of the Free Center in Middletown, where she creates a variety of free programming using expressive arts and movement to cultivate awareness of the mind/body connection as a path to healing.

One of her specialties is creating works of art with groups of dancers, welcoming both those who are conventionally abled and those with a wide range of disabilities. And that is exactly what she will be doing as part of the GreenStage 2023, a festival that will take place on and around the Guilford Green from Sunday, Sept. 17 to Sunday, Sept. 24. Kincy welcomes anyone and everyone 13 years old and older to join in VisABLE Dance.

Every Body Welcome

Kincy’s VisABLE Dance for people of all abilities will take place on the festival’s final day, Sunday, Sept. 24, at 11:30 a.m. Those who would like to join will take part in three 90-minute workshops that will be used to create the performance. Kincy says that in the workshops, participants will learn the ingredients of dance and movement and, using the language of movement, will choreograph the new work. The rehearsals will take place in the weeks prior to the performance. Those who would like to learn more or participate should call Kincy at 860-992-8665.

“This is an invitation for community members, young and seasoned, to take positive risks in movement without the fear of ridicule. Each individual will be honored and will contribute to the whole of our performance. All ages 13 and up are welcome to join us in creating. Everybody is a dancer,” she says.

Kincy says this with the authority of someone who has been doing this kind of work with populations and people who are traditionally invisible for more than 20 years. In addition to people like Patrick Duplin, who have Down syndrome, and others with physical disabilities, she also works with people who have grown more invisible as they grow older and with people who often are shunned by mainstream society.

“I’ve worked with women who are serving really long sentences in prison, some of them for more than 50 years,” she says, women who are assigned a number and a uniform of clothes exactly like everyone else’s. “So there are lots of reasons for that, but it also makes individuals invisible. And so to be able to work with them and provide them with the tools to give voice to what is was really powerful.”

At Connecticut Valley Hospital, she has worked with young adults who had schizophrenia. “That, too, was a population that nobody really thinks of, you know, and they think that nobody understands where they are coming from,” she says. “I was there for about 10 years. I’d go in twice a week for about an hour and use movement as a way to build confidence and esteem.”

She once worked with some people who were voice-hearers, and she asked them, after getting to know them and working with them for some time, “Well, do the voices ever tell you to give someone a hug? And they were like, ‘You know, Miss K., you’re so crazy!’ But we built up the trust so that they knew what they said and what they felt was important.”

Stillness In Movement

She once worked with a group that included a young man who would come every week, but he wouldn’t dance; he wouldn’t even move. “And so we were creating a dance where everybody contributed any movement, any gesture, and we put it together in a sequence, but this gentleman, he just wouldn’t move,” she says. “And so I said, ‘Wow, stillness. This is a great opportunity to take pause, you know, and have some stillness in this movement sequence.’”

She has had some success with people who have Parkinson’s, a brain disorder that can cause unintended and uncontrollable movements, by teaching them how to tango, a dance that starts and stops. “And that was good for them,” she says.

One of her goals is to encourage people to move as much as they can move, but her work goes beyond that. “We also talk about the idea of moving, whether it’s in our minds or in our bodies,” she says. She once did some work at a school that served students with a wide range of very significant disabilities, including cerebral palsy and traumatic brain injuries. “There was a young man in that class who was the star football player who got in a car accident, and he had a traumatic brain injury,” she says. “And here’s this young man; he knew what he wanted to say, he knew where he wanted to go, but he didn’t have the voice. And so he would write and tell me how depressed he was that he could not be in regular classes. And he was able to express how the system couldn’t support him going back to class with his peers.”

Her work extends to those who are traditionally underserved by social structures most of us take for granted, like the healthcare system. “When my own Black daughter because pregnant, we realized how important these tools are when it comes to saying something is not right. It gives you tools to advocate for yourself.”

“So this work, to me, sometimes there aren’t any words. Like Patrick, he doesn’t have a lot of words, but he is so expressive,” she says.

Opportunities For Insight

Patrick’s dad, Mark Duplin, says he’s grateful to Kincy’s work not only because it allows Patrick to be more expressive but also because her unconditional acceptance, along with the structure she provides with her programs, has allowed him to understand how to move in the world with people who are conventionally abled.

He gives this example: “A young man like Patrick doesn’t have a lot of opportunities to be one-on-one with a young lady,” he says. Before his involvement with the program, his inquisitiveness about young women would sometimes lead to behavior that could be considered awkward. He just didn’t know better. Kincy’s program includes guidance on how to move and interact with others who are dancing in ways that are appropriate. “So, over the years, he’s learned how to act properly with a young lady.”

Kincy says that, over the years, she’s learned that when people engage in movement and dance, it can lead to a wide range of learning opportunities and insight. And she is insistent that her program is open to anyone, in this case of the GreenStage event, anyone over 13 years of age.

“Join us. If you can move. If you can’t move,” she says. “It can create lasting change way beyond what we do in the performance. This is all about being seen and the natural healing medicine that movement can provide. Give it a whirl.”