Chuck & Rodney after the preview of the new piece by David

How To Hear "Come With Me" When It's Spoken Through a Power Wheelchair

by Zach Pine

One thing I love about dancing improvisationally in a group is the wonderful richness of experience that can be created, often unexpectedly. During our rehearsal last Monday, I had an unexpected moment of communication - one that is unique to physically integrated dance.

This past month, I've been dancing with the AXIS company, class participants, and community dancers rehearsing for the upcoming David Dorfman commission. Our sessions have always included improvisation, and offered great opportunities to practice the art of non-verbal communication. This past Monday, in the midst of a dance, I found myself non-verbally communicating with another dancer. My message was: "I'm standing right behind you - don't back up," and I sent it without any conscious thought, by thumping and wiggling gently against the rear handles of her power wheelchair. At a break later, I asked her if the message had gotten through, or whether I was just lucky that she didn't back up into me. She told me that my message had in fact gotten through, and invited me to feel free in the future to step up onto on the shelf at the rear of her chair if I found myself there again. A few minutes later, I found myself standing behind her in a dance. I signaled my presence as before, then stepped up onto the back of her chair. Then, unexpectedly, I felt her start to move her chair forward. She did it very gently and expressively, and I "heard" this as "come with me." So, rather than step off, I let her carry me forward. But I only took a short ride before I hopped off - because I didn't want to overstay my welcome, and I knew I hadn't yet learned to distinguish between "come with me for a short ride" and "let me carry you on long adventure." I'm going to work on that.

AXIS for Everyone

By Emmaly Wiederholt

Here’s the number one reason I love AXIS Dance Company: it celebrates the individual. Yes me, you, him, her, and each of us in turn. It celebrates aesthetic, line and form by celebrating my big feet and your wheelchair, his small stature and her big thighs. It celebrates our bodies, and not as an idealized sculpture, but in a very real embrace. It celebrates movement, the kinetic embodiment of our own kinesiology. It celebrates the reality that yes, we don’t all share the same physical abilities, but we each have our own unique physicality. Dancing viewed in this light is almost akin to penmanship; for each person in the world that can write, not one of us forms letters quite the same way. Two people may lift their arms above their heads, but it will be two different bodies, two different people with two different thoughts, hopes, dreams, anxieties, and stories. And so this is why I love AXIS, because it begs the question, “What can I do with this body?”

Every Monday evening for this past month I’ve taken BART to Oakland to participate in AXIS’ weekly open class at the Malonga Center for the Arts. It attracts a generously assorted group of students: experienced dancers, new dancers, high-schoolers, seniors, dancers with two good feet, one good foot, dancers in every kind of wheelchair imaginable, mixed ethnicities, mixed genders, mixed everything. And every class I leave feeling grateful that dance is something everyone can do. How dreadful were dance something only the few and elite could truly love and enjoy. No, dance reaches its greatest height when it is simply movement for the sake of movement, a celebration of our flawed, varied, and ever universal humanity.

Last August I attended the preview of David Dorfman’s commissioned piece on AXIS Dance Company, to premier on November 6- 8 at the Malonga Center. Watching the forty minute guided improvisation, I fell transfixed. What I saw weren’t two dancers in wheelchairs and three dancers on their feet moving in tandem on stage. What I saw were five dancers, each as different as can be, but no less or more able than the next, generating momentum and each pushing their own unique physicality. It was beautiful, engaging, and everything I wish dance always was.

Beyond transcending dancer stereotypes is the other fact that AXIS is fun. Yes genuinely fun. People smile. No one aims to compete, to show off, to please. We’ve all come together to move. You’re in a wheelchair and my knee is bothering me so let’s be careful, but let’s have fun as well. I’ll dance how I dance and you dance how you dance and together we’ll relish in our differences, enjoy our similarities, become more than we could individually. Dance need not be a lofty, idealized, or antiquated art form. Dance can be something anyone can do, regardless of physical ability. Thank you AXIS for demonstrating how.