The AXIS Dance Company, which features dancers with a spectrum of disabilities, have been invited to perform at the opening ceremonies of the international sporting event for injured military veter…
AXIS Dance Company dancers practice their performance for the opening ceremony of the upcoming Invictus Games in Germany, on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023, at Berkeley Ballet Theater in Berkeley, Calif. It’s inevitable that a large number of people will want to check out coverage of the Invictus Games’ opening ceremony Sept. 9 in Germany to see the international sporting event’s celebrity founder, Prince Harry, along with his wife, Meghan Markle.
For its part, AXIS integrates the talents of professional dancers, some of whom have disabilities, into world-class productions that are designed to redefine perceptions of disability and to expand ideas about what dance, the most athletic of art forms, can be. In “Dawn,” JanpiStar, who uses they/them pronouns, whirls their chair around the stage on the power of upper body strength and explosive energy, as the music moves from a soft instrumental melody into a pumped-up Latin beat, accompanied by a female vocalist. JanpiStar pulls dancer Zara Anwar, who is not disabled, up into a lift, positioning her on their legs.
AXIS Dance Company dancers including JanpiStar, who is a wheelchair user, practice their performance for the opening ceremony of the upcoming Invictus Games in Germany, on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023, at Berkeley Ballet Theater in Berkeley, Calif. “It is going to be a thrill performing for such a massive audience,” said deaf performer Anna Gichan who, like JanpiStar, started dancing as a young child. For “Dawn,” Gichan can’t hear the music though she was able to prepare for the piece by memorizing “the textures” of it by listening to it at home on speakers or through her hearing aids. While performing, she takes cues from the other dancers and follows an internal rhythm of her own, which sets for her a precise movement for each count.
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