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TO INFINITY AND BEYOND
By Nicole Flender
Dance Spirit, March 2000
At 49, Kitty Lunn is part of a growing
trend of mature dancers performing, as she puts it, "beyond the age
traditionally associated with dancing." But, as the founder of
Infinity Dance Theater, she extends the boundaries of dance even
further. Kitty and two other members of her company are
wheelchair-mobile dancers.
With professional credits including the New Orleans Civic Ballet and
the Washington Ballet, Kitty has met the challenges of both full and
limited movement. Building on an old concept, her goal these days is
to train others to do the same. "The idea of able-bodied dancers
performing with dancers in wheelchairs has been around for at least
20 years," Kitty says. "I performed with one of the earlier
companies. What struck me was that the able-bodied dancers did
perfectly well but the people in wheelchairs just rolled across the
stage. There was nothing related to dance about them. There was no
parity between the two groups."
After suffering a spinal injury, Kitty realized she needed to take
what she had learned from her formal ballet training and transform
it for the dancer in a wheelchair. In a recent discussion with
graduate dance education students at Columbia University's Teachers
College in New York City, Kitty explained, "I was not always in a
wheelchair. I fell down a flight of icy steps and broke my back when
I was preparing for my first Broadway show. But the training is
still there. And, more importantly, the need to dance is still
there."
Two years ago, Australian ballet dancer Marc Brew found himself in a
similar situation. The sole survivor of a car accident, Marc also
lost the use of his legs. After friends put him in touch with Kitty,
she inspired Marc through e-mail before sponsoring his visit to NYC
in September 1999.
Beautiful, talented and intelligent, Kitty speaks with a presence
that keeps people on the edge of their seats. Clarifying the
differences between Marc's physical capabilities and her own, she
told the Teachers College students, "My line of demarcation is hip
level. I have upper abdominal and chest muscles. Marc's accident
left him with no feeling below the upper chest. Technically he is a
quadriplegic. He has to make different adjustments than I make. For
example, he has to slide his arm along the barre to do a port de
bras forward."
Kitty wants to train Marc in her technique so he can pass it on. The
experiment is working. After his initial six weeks or class and
rehearsal, Marc performed with Infinity Dance Theater during their
fall season at Riverside Church in Manhattan.
A Class in Session
Kitty teaches from one end of the barre with Marc in the middle and
Miriam Stern, an able-bodied dancer, at the other end. While Miriam
does a regular set of pli�s, Marc and Kitty do Graham-style
contractions that give the same sense of movement. Standing or
sitting, the dancers look remarkably similar doing port de bras
front and back.
Dancers in wheelchairs execute all foot and leg barre-work using
their arms and hands. Movement involving the heel of one's foot is
transposed to the heel of the hand. Just as turnout for the legs
originates in the hip, for wheelchair dancers using their arms, it
starts in the shoulders. Hands, like feet, are pointed or flexed.
As the dancers go through tendus, d�gag�s, ronde de jambes, frapp�s
(wonderful articulation for the wrists and hands, Kitty insists),
fondus, ronde de jambes en l'air and grand battements, Kitty's
technique becomes visually clear. She jokes that her leg extension
was never perfect, but her arm extension is now 180 degrees.
Center work, including adagio, turns and jumps, follow the natural
course of a standard ballet class. Kitty demonstrates how everyone
uses �paulement in an adagio. Depending on which makes more sense
for the combination, dancers in wheelchairs alternate between using
an arm as an arm and using an arm as a leg.
When Miriam does pirouette preparation, Kitty and Marc do the same
before executing their spins with the aid of their wheelchairs. As
Miriam does 16 changements, Kitty and Marc do 16 �paulement shifts.
Although Kitty's technique features beautiful movements, it involves
much more than aesthetics. "We need a strong back and strong arms
for what we do," says Kitty. "I am training the muscles in my upper
body the same way other dancers train the muscles in their legs. The
turnout in my arm has improved tremendously since I started this two
years ago.: During performances, Kitty is often lifted from her
chair. Working on the floor, she uses her arms to shift her legs or
is supported by others when standing on her hands.
Tools Of The Trade
Kitty and Marc use 17-pound "dance chairs" on stage. Lightweight and
efficient, they were designed and built by Kitty's husband, Andrew
Macmillan. Kitty can propel her chair the width of the entire stage
with one push of a hand. The chair she uses in everyday life weighs
more than 200 pounds.
"When Marc came to me." Kitty says, "he couldn't sit up straight. He
had been given a special chair for quads that resembles a bucket
seat. The aim is to keep from feeling as if you are falling forward.
I brought him to the spinal corn unit last week at Mount Sinai
Hospital, and they couldn't believe the progress we had made using
dance training."
On With The Show
Kitty's next challenge will be training young wheelchair-mobile
people who never had the opportunity to study as able-bodied
dancers. Under the umbrella of Jacques d'Amboise's National Dance
Institute, she has been instructing elementary school students at
P.S. 199 in Manhattan. "For some of them it's their 3rd Year," she
says. "We have been moving forward. I know I've reached them when I
see them glide across the floor doing a coordinated port do bras
that no first-year student (able-bodied or not) would understand."
Currently making a video that demonstrates the beginner/intermediate
level of her technique, Kitty wants to prepare more dance teachers
to work with wheelchair dancers. "Don't worry about how to use the
wheelchair," she encourages. "The students know how to use the
chairs. But the chairs are inanimate objects. The dancer in the
chair is needed to make the dance-and that's who you are teaching."
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