REVIEW

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it
By Tarin Chaplin, The Barre Times - Montpelier Argus
October 22, 2004

BURLINGTON - Legless dancers? A blind person attending a dance concert? Someone with a broken neck performing in a wheelchair? The Goethe quote continues, '"Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it ..." The founders of this company have that kind of boldness. On Oct. 15, people with physical, mental, and/or developmental disabilities, people unused to coming to Flynn events, filled the lobby. In they came, armless people, people in wheelchairs, people with canes, visually and audially challenged people, people as wide as a roll top desk, people with prosthetics, braces, but above all, people coming to see and cheer and be awed by AXIS, the multi-able dance company from San Francisco nearing the end of its six-week New England tour championed and organized by the Flynn Center.

And awed we were. No need for any condescending "it was nice considering" comments. It wasn't until the second dance that Janet Ressler, arts administrator extraordinaire (herself a former dancer and mother of a professional one), realized that the woman doing the pas de deux (dance for two) in the first dance was missing her lower leg. Now that's athleticism and dancing at its finest! In fact, performer Stephanie Bastos brought her bravura and dynamic skills to all four of the evening's offerings, as did the company director Judith Smith in her wheelchair, and fully abled dancers Alisa Rasera and Renee Waters. This company doesn't hold back.

Jacques Poulin Denis - who lost his right foot in a car accident on the way to audition for the Toronto Dance Theatre School - partnered Bastos with liquid and exuberant physicality, as the two of them cared for one another in one of the duets in "Suite Sans Suite." I adored his lithe, springy bounds and rebounds, and constantly had to remind myself that he was missing a limb. Later on I discovered he's had only two years of solid dance training, and was impressed all the more.

It made me think about the acceptance of untrained people performing and achieving mainstage acclaim, which has its roots in the '60s. At that time Steve Paxton and other post modernists started exploring the validity of pedestrian movement. Paxton's fascination with ordinary walking became most well known in his "Satisfyin' Lover," in which an endless stream of people one-at-a-time walk from stage right to center, sit down in a chair, get up, and walk off. It was one of many pieces that challenged the viewer to look with an aesthetic eye at a mundane action, to include rather than exclude movement other than that of refined dance technique.

Watching the dancers in wheelchairs whiz across the stage, using their upper bodies expressively, partnering and carrying and dragging other dancers with them as AXIS founders Smith and Bonnie Lewkowicz did, is a decades later extension of such "inclusiveness." It begs us to redefine the term.

When choreographer Victoria Marks began "Dust" by having Smith use her wheelchair (as well as her hands and arms) to nudge another dancer onto her back and then to standing, Marks took the idea of pedestrian movement one step further. The wheelchair, an extension of Smith's body, was doing the partnering as much as were her own limbs. In fact, driving the wheelchairs requires as much precision as other dance vocabulary, as when they zoomed in circles close to the fingers of dancers lying on the floor.

One audience member described the dancers as fearless, another spoke of the playfulness of the performers, still another of the agility of the wheelchairs (actually of their operators), and one more was struck by the range of movement qualities presented; all were right.

But when Bastos bends forward downstage, unfastens her prosthetic lower leg at the knee, and sets it to stand alone upright before her the tension in the audience was palpable. And when she glances at us, leans forward and slowly pokes the leg and tips it over, the evening peaked. She can do with it or without it. That leg doesn't define her any more than the skirt I am wearing defines me. In fact, for the rest of the dance, she does do without it. This is especially mesmerizing during the full company simple yet elegant promenades (slow revolutions in one spot), which the other six dancers do on both legs or in their wheelchairs. Although traditionally always performed balanced on a single supporting leg, there is something uncanny when there is no second foot present as a "fall back" for the classical maneuver.

Ann Carlson's piece, "Flesh," began grippingly with row after row of lights flown in from overhead, starting dim and getting stronger as they descended. In fact, the various manipulations of the light bars, as well as the fine score by Meredith Monk (including some great lyrics, "I still have my hand; I still have my money; I still have my telephone") were the most stunning part of the work. Unfortunately, the extensive program notes told us far more about the piece than the choreography itself did.

The evening's focus on serving the needs of people with disabilities was evidenced not only by the sign language interpreter who signed the above lyrics and other parts of the program, but by the simultaneous audio descriptions for blind audience members. Mike Richman, treasurer of the Vermont Council of the Blind, is excited to be spearheading such offerings throughout the state.

The accessibility gap is narrowing. One wild moment occurred in Bill T. Jones' "Fantasy in C Major" when Poulin Denis did some "wheelies" in the chair he was driving and got a bravo from a member of the audience who himself was in a wheelchair. The gap narrowed: possibility grew.

In the post-performance discussion, both of the dancers with missing limbs agreed that it was more liberating to dance without their prostheses. Bastos said she dances "as though my leg extends through the foot that's not there." Able- bodied dancer Sean McMahon said the biggest thing he's learned as a result of dancing with this company is "what's really important in life." Others spoke about the integrated dance technique they are developing "what's behind the arms and legs, what's the basic element here." It is a mantra we could all do well to focus on what is behind the arms, legs, make up.