The Signdance Group is dedicated to developing, presenting and sharing Signdance Theatre worldwide. Through the creative integration of sign language, dance, theatre and music, we place accessibility at the heart of artistic innovation, creating powerful encounters that connect artists, audiences and communities across cultures and borders.  



THE SIGNDANCE STORY

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The Beginning: No Permission Asked

Signdance did not emerge from a strategic plan.

It emerged from collision.

In the late 1980s, Cuban dancer and choreographer Isolte Avila arrived in Britain carrying a fierce physical language shaped by classical training, contemporary experimentation, and a refusal to accept artistic limits placed on disabled artists.

The first sparks were struck during the Linked In programme in Waterloo, London.

Alongside Christoffer, Rebecca, and emerging Deaf Dancers ideas were exchanged, alliances were forged, and the foundations of what would become Common Ground began to take shape.

The movement quickly migrated to Southall Community Centre, where the family expanded. Golda Dahan and Toby Baynton joined the growing rebellion. Nobody knew it at the time, but something unusual was forming: a company that would spend decades breaking rules, boundaries and expectations.

Dancing with the Revolutionaries

The company was never interested in fitting comfortably into existing models.

When Isolte declined an opportunity with the legendary physical theatre company DV8, she created something far more important than a job. She created a conversation.

That conversation brought Lloyd Newson into the orbit of the work and helped shape a period of fearless experimentation.

The results were explosive = A Stranger Disintegrates.

Performances that refused neat categories and challenged conventional ideas about movement, language, disability and performance itself.

Rather than adapting to the system, the artists were already beginning to reshape it.

The Ismael Ivo Years

Every revolution needs co-conspirators.

The next arrived in the form of the extraordinary choreographer Ismael Ivo.

International connections developed through work in Vienna opened new artistic frontiers. Physical language expanded. Ambition expanded. Geography expanded.

During this period, two figures arrived who would help define the company's future: David Bower and Denise Armstrong.

The work became bigger, darker, more ambitious.

Lunera &

An Angel or Old Dream of Flying.

These were not productions built around disability access.

They were productions built around artistic power.

A radical concept then.

Still radical now.

Writers and directors such as Carl Proctor Bill Hopkinson and Kaite O'Reilly joined the journey, producing works including What We Want  we want to Say to Juan Jose, Distant Sisters, and Caliban & Miranda.

The artistic language of Signdance was becoming unmistakable.

And completely impossible to tame.

Liverpool: The Wound

Every long-lived company has a chapter it would rather not have lived through.

For Signdance, that chapter was Liverpool.

The move should have represented stability.

Instead it exposed fault lines.

The work continued.

Tours happened.

The company travelled internationally.

India opened its arms.

But underneath the artistic success, cracks were expanding.

Personal trauma.

Institutional failures.

Broken trust.

The period eventually culminated in events that changed lives forever.

Rather than destroying the artists involved, the experience transformed them.

What was built next would be stronger precisely because of what had been endured.

Refusing to Disappear

Many companies die in moments like this.

Signdance did not.

Isolte Avila and David Bower fought back.

They refused silence.

They refused convenient narratives.

They refused to vanish gracefully.

The struggle culminated in a successful employment tribunal.

What followed was not merely a legal victory.

It was an escape.

For the first time, the possibility existed to build an artistic future free from structures that had become impossible to survive.

Amsterdam: Resurrection

If Liverpool was the wound, Amsterdam was the resurrection.

With the support of Joke Menssink and a network of allies across Europe, a new chapter began.

Carovana SMI in Sardinia.

Ana Monro Theatre in Ljubljana.

Artists, producers and visionaries who offered not pity, but possibility.

The company rebuilt itself from the foundations upward.

A new generation of work emerged.

Named Space.

A reborn Caliban & Miranda.

New collaborations.

New ambitions.

New freedom.

The name Signdance Collective became more than an identity.

It became a declaration of independence.

Making the Impossible

The years that followed produced some of the company's most acclaimed creations.

But Beautiful with adam Reynolds 

Collaborations with Zoe Partington

Dances for a Lost Traveller 

Bad Elvis.

Carthage.

The work travelled internationally.

Audiences grew.

The artistic language deepened.

Yet success never turned the company into something safe.

They remained stubbornly resistant to being packaged, simplified or domesticated.

Too visual for theatre.

Too theatrical for dance.

Too Deaf for mainstream structures.

Too disabled for comfortable narratives.

Too political for neutrality.

Perfect.

The Fight Continues

After decades of battles, crises, reinventions and escapes, the company remains what it has always been:

A disturbance.

A challenge.

A celebration.

A refusal.

Today Signdance continues creating theatre, film, public-space performance, digital work, comedy, television concepts and international collaborations across Europe and beyond.

They have survived fashions.

They have survived gatekeepers.

They have survived funding droughts.

They have survived bureaucracy.

They have survived being underestimated.

Again.

And again.

And again.

The miracle is not that Signdance survived.

The miracle is that after everything thrown at them, they still create.

Still travel.

Still provoke.

Still laugh.

Still refuse permission.

The story of Signdance is not about overcoming disability.

It is about refusing erasure.

And the story is not over yet. 🔥Visit our ARCHIVE