Portland Press Herald describes transcendent AXIS performance at Bates Dance Festival

Portland Press Herald reviewer Jennifer Brewer describes the “physically integrated” AXIS Dance Company performance at the Bates Dance Festival as “gripping, moving and exciting.” Since its 1987 founding, the troupe has “created a dialogue and re-evaluation of how disability does and does not affect artistic movement.” At the festival, AXIS ded two fully able-bodied dancers, one with amputations and three in wheelchairs with differing levels of mobility. “Differences in physicality proved to be both central and almost superfluous to the performance,” Brewer notes. “Every piece involved examination of physical ability and/or specific use of wheelchairs in the choreography. At the same time, the choreographic whole transcended reference to differing ability.” View story from The Portland Press Herald, Aug. 2, 2010, and view preview in the Sun Journal, July 19, 2010.