New Haven Independent

Other wheels appeared on skateboards, roller skates, bikes and wheelchairs as about 20 people of all ages and physical abilities turned out Thursdsay evening to help choreograph what will be the grand finale dance performance at the end of the Festival of Arts & Ideas: the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange’s “613 Radical Acts of Prayer.”

This reporter was on roller blades.

Four wheelchair-bound dance enthusiasts showed up. During the introductions, disability rights activist (that’s what it reads on her business card) Elaine Kolb said it was wonderful to be welcomed to participate in a dance performance rather than being automatically excluded.

After the introductions, Vincent Thomas (pictured at top of story trying out the unicycle) suggested that everyone consider the wheelchair-bound folks “differently-abled,” not “disabled.” Kolb grimaced at that and said, “That word was invented by people who are not disabled because they think ‘disabled’ is a bad thing. We don’t think it’s a bad thing.”

After the group did some preliminary stretching (pictured), Kolb and Thomas were paired up to develop a dance routine.

What they came up with was awe-inspiring. In part, he rode on her lap, and they swayed their upper bodies with perfectly coordinated arm movements. Then he pulled away, and pirouetted around her wheelchair as it moved forward. Their performance was greeted with enthusiastic applause, and Kolb pronounced it “the most fun” she’d had in ages.

All the other groups of two or three came up with their own creative movements. I was paired with Linda on roller skates — a former roller derby girl — and Suzanne, a woman on a pink bike who announced to the group that she’d just been diagnosed with lupus and the doctor additionally had found a lump in her breast. Part of her “dance” was raising both hands and throwing her arms out in a gesture of banishing the lump. We incorporated that into our routine as she grabbed our hands in sequence and spun us around on two intersecting paths near the pool around the flagpole.

Peter DiNuro (pictured on the right), the producing artistic director of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, ran the workshop. After all the duos and trios had a chance to perform, he gathered everyone back together and asked us to share what movements had really made an impression on us. These would be incorporated into the dance going forward.

There will be plenty of rehearsals leading up to the grand finale on June 28, but would-be dancers will also be able to join in at the last minute. Thursday night’s crowd included five-year-old Andrew on a skateboard and several women who were past middle age. There was racial and physical ability diversity too. Participants agreed with Kolb that stretching our bodies and our creativity in this way was an awful lot of fun.