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FROM HER TO INFINITY
Laura Kaminker
"New Mobility" Volume 11, Number 80, May 2000
New York dance studio: polished wooden floors, three walls of ballet
barrers, one wall of mirrors. On the floor, three dancers, all
women, move in a series of motions at once muscular and fluid, their
bodies sinewy and supple, sexy and strong.
If you watch closely, you will notice that the dancer with the red
hair is older than the other two. If you look much closer, you might
discern that the legs of the redheaded dancer don't move on their
own. Which is not to say they don't move.
That dancer is Kitty Lunn, and the dance is Dreambody, a
groundbreaking piece performed by Lunn, Sonja Perreten and
choreographer Roxanna Young, all members of Infinity Dance Theatre.
Dreambody has seven movements, and it is not until the end of the
third movement that the audience sees Lunn's wheelchair.
Lunn began studying dance at age 8; by the time she was 15 she was
dancing principal roles with a professional ballet company. At 36
she slipped on a patch of ice. Three years and five spinal surgeries
later, Lunn emerged an L1 paraplegic. A subsequent fall injured her
neck at C5, leaving her with limited use of her right hand.
For a professional dancer, dance is more than a career, it is an
essential aspect of identity. "Suddenly, without your consent," Lunn
says, snapping her fingers, "it's taken away. You become
disoriented. You don't know who you are anymore."
Lunn tried to live without dancing. She tried not to live. Failing
at both denial and suicide, but still unhappy, she wondered if the
universe was trying to tell her something. Her husband, Andrew
Macmillan, said, "If you want to dance, then dance."
Lunn explored the world of wheelchair dance, working as a guest
artist with one company and observing others, but was left with a
gnawing dissatisfaction. Wheelchair dance was not even close to
being taken seriously by mainstream dance culture. And Lunn felt
that unless the wheelchair dance community changed it mindset, it
never would.
Earned Credentials
"The disabled community sends a lot of mixed messages," says Lunn as
we sit in her antique filled apartment, classical music playing
softly in the background. "We say we want to be part of the
mainstream. But don't expect us to do the same things and don't
judge us by the same standards." Lunn believes that double standard
prevents most wheelchair dance companies from creating
professional-quality work.
First, there is the work of becoming a professional dancer. "Dancers
go to class," says Lunn. "All over the world, whether they speak
Chinese, Russian or English, whether they do modern, jazz or ballet,
the process is the same. Dancers go to class."
Class is to dance what training is to athletics. Millions of people
play sports, but professional athletes train every day. And millions
of people dance, but those who aspire to a career in dance take
classes every day. Lunn found this commitment absent from wheelchair
dance.
"Having a disability," Lunn says, "doesn't excuse you from the
process. You can't just wake up one morning and decide you are a
professional dancer."
Then there is history. "Wheelchair dance has been around for about
20 years," she says. "But Ruth St. Denis, a modern dance pioneer,
was dancing sitting down at the turn of the last century. One of
Martha Graham's signature pieces, Lamentations, is performed while
sitting on a cube."
But, Lunn says, the wheelchair dance world "rejects anything that
doesn't originate in the disabled community." She finds what she
sees as an "unwillingness to learn anything about dance" deeply
troubling.
Lunn takes pains to emphasize that what other wheelchair dance
companies do is no less valid or worthy than what she does. "Many
people derive benefit physically, cardiovascularly, expressively,
from dancing, even though they have absolutely no aspirations to
become professionals," she says. "Amateur dance is not less than
professional dance, but the two are not the same. Yet this community
continues to insist that they are!"
Lunn knows well that people with disabilities have not had the
opportunity to pursue careers in dance, and she knows the many
reasons why - accessibility, social attitudes, wheelchair
technology, traditional notions of body type, all of it. But, she
insists, "Disability diminishes opportunity; it does not diminish
talent. It is easy to become a dancer if you use a wheelchair? No.
Is it easy to become a dancer when you don't have a disability? Not
at all. All nondisabled dancers who aspire to be professionals are
expected to master a certain level of proficiency. Why should people
with disabilities be held to different standards?"
Addressing a crowd at an international wheelchair dance festival,
Lunn once asked, "Why do you think our work is still not seen as
'really dance?' Could it be because we're not creating
professional-quality dance?" Needless to say, she didn't win many
friends.
Eventually, Lunn felt she was ready to form a dance company that
would marry professionalism and wheelchair dance. "I was very
willing to let someone else do this," says Lunn. "Running a dance
company is like pouring money into a whole in the ground. But I
perceived a need."
From that perception, Lunn founded Infinity Dance Theatre. It
mission: "To expand the boundaries of dance, to broaden the world's
perception of what a dancer is."
Expanded Boundaries
Dreambody is a work of astonishing beauty and power. Inspired by the
movements of yoga, incorporating elements of several schools of
modern and African dance, Dreambody takes the audience on a
34-minute journey through the Hindu system of energy centers known
as chakras.
Roxanna Young, Dreambody's choreographer and now a member of
Infinity, recalls Lunn asking her to create a piece that "would push
the envelope socially, would give her something no one had ever seen
before and would use her facilities as a dancer in a way that was
brand new to her." Even with that mandate, Lunn was shocked at what
Young came up with.
