Dance. For someone without a disability, this may come pretty easy. Easier still is imagining what that dance may look like.

Now consider dancing in a wheelchair. What would that be like? What do you envision? Perhaps that's not so easy to do.

However, AXIS Dance Company has been doing just that since 1987. Made up of dancers with and without disabilities, AXIS members are pioneers of "physically integrated dance" and have claimed international success for developing an exciting and inclusive dance form for all audiences to enjoy.

Stemming from a movement workshop for women in wheelchairs, AXIS grew out of a small group of friends in the community who came together to perform at a major dance festival in the California Bay Area. The dance performance was a hit.

"Kind of what happened was that we kept getting offers to perform and before we knew it, it had taken over some of our lives," Judith Smith, artistic director and founding member of AXIS, explained. "We didn't set out to be a dance company per se, but I think that the idea was right and the time was right."

Smith became disabled at the age of 17 following a car accident. Upon discovering movement through dance, she was eager to continue on this path of her own physical rediscovery.

"I knew nothing about dance. Dance was nothing I ever thought I would be doing with my life, but I was really intrigued by it. It was just so liberating and so much fun and really exciting," she said.

Smith was among that small group of dancers who performed for the first time as a physically integrated ensemble and since then, she has been involved in choreographing and performing in over thirty dance numbers---performances that have taken her across the country and abroad.

AXIS Not Well Received Initially
Even though AXIS performances were well received from the beginning, Smith remembers feeling some initial skepticism, not about whether people would watch, but more so about why they were watching and applauding.

"I kind of wondered, ‘Are we getting applauded because we're doing good dance work or because there are disabled people on stage and isn't that wonderful and heroic and inspirational?' You know, all of those things that disabled people live with everyday whenever we do something," said Smith with a playful laugh. "But I never really questioned that people would come and see it."

Well, they did and still do. With performances described as "defiant," "revolutionary" and "eloquent," AXIS Dance Company, based in Oakland, California, has performed in theaters throughout the United States, Germany and Siberia. Currently, the company is made up of seven resident dancers and choreographers, and three guest performers. Of these, four are disabled.

AXIS started hosting monthly "Dance Jam" workshops that eventually developed into regular classes. Today, AXIS offers extensive community education and outreach programs, known as Dance Access and Dance Access/KIDS!, which combined offer classes and workshops to adults and youth of all ability levels, lecture demonstrations and school assemblies. All this makes up about 50% of AXIS's workload, according to Smith. And whenever the opportunity arises, AXIS has offered classes in other languages via translators, particularly when they tour overseas. Workshops in Spanish are in the works as the company plans a trip to Colombia.

AXIS has received numerous dance awards and acknowledgements, including several Isadora Duncan Dance Awards. Among these, Best Individual Performance in 2000 was presented to Uli Schmitz, the first disabled dancer to receive such an award. These recognitions have made AXIS Dance Company a solid and viable force in the world of dance.

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