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"Trust"
Bruce, Age 45, Berkeley, California, Biographical materials
Picture Details
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Contact Improvisation: A Dance of Equality
I currently work at the World Institute on Disability (WID), managing several projects with Russians who have disabilities. Working with the Russian Society of the Disabled, I provide technical assistance in the form of management, leadership development, media, and training. As well, I am involved in influencing U.S. foreign policy to include people with disabilities in U.S. International and Development programs. In addition, I create and promote dance that brings together people with and without disabilities.
At the age of 17, I broke my neck while diving, which resulted in paralysis affecting my body from my chest down. While on a March for Peace in Central America, I learned about contact improvisation and discovered through it that people with and without disabilities could dance together equally. Contact improvisation allows someone disabled to become so engaged in the contact and balance with another dancer, that the sensation supersedes the superficial image. Even though I have limited voluntary movement throughout my body, I can create coordinated movement, using the sensation in my body and skeleton.
The focus of the dance is on the conversation of body movement between two people. Each person listens through that person's own body to the other dancer's movement. As well, each person is responsible for his or her own safety in the dance and trusts that the other will always be in the present moment, listening.
Watercolor by Julie Cohn
This painting, "Trust" is Julie Cohn's interpretation of feelings arising from an interview with Bruce.
The accompanying text, written by Bruce, represents some of his feelings about his life and disability.
For me, it's important to create motion and dance that naturally emerges from a disabled person's body. I encourage people with disabilities to find their own personal expressions of movement from their own bodies rather than imitating dance styles like ballet or ballroom dancing and movements that come from non-disabled bodies. When persons with disabilities try to perform in contemporary dance styles typically performed by the non-disabled, audiences judge them as making a nice effort. However, when persons with disabilities create dances which present the authentic movement of their own bodies they will find that the audience will appreciate them as true artists.
At 45, I look back to my involvement with the Disability Rights Movement of the early 1970s and recognize the growth of consciousness since then. At that time I was involved as an activist. Now I feel the importance of presenting my dance work as both a political message and an art form. In today's information overloaded society, the public has less time and is continually less open to receiving educational information about people with disabilities. Lectures and articles are not likely to affect the public's stereotypes; they elicit a less than enthusiastic or even an uninterested response. However, when I show people, from any culture, positive images of people with disabilities actively involved in society, the ability of the nondisabled to imagine people with disabilities is positively expanded. The arts in general is a way to involve the heart and change the public's stereotypes of people with disabilities.
The Balinese make no distinction between life and art. Art is connected to the meaning of human life rather than just being a leisure activity. Through dance, I want to redefine society's attitude toward people with disabilities. Beauty and ugliness are not inseparable in anyone, so they should neither be exalted nor repudiated in dance.
- Bruce
The Athlete, Bruce:
At a dance
club called Ashkenaz,
when Bruce moved his arms and hands to the music, he met a warm and heartfelt
welcome from the other dancers. With each public exhibition, Bruce has
transformed his fear of dancing in public. This has led to a continual
experimentation with his own body's unique movement with other dancers.
I met with Bruce, Lori, and Ray on the dance floor. They were gracious
with their time, spontaneously moving as I photographed them in action.
The painting,Trust, was inspired by their dance and the photos
that followed. As I intently watched them, I was convinced that all of us
can dance. It doesn't matter how we perceive or move to a given beat.
What's important is that we are expressing ourselves without inhibition.
Contact improvisation is a form of dance during which people support each
other physically and mold themselves to each other sculpturally while
continually moving to their own internal music. In the height of kinetic
energy, there is little distinction between Bruce in his wheelchair, the
wheelchair itself, and Lori and Ray. The wheelchair is an integral
part of the dance, allowing for timeless and graceful movements. The
chair is a pivotal point from which Bruce's upper body extends and supports
the weight of others. It allows a sculptural type of dance to evolve;
at any moment the dance can turn into a slowly moving sculpture and then,
just as suddenly, evoke the magic of a feather blowing through a quick
wind.Lori and Ray trust Bruce's strength, quickness, and agility.
They can physically lean on him without doubting his stable support. I
wanted to capture their fleeting movement, showing blurred images bouncing
through light, about to leap off the painting onto the floor where we
now stand.