Lunn, the only dancer in the piece who has a disability, is out of
her chair for at least two-thirds of the dance. She performs seated
cartwheels by grasping her own ankles. She does handstands,
supported by the other dancers. She dances on Sonja Perreten's back,
as Perreten perches on the wheelchair and appears to swim across the
room. At times the chair seems like a fourth dancer, rounded and
graceful, almost self-propelled. Other times, the chair becomes a
fantastical multilimbed creature as two or all three of the women
balance on and around it.
During Dreambody, each dancer has a solo while the others either
provide counterpoint or leave the stage. Dancing in her hair, Lunn's
soft fluidity offsets Young and Perreten's sharp angularity as their
bodies contort into intricate yoga-like positions. On a taped
voice-over, Lunn recites "He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven," a
poem by W.B. Yeats. As Young and Perreten dance behind her, Lunn
signs the words in ASL, her arms and hands giving the poem shape and
flight.
None of this came easily.
Although Lunn had some modern dance experience before her injury,
working with Martha Graham, she had been primarily a classical
ballerina and her wheelchair dancing has focused mainly on
transposing ballet technique to seated dance. "I didn't know if I'd
ever be able to adequately perform this style," Lunn says. "It's
about as far away from Sugar Plum Fairy as you can get."
The work raised issues of body image and sexuality. In Dreambody,
Young, 31, Perreten, 24, and Lunn, 49, wear handpainted unitards,
colorful second skins. "Although I am very comfortable with my body
now," say Lunn, "the Dreambody costume accentuates everything, warts
and all. It was very scary for me, at my age, dancing beside two
young women in the prime of their lives, to be so physically
vulnerable, so exposed."
But for Lunn, the issue that loomed above all was allowing her dance
partners to take her out of her chair; to trust them, literally,
with her life. During the dance, Lunn often moves her legs with her
own hands, and the other dancers move her body with their own
motions. This "shared technique" requires precise timing, and
enormous amount of strength and balance, and boundless mutual trust.
Creating Dreambody was a profound journey for all three women.
"Neither Roxanna nor Sonja know anything about paraplegia," says
Lunn. "They didn't understand how still paralyzed is." When they
began working together, the three were pleasantly acquainted, but
had nowhere near the bond the work would ultimately required of
them.
"Bizarre and disorienting" is how Lunn describes beginning the
process. "I'm on the floor, but I can't feel the floor. When Sonja
slaps by leg to make me spin, I'm not aware of it until the turn
gets up to my torso. It took a while for me to get my bearings."
There were moments Lunn describes as "beyond frightening"-the
handstand, for example. "The only thing I can feel are my palms
touching the floor," says Lunn. "At first, I had no idea who was
controlling my upper body. Where were my legs? Where was my pelvis?
And how can I learn to be comfortable with this?"
To develop the necessary arm and back strength, Lunn took classes in
specific modern dance forms. As she built herself up and studied
technique, Young and Perreten learned more about working with Lunn's
specific capabilities.
Young remember Lunn calling to her during rehearsal, "Roxanna, I'm
paralyzed, remember?" "And I'd say, yes, what about it?" laughs
Young. "Kitty would look at me and sign and say 'You're crazy.'" The
work pushed Lunn to places she never thought she could go. "But,"
Young emphasizes, "this isn't about Superwoman. It takes a
tremendous amount of support. We can only go so far on our own."
How does Lunn feel about Dreambody now? "Fabulous," she says,
beaming.
Building Bridges
Though Lunn sees herself as a bridge across a great divide, she
doesn't want to be the only way across. Another of Infinity Dance
Theatre's stated goals is "to develop a curriculum for teaching a
wheelchair dance technique that is rooted in the disciplines of
classical ballet, jazz and modern dance."
In addition to teaching dance education at Columbia University
Teachers College, Lunn is also an instructor with the National Dance
Institute (NDI), the seminal program founded by dance educator
Jacques D'Amboise to expose inner-city public school children to
dance. Lunn is NDI's only mobility-impaired educator, and the only
teacher in the nationwide program to teach children with physical
disabilities.
Lunn is also teaching dance instructors, in person and on video, how
to transpose their lessons for a student who uses a wheelchair.
Nondisabled dance educators, Lunn says, invariably express the same
concern: "I don't know anything about wheelchairs." She tells them,
"You don't need to. The person taking your class knows how to use
the chair. What they don't know how to do is dance."
Lunn see professional wheelchair dance as another thread in dance's
rich fabric. She remembers when a young African-American woman named
Virginia Johnson wanted to be a classical ballerina. Johnson was
advised to study tap or modern dance, because there was no future
for a black woman in classical ballet. At the time there had been
only one African-American professional ballet dancer, a man named
Arthur Mitchell.
"Virginia Johnson said no," says Lunn. "She wanted to do the
classical repertoire, she wanted to be Sleeping Beauty and Giselle.
A short time later, Arthur Mitchell started Dance Theatre of Harlem,
and Virginia Johnson went on to become the first African-American
classical ballerina. As a result of Virginia saying no, there are
now African-American professional ballet dancers. It may be 20, 50
or 100 years before there are dancers using wheelchairs in classical
ballet companies. But I guarantee you that it will never happen if
we don't start laying the groundwork."
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