The music comes on, and the dancers appear. At first, all you see is the man in the wheelchair. He pulls his partners close and pushes them away. He makes his wheelchair jump or abandons it to crawl forward on the floor. It's a slight shock – you're not used to seeing disabled people so much in command of their bodies. How graceful, how athletic he is, in spite of the disability, you think. Gradually, you're drawn into the dance and start experiencing it as a whole. Able-bodied and disabled dancers become one group in beautiful movement, taking and giving in perfect coordination. Stories of pursuit, desire and repulsion unfold on stage; vignettes of despair, conquest and joy. The wheelchair is only one element of the dance. And when the performance is over, you need a second to withdraw from the beauty of what you just experienced and readjust to your surroundings. AXIS, the integrated dance company from California, has made magic yet again, in Lod. AXIS spent five days in Israel last week as guests of the American Embassy. The program was part of a national project to develop enrichment of the special-needs population and the elderly. Metro was invited to visit the company's day at Lod's Ganei Aviv community center. The company gave workshops with adults and children, performing excerpts of their works after several performances by local groups. Present at the Lod performance were William Grant, deputy ambassador of the United States; Tom Genton, senior adviser for press and cultural affairs; and Tyler Partridge, deputy press attaché. On the Israeli side were Avi Gil, director of Lod community centers; Deputy Mayor Aviv Wasserman; and Aaron Atias, director of the Lod Municipality. Marc Brew has been the guest artistic director at AXIS for the past five years. He has danced and choreographed for 18 years with companies such as the Australian Ballet Company, South Africa's PACT Ballet, and Scottish Dance Theater. The London-based Brew has received international awards and honors for his pioneering work and was recently named by Time Out Magazine as the best of the new breed of London's Rising Dance Talent. He was disabled at age 17. “I acquired my disability from a car accident 18 years ago. I had been trained as a dancer, so I have experience both as a non-disabled dancer and a disabled dancer,” he says. “I had to change my ideas of what a dancer was. My traditional perception was that I have to have two legs, I have to be on my feet. I was paralyzed from the chest down, so I couldn't do it that way anymore. I had to think about what dance means to me. I concluded that it's about how I can express myself through movement. Certainly there are restrictions, but it creates possibilities.” Brew sees his “acquired” disability not as something terrible but as an opportunity to develop personally and creatively. Integrated dance liberates not only disabled people but also those whose stereotypes place them squarely in wheelchairs, there to sit passively for evermore. AXIS challenges everything about such stereotypes. Of its eight dancers, four are disabled. One female dancer was born with most of one arm missing. I will not soon forget how she and her able-bodied partner, also a woman, portrayed friendship, a quarrel and reconciliation in sinuous, energetic rhythm. According to a representative from the embassy, the dancer had a prosthesis but dumped it, feeling freer without it. “They're showing that everything is open to everyone,” says the representative. And it seemed to prove true when the Israeli integrated dance group performed. They were mostly middle-aged and elderly women dressed in Hindu costumes who looked like they were having the time of their lives. Kiyon Sagari, a female AXIS able-bodied dancer, explains how the company teaches disabled children and adults. “Our environment is welcoming and open and safe, and it's a brave space. If someone doesn't want to join in at the beginning, we allow them to do that, all the while acknowledging them. We keep looking at them as the workshop goes on. For the most part, they get excited and want to join. As soon as they join, they know that we're all supporting each other,” she says. I witnessed just such a touching incident during the children's workshop. One little girl, the only one disabled among about 20 kindergarteners, first stood to one side, clinging to her mother. The she began to imitate the other children's movements and gradually joined the giggling, jumping circle. The workshop ended with all the kids hugging their partners, and she did too, while her mother, standing aside, beamed. When asked what drew Sagari to AXIS, she says, “I was already a dancer in San Francisco. I'd had some personal experience with disability. My father became disabled before he passed away. It was my first experience with a disabled person in a wheelchair. When I knew that AXIS had a job opening, I was interested in changing my experience with disability; using my art as therapy, finding a new way of approaching disabilities. For me, it opened a door to the fact that even someone who's disabled can have access to art and dance and movement, the same way I do.” Dwayne Shuneman, 47, the dancer in the wheelchair, says, “I broke my neck diving into a swimming pool at age 26. At first I started playing wheelchair sports. Then I tried dance, and just kept dancing. That was 14 years ago. So now I dance with AXIS and tour the US. What drew me to dance? In sports, you compete with everyone else. In dance, you connect with people. I really like that. And in sports, let's say in basketball, there's a limited number of moves, maybe 60, but no more because only those are useful on the court. In dance, every time I perfect a move, there's another one to learn – and another one and another one. The number of movements is endless.” The performers rehearse 20 hours every week, and most take master classes or work out privately. What gave Shuneman the inner fortitude to go on when he broke his neck? “Family support was a big part of it,” he says, “but I've always believed it's important to focus on what you can do, and not what you can't. So when I broke my neck, that was the ultimate test. At the beginning, I could barely push my wheelchair 10 yards. But if that's what I could do, that's what I did. And then it was 20 yards, and then I was going up and down curbs, and then I was dancing.” Apart from performing with AXIS, Shuneman has a full-time job teaching autistic children and has raised a niece and nephew as his own. Integrated dance is more about communication and expression of emotions than typical dance forms. The able-bodied and disabled partners have equal importance in each scene, and their interdependence is obvious. It takes courage to accept that your safety is in the hands of your partner, especially in daring moves when a wheelchair dancer will tip sideways or even flat backward or when a standing dancer lightly lands on then somersaults away from his or her lap. “A lot of trust has to be established between us,” explains Shuneman. “Especially when you're moving from place to place. For example, this stage is a lot different from other stages – it's shorter. You just have to trust your partners. You might think, 'I'm just going to stop here,' and you have to trust that your partner will stop there, too. It takes a long time. We work in the studio a lot of hours to build that trust. And when we're on the road, we're like a family.” That became evident when Brew wheeled himself over, concern on his face, and urged Shuneman to eat something before the group left. AXIS held performances, workshops and master classes for dancers with and without disabilities during their Israel tour. At the YMCA in Jerusalem, they performed for a group of young Jews and Palestinians in a coexistence project. Throughout their Israeli tour, their audiences were a mix of religious and secular, Jewish and non-Jewish. The group also had an exchange with the male Orthodox dance troupe Bein Shamaim Va'aretz, sharing dance techniques and even developing a project for the future. The embassy representative says, ”One of aims of the State Department was to create a cultural interchange. Not just the embassy showcasing American culture and art but the Americans learning from the Israeli culture too and taking something back with them. I feel we achieved that.” To learn more about AXIS: www.axisdance. org. For more information about integrated dance in Israel, visit the sites of Keshet and Vertigo: keshetarts.org/klab/ physically-integrated; www.vertigo.org.il.