"We need to be a little bit political in order to make our lives livable," says Judith Smith, co-founder and artistic director of AXIS Dance Company, using an all-inclusive we. She clarifies, however, that politics are "not what we're about." Instead, current events often lend an emotional undertow to the dance company's work without actually being present. The physically integrated troupe counts three disabled dancers on its eight-person roster, two who use wheelchairs and one who sometimes wears a prosthetic leg to dance, and sometimes dances without it.
Smith has several perspectives from which to speak — out lesbian, disability advocate, boundary-pushing artist — and in a way, merely being a disabled dancer can be a provocative act. But increasingly, the company finds it more important to reach for universal themes in its collaborative work rather than pursue agendas — making the dances accessible, so to speak, to audiences unfamiliar with disability politics and its esoteric culture.
After two years of touring, the Oakland-based company will premiere its emotionally laden Terre Brune (Brown Earth) this weekend during a short run at Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts in Oakland. Giving an example of how outside events seep into work unexpectedly, Smith says that Terre Brune took on new emotional heft for the company because Hurricane Katrina and its destruction were unfolding just as they were finishing it. The piece, choreographed by frequent AXIS collaborator Sonya Delwaide, evokes the "wounded" city described in a poem of the same name by French-Canadian writer Marie Savard. An original score by cellist and former Kronos Quartet member Joan Jeanrenaud, who will also perform it live, mingles with Savard's spoken text.
Physical difference does have a place in AXIS' work, but the formal aspects of this kind of movement intrigue most. "What's unique is how we deal with ensemble and unison movement," says Smith. "We're at different heights, for instance."
The Bay Area premiere of Flesh, a work AXIS commissioned from New York-based choreographer Ann Carlson, illustrates this challenge. The piece features music by Meredith Monk and was created for Monk's 40th anniversary celebration at St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery in New York last November. Monk was taken with it enough to invite the company back next month. Completed as the Iraq War neared its first anniversary, a somber tone wriggled its way into this work as well.
Flesh opens at a slow, meditative pace, but speed soon intervenes as two dancers glide quickly across the stage at a smooth, motorized clip. Later, bodies are cast off from the laps of wheelchairs into limp piles on the floor, as lines are read from "The Machine Stops," a short story by E.M. Forster about a dehumanized world. At the end, obvious distinctions in the abilities of those onstage are poignantly absent.
'Dust' up
Dance fans who missed the premiere of Dust at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2003, during AXIS' 15th-anniversary celebration, can now catch it in Oakland. An audience favorite, the work is an ensemble portrait by Victoria Marks that uses her trademark wit to address issues of power and access, desire and repulsion. Musician Eve Beglarian contributes an original composition.
Lastly, Decorum is a new work from AXIS member Katie Faulkner that debuted in June. In it, a trio plays with social expectations, propriety and the illusion of it through movement. Faulkner, a native Southerner, gives a supporting role to a Victorian sofa.
The company aims high, commissioning work from such dance heavyweights as Joe Goode, Bill T. Jones and Remy Charlip. Like gay actors not wishing to be typecast, AXIS presents itself as contemporary dance-makers first, disabled persons second, and in Smith's words, "invites people to accept things as they are."
AXIS Dance Company will run at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts in Oakland through Oct. 23. Tickets are $22 (with student, senior, disabled and youth discounts). Call (925) 798-1300 or go to www.axisdance.org.