By spotlighting disabled performers, Bay Area company AXIS Dance challenges conventional thinking about movement

The dance world has often based its plaudits on how spectacularly performers can defy gravity with leaps, kicks and twirls. But a handful of wheelchairs, some roller skates and a trapeze helped a Berkeley-based troupe flip antiquated and ableist conceptions of athletic ability and athleticism on their head.

By pairing disabled dancers with able-bodied performers, AXIS Dance Company began shifting attention away from impossible feats to the art of what’s possible.

The group’s unique exploration of dance – pioneering different ways to translate internal thoughts, feelings and ideas into physical motion – started as a therapeutic way to regain bodily autonomy. AXIS’ work bending the rules of contemporary choreography coincided with the national disability rights that began brewing on UC Berkeley’s campus and quickly garnered international acclaim.

But as the idea of accessibility continues to evolve, the same is true for the nonprofit’s mission, according to Executive Director Danae Rees.

Notably, AXIS no longer sees itself as a “physically integrated” dance company – a term the ensemble picked up decades ago when they helped introduce audiences and critics to the idea that disabled dancers could not only keep up, but also elevate on-stage dynamics with able-bodied peers.

Rees said the modern iteration of AXIS now taps the talents of disabled, non-disabled, d/Deaf and neurodiverse dancers – creating a diverse, radically inclusive spectrum of life experience that showcases the beauty found in difference.

But many of the concerns that motivated the group’s formation still abound, centered around structural inequities in health care, employment and education. That’s why engagement is key to uphold AXIS’ legacy of artistry and advocacy, she said, pointing to the company’s performance calendar, which they’ve bolstered with educational resources, such as the Choreo-Lab Fellowship, and opportunities for mentorship through myriad training workshops.

“The definition of disability has broadened over time, so we made a shift,” Rees said in December. “Being able to just create, without any expectation of having a final product, is often not an option provided to disabled artists. It’s something that feels really important to continue and nurture.”

AXIS didn’t develop deep roots in the East Bay by happenstance. Judith Smith, one of the company’s founders, had moved here during the 1980s after she was severely injured in a car accident. She was drawn by the burgeoning independent living community, led by trailblazers like Ed Roberts and Judy Heumann, who years prior had started pushing for more rights and resources.

Smith’s extensive rehab involving a string of self-defense, zen and other disability workshops, however, morphed into classes studying improvisational wheelchair movement. By 1987, she joined forces with Bonnie Lewkowicz and Thais Mazur to found the “Dis-slash-Abled, with a capital A, Dance Troupe,” Smith told UC Berkeley historians. The group settled on the name “AXIS” and became a nonprofit three years later, which opened up grant funding opportunities for the dancers to continue puzzling crowds with their novel moves.

“Our dance vocabulary is because of the equipment, not in spite of it,” Smith told this news organization in 2005, explaining how navigating accessibility is no different than learning steps with a new dance partner. “We have the potential to create movement other dancers can’t.”

In addition to showcasing the innovative, expansive range of wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs and canes, Smith credited their success to audiences, who flocked to stages where they could see themselves reflected on stage.

Yet a chronic lack of accessibility continues to shut the disabled community out of arts venues in the Bay Area and across the nationwide, Rees said. That’s why she and Nadia Adame, the company’s artistic director, compiled the “Access Guide to Presenting and Touring the Performing Arts” in 2024, which offers free, online resources for a range of different needs, including “relaxed performances” that reduce loud noises and strobe lighting. There’s also explainers on improvements to protect immunocompromised folks, as well as checklists to evaluate lobbies, restrooms and greenrooms for physical barriers that linger long after the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990.

“There’s not one way of thinking about this — we can’t prescribe exactly how to do it because every venue is different,” Rees said, explaining different roadblocks that vary depending on a venue’s size, location and budget. “We’ve tried to provide more guiding principles that are tangible and resources to help support that work so it becomes part of (a business’ everyday) practice.”

The project took several years to develop, spurred by consistent complaints and suggestions from dozens of experts, but it’s become especially timely. The Trump administration officials have already rolled back new and old guidance for public businesses like hotels and retail shops on how to comply with the ADA – the latest policy shift that disability advocates say undermines the watershed access law.

Nadia Adame took over as AXIS’ artistic director in 2022, which was a sort of homecoming after she’d danced within the ensemble nearly two decades prior. Before wrapping an independent, disability-centric partnership that reimagined “A Christmas Carol” at Center REP in Walnut Creek during AXIS’ recent holiday break, Adame spearheaded a May collaboration of “Kinematic/Kinesthetic,” which studied the convergence of technology and anatomy, experimenting with dances featuring telescoping crutches and robotic hexapod legs developed by engineering students.

Rees said AXIS will continue to push boundaries and expand access – on and off the dance floor.

“Without enough accessibility, artists like us can’t even be on the stage, which also means audiences can’t come and participate and have that cultural experience,” Rees said, explaining how changes impact the entire arts community, regardless of ability. “If we center accessibility for everybody, then everybody feels welcome into those spaces.”That reality hit close to home during the pandemic, she said, when mounting accessibility issues forced AXIS to pivot out of its longtime Oakland studio.

“But we felt like it was time to go back to Berkeley,” Rees said. “It feels very important – continuing to do the work that we’re doing – being in a place where that movement started.”