The artistic collective Ostružina has a repertoire which contains two performances that are accessible to a deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences and has systematically engaged in making dance activities accessible for deaf children since 2020. The catalyst was the international meeting of ASSITEJ (Association Internationale du Théâtre de l’Enfance et la Jeunesse/International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People) members, with theatre and dance work with deaf and hard-of-hearing children being a commonly mentioned and demonstrated practice in many countries. This meeting was also attended by Barbora Látalová, Ostružina’s founder, who decided to launch initiatives that would help make dance more accessible for deaf children. Deaf performer Věra Sagulová was invited to join the Ostružina team, first participating in the performance of The Carnival of the Animals, and later in Goats Horsing Around (Kozí kraviny).
In 2022, Lucie Štádlerová also joined the team, an expert in education to the Deaf community, bringing further expertise and enriching the collective’s activities with the idea of dance-movement workshops conducted in Czech Sign Language. In 2022 and 2023, this project received support from the Ministry of Culture and National Renewal Plan, allowing the collective to organise workshops in all eleven schools for the hearing impaired in the Czech Republic.
Through this experience and their observation of how these events played out, Ostružina published on and reflected more deeply about the importance of artistic experiential activities in Czech Sign Language for deaf children’s development.
Interestingly, the One World film festival coincidently screened the documentary La Singla (directed by Paloma Zapata, Germany/ Spain, 2023) back in 2023, the main protagonist of which is a deaf Romani flamenco dancer from Barcelona, named Antonia Singla. In the film, she explains how dance makes her life whole. For her, flamenco is as natural as Catalan sign language, the signs of which she spontaneously incorporates into her characteristic arm movements. Dance became a means of expressing her identity. Ostružina took part in the post-film discussion, coming together with deaf performers to consider the influence of dance on deaf people’s lives. The information in the film confirmed the experiences acquired during the workshops.