Dancers

The Gallaudet Dance Company is a performing group of approximately 15 dancers. All members of the company are undergraduate or graduate students at Gallaudet University, the world's only accredited liberal arts university for deaf and hard of hearing students. Each dancer's background is different-both in terms of hearing loss, preferred communication mode, secondary school education, and current major field of study as a University student. But all the dancers are excellent communicators. They rely on their vision as their primary mode of communication and communicate through their dancing in a range of styles, including dance that uses American Sign Language as its foundation. Gallaudet University itself is a bilingual community where students, faculty, and staff communicate with each other in both American Sign Language and English.

The Gallaudet Dance Company has entertained audiences of all ages around the world for more than 55 years.  It is considered to be one of the most exciting troupes presenting dance with ASL. The company is not able to satisfy all of the many requests it receives for two reasons. First, the dancers' primary responsibility is to their liberal arts studies. Secondly, the company is self-sustaining and requires financial support for its performances.

For booking information, please click on "Bookings" on the left of the page and for more information on dance techniques for deaf and hard of hearing dancers and/or our teaching methods, click on "Techniques" and/or read article by Dr. Diane Hottendorf and Ms. Sue Gill-Doleac entitled,"Deaf Dancers Celebrate 50 Years of Dance! Teaching Dance to Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students: The Gallaudet University Way," Dancer Magazine, March 2005, 42 - 45.