Soft / Hard Edges – A reflection on accessibility at Foolish Operations
by danielle wensley

Foolish Operations (FO) is a multi-faceted dance organization creating performances and movement classes for children up to eight years old and their caregivers, a demographic where accessibility is a dynamic negotiation of space, relationality, and care. In our practice of community dance, true inclusion relies on “soft edges,” which are responsive environments that adapt to individual agency, pace, and vulnerability. Conversely, “hard edges” represent the structural or spatial boundaries that inevitably surface when diverse human needs intersect. As an organization dedicated to early childhood, navigating these edges requires a willingness to lean into complexity. By learning through community collaboration, we aim to stretch traditional boundaries and create spaces that truly welcome every body into the dance.

Our movement classes are carefully designed and facilitated with co-regulation, play and relationality in mind, aiming to make dance feel welcoming to the early years demographic. Some of the supportive elements include a padded floor, a wide-open room free of obstacles and the invitation to enter and exit as needed. We facilitate in pairs, and often with several additional dance artists in the room, not only as an artistic choice but a response-focused framework for safety and comfort. A lead facilitator shares instruction while the co-facilitator and additional artists tend to the peripheral activity and more direct needs of participants. These, among others, work to form an irresistible dance cradle with soft edges. Soft edges are responsive and respectful of the individual agency of participants; they shape a container of shared dance experiences that includes the humanity of day to day life. 

The needs of young children and their caregivers have always been a primary focus of Foolish Operations’ gatherings, whether by welcoming breast feeding or bottle feeding at any point, allowing participants or audience members to exit and re-enter as needed, or yielding to big emotions as they erupt and recede. While the practice is inherently rooted in celebrating and exploring movement and audiencing at various developmental stages from baby to young child, FO Artistic Director Julie Lebel noted an underrepresentation of participants with disabilities, possibly due to a combination of limited access to disclosure mechanisms and various known or unforeseen barriers to participation. Over the last couple of years, FO facilitators have been researching how to deepen the organization’s capacity for full-spectrum inclusion, expanding our practices to welcome participants with diverse physical, cognitive, sensory and neurodivergent needs. 

In Fall 2024, Julie Lebel, Sarah Gallos and I spent a week in residence at Surrey Centre for Child Development (SCCD), learning through facilitating workshops with daycare groups of toddlers and preschoolers. SCCD supports children with disabilities and their families, whether with or without a formal diagnosis. These workshops helped Foolish Operations develop Paper Boat Voyage, a multi-sensory interactive performance for children five to eight years old designed to be inclusive of children living with neurodiversity or reduced mobility. 

As the week unfolded, new lessons in the realm of soft edges tuned our attention to modulation: slowing or quickening the delivery of information based on group response, reducing the volume of voice or music as a grounding method, and stretching the timeline of perceived engagement and response. Often, the workshops’ endings would blend into an increasingly relaxed and social space of continued play, which seemed to support a wider breadth of engagement potential. Here, we would witness some of the children continuing to explore the material that was introduced during the workshop, or even touch into it for the first time. Traversing the soft edge, we met the children in a place of sustained movement exploration. 

We applied this learning to the beginning of the workshops as well, defining an arc that prioritized the transitions from welcoming participants in, facilitating the workshop structure, and culminating with a real-time, active debrief. Soft edges in the beginning moments allowed us to learn about the participating students before transitioning into the workshop content; some moved tentatively towards us, some cowered at loud sounds, some wanted to hold a blanket or toy, and some used mobility devices or preferred a chair for seating instead of the floor. Within this slowed-down and stretched welcome and farewell, we prioritized relational learning that was directly rooted in what was present. In other words, we used these moments to learn about each other and notice what approach might best work within this specific group, on this specific day. This practice closely follows a spirit of improvisation, always responding directly to what is happening rather than imposing a perceived outcome based on past or desired outcomes. 

In the spring and summer of 2025, FO consulted with artist Harmanie Rose on approaches to accessibility in a community dance context. Harmanie is a performance artist, choreographer, and facilitator who draws from her lived experience with spina bifida and 20 years of experience in contemporary improvisational dance to uplift disabled, Mad, and otherwise marginalized artists. Harmanie’s perspective as a dancer who uses a motorized wheelchair provided FO with a unique perspective on accessibility and specifically the inclusion of mobility device users. Historically, FO spaces have seldom included mobility device users, aside from the Ensemble Thinking workshops which generally attract emerging and established adult dancers. 

