Cover story
30th year combining dancers with and without disabilities
A look at the 30th anniversary season of Axis Dance Company. Pictured is Marc Brew, the troupe’s new artistic director.
“We’re in the game,” says Marc Brew, Axis Dance Company’s new artistic director, on a break from rehearsing his new work, “Radical Impact,” at Oakland’s Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts. “We’re ready to have an impact on the dance community in the Bay Area — and nationally, and internationally.”
In May, the award-winning postmodern choreographer, dancer and filmmaker took the helm of Axis, which combines dancers with and without disabilities, from co-founder Judith Smith. Just six months later, on the eve of the troupe’s 30thanniversary season, the change already feels like a paradigm shift.
“He’s one of the most highly regarded disabled artistic directors and choreographers and performers in the world,” Smith said by phone. “The goal is to really advance the artistry of the field, and opportunity. To have somebody of Marc’s caliber here … is really exciting.”
Brew is putting his stake in the ground with “Onward and Upward,” Axis’ inaugural performance under his direction. Opening at the Casquelourd Center on Thursday, Oct. 26, the bill features the premieres of “Impact” and Amy Seiwert’s “The Reflective Surface,” choreographed in 2013 but not performed until now, plus excerpts from Stephen Petronio’s 2001 commission “Secret Ponies.”
The Bay Area first encountered Brew’s work in two Axis commissions, 2011’s theatrical “Full of Words” and 2014’s more abstract “Divide.” He has also choreographed for Seiwert’s Imagery, presented at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival and garnered a 2015 Isadora Duncan Award nomination for his solo “Remember When.” His extensive international bona fides include performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and artistic leadership of Scottish Dance Theatre and his own Glasgow company.
Brew thrives on sharing projects with avantgarde artists like South Korean dancer Yoon Bora. “One of the things I’m trying to do is bring more collaborations,” he says. “Impact,” for ex-
ample, is set to a string quartet commissioned from Oakland’s classicalmeets-hip-hop Ensemble Mik Nawooj.
“I think that we’re doing very similar work,” says the ensemble’s founder, JooWan Kim, 39, who feels both personal and artistic kinship with Brew. “I’m saying that hip-hop is going to influence classical music, and classical music is going to be more like hip-hop. Marc’s disability will change what is perceived as high-level dance, and therefore changing what you think of as dance.”
Other artistic exchanges are in full swing. Robert Dekkers of Post:Ballet recently taught a six-week contemporary ballet workshop, and in September, members of LevyDance and England’s contemporary 2Faced Dance joined company class.
“There’s not a line where disabled dancers are a different thing,” 2Faced dancer Louis Parker-Evans said afterward. “You’re a person. What can you do, what weight can you take, how much weight do you want to give? Finding those answers out through movement is always interesting.”
In company class, Brew gives verbal cues for improvisation, like “your bodies are bound by elastic” or “you’re scooping the insides of a bell pepper,” mind-body puzzles that push dancers past the mannered restraint of technique. Yet he is also elevating the company’s technical rigor.
“He comes from a ballet background, like I do,” says Lani Dickinson, 23, one of several new Axis dancers. “Marc is not settling. He wants a high level, and professionalism. There’s been a change, for sure.”
Brew’s artistry was incubated during his training at the Australian Ballet School; he was a promising 20-year-old dancer when he became paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident. It is one of many perspectives that he brings into his work.
“I acquired my disability; that’s now become part of my identity,” he says. “I’m a gay man; that’s part of my identity. Being Australian is part of my identity. So how do I draw on all that richness to express that through my body?”
Identity is a frequent theme in Brew’s choreography, and while creating the 30-minute “Impact,” he asked the dancers to reflect on their own origin stories and bring their innate movement styles into the solos and ensembles. “I really wanted to show the virtuosity and the subtleness and the emotional connections,” he says, “showing their strength but also their vulnerability.”
Brew and Smith’s wider ambitions include offering more choreographic and technique workshops — the demand exceeds capacity — plus a collaboration with Australia’s Expressions Dance Company and a 2018 United Kingdom tour.
“We have so many offers, all over the world — Italy, France, Germany, China,” says Smith, who has shifted focus to advocacy and development, “but we can’t do them because there’s not a funding mechanism.”
What is inked into the schedule is a return to New York’s Gibney Dance Center for a November residency.
“Marc is an extraordinary artist, performer, choreographer, mentor and advocate,” says Gina Gibney. “The combination of his powerful presence alongside Judy’s, and their strong team — there is no doubt that this will be an amazing year.”