Beyond the Ramp: Universal Design in Ballet

Ballet has always carried an aura of excellence. Its precision, strength, and artistry are what make it magnetic. But that same rigour can also be a barrier.

Too often, we keep people out of the studio not because they lack artistry, but because our teaching frameworks were never designed for the full range of human movement.

In this article, I talk about how to enable more bodies to feel at home in your studio...

Disabled bodies, or bodies that do not match the ballet or dance stereotype, do not need to be fixed or hidden. I believe in a world where more bodies can be at home in themselves and in the spaces around them. Universal Design in Ballet is one way to build that world.

Universal Design in Ballet reframes training from the ground up. It is not a bolt-on or an afterthought. It is a way of structuring class so that more dancers can pursue ballet’s rigour and beauty with integrity. It essentially pulls apart the code and gives everybody in the room an understanding of the creative goal. It’s not a mimicked exercise. Instead, it increases understanding. You're creating individualised movement but you’re also finding the commonalities.

For educators and artistic directors, it offers practical tools that protect ballet’s identity while widening its reach and helping dancers stay in their craft for longer.

Why Universal Design Matters

Traditional adaptation often fragments the studio. Teachers juggle parallel lessons, and disabled dancers end up analysing and translating while others copy and repeat. The result is survival, not training.

Universal Design shifts the frame. It asks us to build one coherent learning pathway with multiple legitimate entry points. It keeps ballet’s constants at the centre and opens more pathways to reach them.

Those constants, the features that make ballet recognisable and rigorous, remain unchanged:

• Long, open lines and clarity of shape
• Épaulement that shows direction and relationship to space
• Articulation through feet, hands, spine, and phrasing
• Musical precision in count, rhythm, and dynamic accent
• Virtuosity, expressed as speed, complexity, control, balance, or risk

Protect these, and the form remains whole. What we open up are the ways of achieving them.

How a Universal Design Class Works

A Universal Design class follows a consistent arc: Me → You → Us.

Exploring

Dancers begin individually, trying out different engines — legs, wheels, crutches, torso, floor — toward a shared function. Instead of “walk to the corner and show arabesque,” the cue might be: “Travel to an extended line behind you, show clear épaulement, arrive on a count of three.

Improvising

Constraints such as timing, facing, or pathway length are added so that personalisation remains but cohesion builds.

Setting

Each dancer locks in their version, aligning with ensemble parameters like timing and phrasing.

Relating

Duets, canons, mirrors, and call-and-response bring difference into dialogue.

Combining

Material integrates with repertory or new choreography, always anchored in ballet’s constants.

This sequence builds agency, precision, and ensemble cohesion, without creating separate classes running side by side.

Coaching Language: Function First

Language is one of the most powerful shifts. In Universal Design, cues move from function → form → finesse:

• “Travel” instead of “walk.”
• “Come to upright” instead of “stand up.”
• “Rebound” instead of “jump.”

This is not semantic softness. It is precision that keeps standards high while allowing multiple ways of achieving them. Every dancer receives both open goals (“demonstrate a rebound that generates forward travel, in time”) and closed goals (“arrive downstage on four with a long line and épaulement reads en face”).

The result is parity of training, parity of feedback, and an ensemble that shares a deep literacy in ballet’s aesthetics.

A Plié, Redefined

Consider the plié. Its traditional form - folding and extending through the legs - is one pathway. Its functions - lowering, rising, weight transfer, momentum - open up many more.

• A dancer on legs folds through ankles and knees.
• A dancer with crutches compresses and releases through torso and upper body.
• A wheelchair dancer compresses through spine and wheels, rebounding into travel.
• A floor-based dancer pulses through pelvis and spine with sustained épaulement.

Everyone keeps the same timing, facing, and musical phrasing. The room sees many pliés, but one ballet.

Learn more about the plié exercise in this video and article.

What Changes in Your Studio

Universal Design gives educators and directors practical tools to use immediately:

• Begin an exercise by naming function before form.
• Demonstrate three ways into a phrase, floor, supported, travelling.
• Lock two shared parameters, such as timing and facing, and invite dancers to create their own version.
• Use Drop & Join, self-regulated pauses, and Replace, personal material within shared timing, to strengthen ensemble listening.
• Write assessments with one open and one closed criterion, and give feedback in the same order: function, intention, form.
• Always return to: “Find your 100%.”
• Cohesion does not require uniformity, it requires commitment, clarity, and shared agreements.
• Use the phrase “Keep the count, customise the pathway.”

Safeguarding Ballet While Widening Access

Many leaders worry that opening the pathways might dilute ballet. In practice, the opposite happens.

Universal Design raises artistry. Dancers develop deeper understanding of function and intention, they make conscious choices rather than mimic shapes, and they own their musicality and line. The ensemble becomes more honest, and the work reads more strongly as ballet.

Universal Design is not a kindness. It is a design choice. It protects ballet’s constants while expanding its reach.

As educators and artistic leaders, the question is not “Can ballet handle this?,” but “Which part of my teaching will I rewrite this week so that it names function and intention first?”

If you are ready to explore how Universal Design could work in your company, I would love to help you build that framework. Please feel free to contact me and we can have a chat. I may even bring biscuits.

Together, we can keep ballet’s rigour and beauty alive, and open the door so that more dancers can truly enter and feel welcome.

[Image caption: Suzie has her back to us and in front of her are a group of ballet dancers holding the barre in a studio. She is talking them through a series of movements. They face us.]