Harmanie consulted closely on the development of promotional material and access information for a workshop titled Dancing Pathways, which took place at Riley Park outside of our Fieldhouse residence throughout the summer of 2025. The workshop included facilitated movement activities inspired by the pathways observed in the park—underground, on the ground and in the air—followed by an invitation to draw with chalk on the concrete pathways nearby. Harmanie supported the development of a clear statement on park accessibility with information about transit routes, public health precautions, accessible park entrances, and a summary of workshop activities that expressed possible barriers to people with disabilities. Dancing Pathways was promoted directly to All Bodies Dance Project community members, with hopes of welcoming a broader range of dancers with various access needs, including dancers who use mobility devices. 

The Dancing Pathways workshops were facilitated outside in the shade on FO’s large canvas dancing carpet. As we prepared to welcome mobility device users for one of the workshops, we set up the dancing carpet next to the concrete basketball court since wheel traction could potentially tear the canvas. This spatial arrangement ensured a soft, padded area for babies and young children to move on the ground and without shoes, as well as a smooth surface for wheelchair users to travel with more ease. The workshop progressed and emphasized spatial barriers; participants using the dancing carpet without shoes could move onto the concrete with less comfort and safety, and wheelchair users could not move onto the dancing carpet. Participants could dance close together, but the spatial boundaries defined a segregation between the two spaces. Despite our best efforts to hold our usual soft edge approach, a hard edge was formed. 

As the movement portion of the workshop culminated, participants were invited to draw their dances with chalk on the concrete or to continue to dance on the carpet. During this time, we noticed more fluidity between the two spaces. Many participants stayed for up to an hour after the guided parts of the workshop, hopping from the dancing carpet to the concrete for drawing, and even to the playground or farmer’s market briefly before returning to dance or draw some more. Harmanie was joined on the concrete by a three-year-old participant and then established a lead-and-follow sequence where Harmanie danced the little one’s drawing. Once again, the extension or spillover into a more loosely facilitated space supported continued engagement. The overall experience did call attention to spatial barriers, conflicting access needs, and a cacophony of soft and hard edges, but ultimately resulted in a joyous community gathering.

We are in the process of defining this region beyond the soft edges. It is a secondary space nestled alongside, and even overlapping with, the primary container of facilitated activities. It has become a consistent element of the Dancing the Parenting practice, when a bucket of books is brought out after the dancing practice has closed with a “1, 2, 3, clap”. Unexpectedly, all of Riley Park became a supportive secondary space during the Dancing Pathways workshops. Families could split up and enjoy simultaneous activities at once. In one occurrence, a parent shared that the drawing activities kept their older child engaged while they danced with their younger child on the carpet nearby. Throughout the summer, it was exciting to notice how the primary and secondary spaces worked in tandem to meet multiple, and sometimes conflicting, needs. We are beginning to accept that not every space can be tailored to meet all needs, but the use of the secondary space seems to broaden the scope of who we welcome into FO spaces. 

As we work toward approving an official Accessibility Policy for Foolish Operations, we are reflecting on the needs of our primary demographic. Our workshops and classes will always be designed with early childhood in mind, prioritizing the unique needs of young children and their caregivers. However, true accessibility means our culture of care must remain malleable and shift dynamically based on who is in the room and how they want to participate. We are learning that articulations around proximity, touch, and spatial boundaries can vary significantly from person to person, and that explaining these essential needs to young children can be challenging within a brief movement class.

This reality became profoundly clear during an Ensemble Thinking workshop in 2025, when a dancer who alternates between manual and motorized wheelchairs shared two critical boundaries. First, they noted a valid safety concern regarding the potential for accidentally injuring young children while navigating mobility devices in shared spaces, as well as a preference for minimal touch due to heightened physical sensitivity. Moments like this remind us that designing a single space that flawlessly meets every individual need is a beautiful, yet often impossible, challenge. Our spaces will inevitably contain participants with conflicting needs. Moving forward, Foolish Operations commits to leaning into that complexity by continuing to practice rigorous awareness and value experiential learning while growing directly alongside our community.