Our objective was to gain more confidence in teaching an ageing general population by reflecting suitable didactic methods, by clarifying the needs of this target group, and by practicing teaching together. The joint theme was "Embodied Agency". We wanted to find out how important were cultural differences while teaching dance to the target groups. All our three organizations are striving for inclusion and how to realize inclusion on many different levels: to understand what inclusion means in dance after abandoning existing differentiation of professional dancer or amateur for example. What strategies work, which ones don't. An important point became how to address the target group so people would feel invited to join. This is especially important in dance as many people think they cannot dance or they have a difficult time learning movement. Our goal was to ensure no one felt like they were not good enough to participate. A resource-oriented approach lied at the heart of KODA: To acknowledge the life experience and the skills that each participant brought to the classes, and that the resource orientation founded the didactic methods.
Many contemporary dance teachersoneapproach an age where they are not necessarily teaching young professional dancers anymore. Redirecting themselves, the ageing population is one logical new target group. Yet the goals, possibilities, methods of teaching an ageing population is completely different. As many dance teachers act as solo agents, a lot can be gained from an in-depth exchange among dance teachers, tapping into indivual knowledge and experience. Common denominators and cultural differences as well as different didactic approaches need be thus explored. Wiener Tanzwochen has been offering dance workshops for the generation 50 and older for a number of years. Yet beyond informal exchanges no reflection on methodologies took place before KODA at ImPulsTanz. Artis Umbria gears retreats towards Salutogenese to an international audience and would like to address the demographics in rural Italy more precicely. The teachers from University of Limerick already have experience with specialized ageing populations, such as Parkinson patients, and wants to extends the knowledge to teaching low-threshold dance classes to a wide range of community-dwelling, ageing people.