REVIEW

Sightlines: AXIS Dance Company
By Rachel Howard, IN DANCE
Jan/Feb 2004

How does AXIS Dance get to work with so many top-drawer choreographers? The 16-year-old Oakland-based company is a pioneer in the field of "integrated dance", mixing dancers with and without disabilities. But, with apologies to PC sensibilities, it is no charity project. Artistic director Judy Smith has brought together intense and dynamic performers - some in wheelchairs, some with amputated limbs - that many an accomplished choreographer would dream of working with.

And there is a side-benefit, too. I like to think of an AXIS commission as structural boot camp for mid-career dance makers. Working with dancers who may not be able to move in quite the way the choreographer is accustomed has forced such luminaries as Alonzo King, Stephen Petronio and Bill T. Jones to reinvestigate their habitual movement vocabularies and find a new clarity of expression.

The latest name to come aboard the esteemed AXIS roster is Victoria Marks. She brought her L.A.-based company to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum late November for a shared program that included one work for her own dancers, the premiere of her latest dance film, and a striking new work for AXIS.

Many images linger from "Dust": the dancers very still, facing different corners like mysterious trees; cartoonish attempts at connection, suddenly covering each other with kisses; desperate running and sliding across the stage. Most arresting of all: Stephanie Bastos, slowly defiantly removing her prosthetic lower leg, asserting her physical independence. What sweet strength she personified as she darted and knelt and rolled across the floor like a born stuntswoman. Composer Eve Beglarian sang her own haunting score. Another keeper for the growing AXIS Dance rep.

Homer Avila, who lost a leg to cancer a few years ago, continued to build an extraordinary new phase in his performing career in an athletic 2002 solo created in collaboration with Marks. June Watanabe contributed a well-crafted new duet. But my favorite offering of all was the final section of "Air Mail Dances", based on Remy Charlip's illustrated movement scores as interpreted by dancers Megan Schirle and Leon Setti. Schirle, who normally locomotes by wheelchair, sat in a wing chair reading as the hulking Setti, a serene, almost angelic presence, lifted and repositioned her legs- crossed, uncrossed, stretched as if to fly - never disturbing her rapt attention. It was tender and magical.