When you think of a dance company, a range of images enter your head, most likely including beautiful ballerinas dancing “The Nutcracker” or a chorus of tap dancers showing off their sparkling dresses and jazz hands.
You probably don’t think of dancers with one leg, or a dancer in a wheelchair or a dancer with only one arm. But if you see a DanceAbility International show, that’s exactly who you would see. DanceAbility is a company that’s trying to change people’s preconceived ideas of who a dancer can be.
“They’re not a normative dance company with a particular age and type. They’re all different ages and have all kinds of body types,” said Frances Bronet, dean of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Bronet recently worked with DanceAbility on its recent show, “Don’t Leave Me,” an exploration of space and collaboration of arts and architecture students and dancers that was performed at Lane Community College.
“Alito and the dancers are what inspired all of us,” he said.
Alito Alessi started the DanceAbility method in 1987 after he was inspired by an article he read about mixed dancing abilities.
“I grew up in the generation of contemporary dance where dance was for everybody, but nobody was doing it, including myself,” Alessi said.
Alessi decided to change this old model of looking at dancers as only those who have undergone a certain amount of training. He believes that the work of DanceAbility helps decrease prejudice and misconception about diversity in the field of dance.
Sarah Ebert, one of the dancers who performed in DanceAbility’s recent show and an adjunct professor at UO, enjoys working with the company because of its inclusivity.
“Alito believes that all bodies are dancing bodies and have equal abilities and contributions to the process as people that have studied dance for a lifetime,” Ebert said.
Alessi has traveled all over the world teaching his methods, which center around contact improvisation. There are DanceAbility certified teachers in Latin America, Europe, Asia, the US and Canada. DanceAbility’s improvisational methods encourage exploring new ways of movement, understanding one’s own body and responding to other people’s bodies and movement.
Alessi has also taught a DanceAbility Teacher Certification Course internationally, which teaches dance educators methods to make teaching dance more accessible to people of mixed abilities. Alessi has also been performing in schools since 1995, performing with a dancer in a wheelchair to show people at an early age that anyone can be a dancer.
“It definitely has helped me understand the importance of acknowledging that everybody is a dancing body and that we all have something to contribute,” Ebert said. “It’s not an elitist thing.”
If you’re interested in taking a DanceAbility class, certified DanceAbility teachers Celeste Peterson and Emery Blackwell lead a dance improvisation workshop the first and third Saturday of each month, 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. at the Reach Center, 2520 Harris St. for $8.