By Jenea Rewertz-Targui, Ordway Center for the Performing Arts

The Ordway welcomes everyone and is committed to making our facility and programs accessible and inclusive to all in our community, including those with disabilities. We look forward to expanding and increasing access to opportunities to attend, participate in, and learn through the professional performing arts.

AXIS Dance Company performing choreography by Sonya Delwaid. Photo from www.axisdance.org

The Ordway is proud to bring AXIS Dance Company to the stage on March 21, as the company embodies artistic excellence, innovation, and access to the arts in a very profound way. Under the artistic direction of Judith Smith, the company of seven dancers—with and without disabilities—challenges the possibilities of movement, expanding and enriching the art form itself and changing the way we think about the possibilities of the human body.

Prior to the performance will be a panel discussion with local artists Gretchen Pick, Artistic Director of Young Dance, and Independent Dancers Mike Cohn and Canae Weiss, who will share about inclusive dance opportunities and demonstrate translating movement to their own body and collaborative possibilities between dancers with and without disabilities. Young Dance Company members will demonstrate how dancers create different solutions to movement tasks that define the creative process as they work on a dance.

By Ilona Sturm

While in town, AXIS Dance Company will present three school performances and offer a master class for the community. Instructors will introduce the fundamentals of Physically Integrated Dance, a contemporary dance form that evolves from the collaboration between dancers with and without physical disabilities, during “Get inMotion!” on March 19 at the Ordway. The 90 minute workshop is for non-dancers and dancers with any level of dance experience, with a focus on using creative movement, improvisation and modern dance techniques looking at differences as opportunities and not limitations.

Access and inclusion continues beyond the walls of the facility.

It’s important to note that many local arts and cultural organizations are, as a community, taking giant leaps forward in improving access and full inclusion for people with disabilities — not only as patrons, but also as volunteers, staff and artists on stage.  With a deep, shared commitment that this is the right thing to do, the Ordway is embracing inclusivity through relationships and partnerships with local pioneering cultural leaders.  VSA Minnesota and Young Dance are among our collaborators for programming and promotions, along with a number of other arts and educational organizations who are committed to inclusive arts experiences and arts learning.