Who We Are - ShaLeigh Dance Works

We create dance-theatre experiences that invite people to encounter the world through perspectives beyond their own.

ShaLeigh Dance Works (SDW) is a Durham-based nonprofit dance-theatre company dedicated to creating original performances that explore perception, connection, and what becomes possible when people gather across difference.

Founded in 2005 by Artistic Director ShaLeigh Comerford, SDW has spent more than two decades developing immersive dance-theatre works that blend movement, sound, text, visual design, and sensory experience. Through collaborative creative processes, the company creates performances that invite audiences to enter an experience rather than simply observe it.

Today, SDW is recognized for pioneering disability-led, multisensory approaches to performance that reimagine accessibility not as accommodation, but as artistic practice.

Twenty Years of Artistic Inquiry

ShaLeigh Comerford in a performance still from "Dedicated to [ ] because of [ ] (and vice versa)." — ID: ShaLeigh performs in *Dedicated to [ ] because of [ ] (and vice versa)* in a flowing light-colored costume extends into a sweeping curved shape against a black background. Other performers emerge from the darkness behind them, creating a striking composition of movement, contrast, and theatricality. The black-and-white image emphasizes the expressive physicality and artistic vision that have shaped ShaLeigh Dance Works throughout its history.

Throughout its history, SDW has explored questions of identity, power, belonging, and human connection.

Early works such as Dedicated to [ ] because of [ ] (and vice versa) examined gender, violence, and cultural narratives surrounding power. Later productions including I Promise, Bamboo Wind, and The In-Between expanded the company’s investigation into community, collective experience, and the ways people encounter one another across difference.

This artistic inquiry ultimately evolved into enVISION, SDW’s nationally recognized multisensory performance initiative created in collaboration with blind, low-vision, Deaf, hard of hearing, DeafBlind, and disabled artists and community members.

While the methodologies have evolved, the central question has remained remarkably consistent:

How do we move from “I” to “us”?

Why This Work Matters

ID: A participant wearing a white blindfold sits within a multi-sensory performance environment during enVISION: Sensory Beyond Sight. Bathed in blue light, he reaches one hand outward to determine whether rain is falling around him as umbrellas hang overhead. The moment captures the curiosity, uncertainty, and sensory discovery at the heart of the performance, which invited audiences to experience dance through touch, sound, movement, and imagination rather than sight.

Many arts experiences continue to be designed around assumptions about how people should see, hear, move, and participate.

SDW believes accessibility is not simply a matter of removing barriers.

It is a source of artistic discovery.

By centering disabled artists as creators, leaders, educators, and collaborators, SDW develops new approaches to performance that expand artistic participation, challenge assumptions, and invite audiences to experience the world through perspectives beyond their own.

The result is work that creates meaningful encounters between people with different lived experiences while contributing new ideas to the broader performing arts field.

Header ID: A group of enVISION audience members wearing blindfolds raise their heads upwards. There is a sense of unity and connection in how they lean into the SDW Company Members behind them who are gently directing their movements. Stage lights are visible as colorful circles above the audience’s heads. The three lights each project a different color, ranging from green to orange to blue.