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DANCE OF BRAVE HEART
The Scotsman, July 3, 2002
Kitty Lunn's will is astonishing - even a broken back couldn't stop
her dancing. Louisa Pearson found her preparing for two
ground-breaking shows in Glasgow.
"Andrew and I take our Scots heritage very seriously", says Kitty
Lunn, from a B&B on the Isle of Iona. The artistic director of
Infinity Dance Theater is explaining to me why an American
choreographer would choose to create a ballet inspired by Scotland's
great heroes. When you learn that Lunn's husband is Andrew MacMillan,
president of the Clan MacMillan Association of North America, the
pieces of the puzzle fall more or less into place. "People seldom
think beyond Braveheart, a kilt and the bagpipes," she says. "They
think they know everything about Scotland - but the culture is so
rich".
Lunn has a real and deep interest in the county, one that goes
beyond the stereotypical American searching for their roots. But
then, she is a woman who takes preconceptions and throws them into
the spin cycle.
Once she was a dancer with the Washington Ballet. Lunn worked with
some of the biggest names - Martha Graham, Anges de Mille and Jos�
Limon were on her CV. Then one day, amid the preparations for her
first show on Broadway, she slipped on some ice and broke her back.
She could no longer walk, let alone dance.
"I've been dancing all of my life", says Lunn. "It's
an intrinsic part of who I am, but after my accident I tried very hard not to
think about dancing and I was very unhappy - so unhappy that I
contemplated taking my own life". Having seen her whole world crash
around her, Lunn was fortunate enough to have the support of her
future husband.
"He said: 'If you want to dance, what's stopping you? Is there some
kind of rule that says you can't ?' A lightbulb went off in my head
that I was stopping me - it was my own fear and anxiety about how
would I do this, or what would other people think."
Having made the decision to dance again, Lunn faced up to the
physical challenge. With the help of her husband and her
physiotherapist, she made her way to a mainstream ballet class. "I
went back to class - in fear and trembling, I might tell you - and I
knew after that day that everything was going to be okay."
With her extensive knowledge of classical ballet and modern dance
techniques, Lunn began to work on adapting her skills to the
wheelchair. Her husband modified a chair for her to dance in,
creating a vehicle which was both lightweight and able to respond to
the shift in her body weight, and the long process of discovering a
new way of dancing began.
While blazing a trail in her own life, it soon became clear that
there were many other performers with disabilities struggling to win
their right to get up on stage like any able-bodied actor or dancer.
True to form, Lunn tackled the situation vigorously, becoming a
prominent activist on disability issues.
She has been placed on the boards of numerous organizations, ranging
from Actors' Equity to the National Board of the American Federation
of Television and Radio Artists. Lunn tries to play down these
achievements, but is willing to admit that "I have helped to get
laws passed. Depending on who you talk to, I'm quite a
troublemaker".
She established her own company in 1994, employing dancers with and
without disabilities. Lunn concentrated on teacher-training, with
the rationale that if more dancers with disabilities were going to
find success in professional dance, they would need informed
training. "I teach teachers how to transpose the work that they're
already doing. Everyone gets so panicky about wheelchairs, but the
chair is an inanimate object - it doesn't do the dancing."
And crucially, she focuses on getting teachers to forget about the
chair and remembering to teach the student - to Lunn, the question
of perception is the main problem that has to be overcome. "The
biggest obstacle that Infinity Dance Theater faces is the
non-disabled world's fear that it's going to be pathetic," she says,
bun in practice, Lunn and her company regularly leave their
audiences overwhelmed. Lunn teaches six professional ballet classes
a week, and makes an effort to teach a class in every country the
company visits - she'll be at Scottish Ballet for one such class.
She recalls a visit to Italy where the company was not only unused
to having a teacher in a wheelchair, few of them spoke English
either. Typically, Lunn refused to recognize a barrier. "The
language of the ballet class is universal and I can do more to
create an understanding by participating in a mainstream way," she
says.
As well as the Scottish programme, she will bring a collection of
modern dance performances to Glasgow, describing it as an eclectic
repertoire featuring her own solo work as well as ensemble pieces.
One work features dancer/choreographer Jeffrey Freeze in a ballet
inspired by Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. Freeze dances
the role of the mother, though Lunn says this version is "not a
comedy, not a farce. It goes all the way back to Shakespeare's time,
when women weren't permitted to be on the stage and so men did all
of the female roles". With a multi-generational company that
features dancers in their fifties, Lunn seems impervious to
traditional restraints.
Her strength and beliefs have not just transformed her own life,
they have spilled over into the lives of those around her. She has
the power to inspire. "What I've learned on this 15-year journey is
that the dancer inside me doesn't care that I use a wheelchair," she
says. "It has more to do with what's in my soul than it has to do
with what my legs can or cannot do. If you are angry with your
instrument, you are not going to be able to produce anything
beautiful from it; it's perfect the way that it is."
"I didn't say it was convenient, but it is perfect."
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