AXIS Dance Company

AXIS Dance Company members Sonsherée Giles and Rodney Bell perform an award-winning dance piece by Joe Goode in 2008.

AXIS Dance Company is a professional physically integrated contemporary dance company and dance education organization founded in 1987 and based in Oakland, California. It is one of the first contemporary dance companies in the world to consciously develop choreography that integrates dancers with and without physical disabilities. Their work has received seven Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and nine additional nominations for both their artistry and production values.

Physically integrated dance

Founded in 1987[1] by Thais Mazur, Bonnie Lewkowicz, Judith Smith and others, AXIS was one of the first contemporary dance companies in the world to consciously develop choreography that integrates dancers with and without physical disabilities.[2][3] AXIS dancers with disabilities have included wheelchair users (both manual wheelchairs and power wheelchairs), crutch users, and people with amputations using prosthetic limbs.

AXIS dancers who are not disabled come with training in a variety of contemporary dance, improvisation and other movement practices. Through interactions between these dancers and nondisabled dancers, a new dance vocabulary began to be developed. This started a trend, which eventually became known as physically integrated dance, which seeks to broaden the definition of ‘dance’ and ‘dancer’ and increase opportunities for artistic expression through movement for a wide spectrum of physical attributes and disabilities.[4][5] The physically integrated dance movement is part of a broader disability culture movement, which recognizes and celebrates the first-person experience of disability, not as a medical-model construct but as a social phenomenon, through artistic, literary, and other creative means.[6] The AXIS Dance Company has commissioned works by a number of renowned choreographers, including Ann Carlson, Sonya Delwaide, Joe Goode, Joanna Haigood, Margaret Jenkins, Bill T. Jones, Victoria Marks, and Stephen Petronio.

Works

The AXIS Dance Company performs Waypoint by Margaret Jenkins. From left to right are dancers Margaret Cromwell, Bonnie Lewkowicz, Sonsherée Giles, and Sean McMahon.

The Company has created more than sixty repertory works, two evening-length works, and commissions for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Bates Dance Festival, San Francisco Exploratorium, and CAL Performances-UAM/PFA.

AXIS has performed in more than sixty cities, Europe, and Siberia. Notable performances include the Olympic Arts Festival, 2002; Meredith Monk’s 40th Anniversary Celebrations at St. Marks & the World Financial Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Scottsdale Center for the Arts; UC Santa Barbara; Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago ; SF Internat’l Arts Festival; The Kentucky Center for the Arts; Paralympics 1997; Walker Arts Center; Dartmouth College; Flynn Center for the Performing Arts; UMass Fine Arts Center; University of Koln, Germany; Dance Umbrella’s Internat’l Festival of Aerial Dance; and Railroad Theater, Novosibirsk, Siberia.

AXIS’ education programs, Dance Access and Dance Access/KIDS! offer an extensive array of events for adults and youth of all abilities. AXIS is working with CSU East Bay to develop and launch the first BA program in Physically Integrated Dance in the US.

AXIS has received numerous Isadora Duncan Dance Awards (IZZIES) including:

The company has also received numerous IZZIE nominations for artistic work and production elements. [7]

References

  1. ↑ Weber, Bruce (2009-11-01). "A Dance Company Mixes Arms, Legs and Wheels". The New York Times. p. A37B. Retrieved 2009-11-13.
  2. ↑ Ulrich, Allan (2009-11-08). "Review: Axis Dance Company at Malonga Casquelord". San Francisco Chronicle. p. E-1. Retrieved 2009-11-13.
  3. ↑ Marech, Rona (2002-03-08). "Rebel filmmaker's movie about Burning Man screens in Oakland". San Francisco Chronicle. p. EB-3. Retrieved 2008-01-09.
  4. ↑ Pamela Kay, Walker (2005). Moving Over the Edge: Artists with Disabilities Take the Leap. Davis, California: Michael Horton Media. pp. 112–117. ISBN 0-9771505-2-6.
  5. ↑ Interview, Judith Smith, “Artistic Director, AXIS Dance Company” conducted by Esther Ehrlich in 2005, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2006. Artists with Disabilities Oral History Page
  6. ↑ ABC-CLIO Companion to the Disability Rights Movement, p. 97
  7. ↑ Lee, Jez. "Award History". list of awards from 2000-2010. ISADORA DUNCAN DANCE AWARDS COMMITTEE. Retrieved 2011-09-15.
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