Thinking Outside the Box

The AXIS Dance Company inspires in more ways than one.

Text and Photos by Alice Faye Love

Margaret Cromwell, Alice Sheppard, Lisa Bufano and Rodney Bell of San Francisco’s AXIS Dance Company perform at a public school in Birmingham, Alabama.

Many a dance performance has left me scratching my head wondering what just happened. Even having spent over 25 years as a technician for live performance, I still suffer from these moments. But that’s okay. Modern dance, for me, promotes thinking about what I just saw and digging a little deeper into myself to “get it.”

AXIS Dance Company of San Francisco is a group that bridges the many gaps between the completely dance-innocent novice and the sophisticated taste of the seasoned viewer. As one of the country’s most acclaimed and innovative ensembles of performers with or without disabilities, AXIS is totally accessible to all levels of public appreciation for the medium of expressive dance.

The difference with AXIS is their vision of what encompasses “dance.” They go far beyond the usual idea of the gorgeous, lean, lithe able-bodied dancer, usually associated with the term “dancer,” to include a diversity of body types and abilities. The AXIS company accepts the body in all its extremes of unorthodox virtuosity.

Founder Bonnie Lewkowicz (right) and artistic director Judith Smith

Formed in the 1980’s by Bonnie Lewkowicz with Judith Smith as artistic director, AXIS blends impeccably the abilities of the disabled and non- disabled dancers in the troupe. It is wonderful that their nondisabled dancers, who, with their astonishing technical abilities, could dance with any company in the world, have chosen to add their talent to this exotic group.

I recently had the fortune to see AXIS in motion in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, on their 2007 tour. One of my favorite AXIS dances was Foregone, choreographed by Kate Weare. The music, with the pines in Dolly Parton’s “Silver Dagger” and Gillian Welch’s, “I’m Not Afraid to Die,” appealed to my old time Southern background. Dancers Rodney Bell, Lisa Bufano, Margaret Cromwell, Alice Sheppard, and Judith Smith emerge in a poignant dance about loving-how painful, rancorous and foolish it can be, and how we keep doing it anyway-surely a theme accessible to anyone. Even my poor mother, who never went to a dance performance in
her life, would have easily flowed along with the movements and the music. I sat spellbound as Bufano, a double-leg amputee, glided with her nondisabled partner Cromwell. With unforgettable balance and mirroring, they moved as on air to every angle of the performance stage, leaving the audience completely stunned with their grace and beauty, making the most difficult of movements seem easy and effortless.

Lewkowicz and Cromwell

In addition to the public performance, AXIS left its mark within the community and public schools with workshops and special performances, complete with question and answer periods. Not having toured for many years, I had forgotten the stamina needed for a week of such activity. I was left exceptionally tired as I shadowed the dancers with notebook and camera in a nonstop move from group to group, around the city of Birmingham, wondering each day how they were able to keep up such a pace.

The only thing lacking in AXIS’s visit to Birmingham was audience members in wheelchairs and people with mobility issues at their performances. As a community that needs inclusion, we also need to support the different efforts of those who attempt to educate and change the world for all of us. It is my hope that every city will offer AXIS the opportunity to not only perform, but also to offer the educational workshops AXIS presents so tirelessly.

In a few brief days AXIS changed my world, and every one who came in contact with them. Their work celebrates the diversity of the human race. More importantly it allows for all forms of mobility and movement to be explored and honored. It fans the fl ames of imagination, of what one can do that gives the hope and inspiration needed to go on each day, and become the best one can be. Asking each to explore the world of dance, free the form from the restrictions of a long outdated box we all seem to try and view life through, I would challenge able-bodied dancers within other communities, to bring AXIS and other similar dance companies to your community for a residency program.

For more information, see www.axisdance.org.

Alice Faye Love is an artist, photographer, writer, dancer, and wheelchair tennis player from Birmingham, Alabama.