In 2014 Australian director/choreographer Philip Channells (Dance Integrated Australia) was commissioned by DansiT–Senter for Dansekunst i Sør-Trøndelag to collaborate with 20 members of the Danselaboratoriet and Danseteateret 55+ companies. The end result was a full-length intergenerational, disability-inclusive work that merged poetry, dance, theatre and music. Perfect (im)Perfections–stories untold was created with an international cast of artists with diverse backgrounds and life experience. The work premiered at the Multiplié Dansefestival in Trondheim on 3 April 2014. In his article, Channells shares his personal history and dance background before focusing on the collaboration. He discusses the inspiration behind the work, the creative processes and the successes and challenges in working across cultural boundaries.

This chapter presents a case study of two of the authors-Elen, a dancer, and Philip, a choreographer-teacher. It focuses on their experiences of change through long-term engagement in inclusive contemporary dance contexts, and how this participation has contributed to their quality of life. In this study, "inclusive contemporary dance context" refers to a dance community where differently bodied dancers, with and without disabilities, and little or much previous experience of dance, participate in and contribute to artistic and educational dance processes, often culminating in performances on stage. Individual meanings and shared themes are identified through holistic life story analysis of the two artists' written stories completed for the study. Participants' experiences are interpreted with the help of theory about aesthetic transformation and learning within a wider framework of dance art, dance education and quality of life.