Tone Pernille Østern was studying at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in the 1990s, when CandoCo dance company, with dancers with and without disabilities, was up and coming in U.K. Much inspired by their work she co-funded Inclusive Dance Company in Norway in 2000, a small independent company that since then has had “difference” - in many ways - in focus in its artistic search. She further funded The Dance Laboratory, a community-based company with differently bodied dancers in 2003 and was artistic leader for them for 10 years. The Dance Laboratory also was her doctoral project for a Doctor of Arts in Dance at the University of the Arts in Helsinki, which she fulfilled in 2009. Since then, she works as an artist-teacher-researcher in an academic context as professor at NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The question of different bodies runs as a red thread through her work.
Read more at NTNU, Danselaboratoriet and Inclusive Dance Company.
