AXIS Dance Company highlights the talents of performers with disabilities. Here’s its story.

Marc Brew was beginning a promising career as a ballet dancer in South Africa when a head-on car collision paralyzed him from the chest down. “I was told that I would never walk again,” he said. “You can imagine, for a dancer, that was my worst nightmare.”

After returning home to Australia for rehabilitation, he came to accept using a wheelchair but not ending his dance career. “Rather than seeing [my disability] as less, it actually created more opportunities for me in exploring my physicality and what dance meant to me,” he said. “I realized it was about expressing myself through movement, and I could still do that.”

Over the next 20years, he danced and choreographed for ballet and contemporary companies across the globe. In 2017, he became the artistic director of AXIS Dance Company, an ensemble of both disabled and nondisabled artists in Oakland, Calif. AXIS will perform Brew’s latest work, Roots Above Ground, at Rowan University in Glassboro on Saturday. Among the company’s six dancers for the weekend performance, two use a wheelchair and one has a limb difference.

“We’re broadening and expanding what we think dance and dance companies should look like,” said AXIS dancer Louisa Mann. “We make adjustments based on people’s needs and body types, but we’re all here to dance and create and share art.”

Unlike other dance companies which may prize uniformity, AXIS embraces each dancer’s uniqueness. “There’s beauty in difference,” said Brew.

Roots Above Ground explores what it means to belong, and Brew challenged his dancers to infuse their own experiences into the work. “I hope the audience gets to learn about each dancer a bit,” he said. “They’ll be wearing their hearts on their sleeves when they perform.”

To maximize accessibility for audiences, Brew collaborated with disability consultants and a visual projection artist to embed American Sign Language, closed captioning, and audio descriptions into the artistic framework. All AXIS performances occur in theaters that are wheelchair accessible. Rowan University will have large-print programs available, and AXIS hopes to provide Braille programs at future performances.

Inspiration for the piece initially came from Brew’s experience “of being a world traveler always moving around for work and ambition but never laying down my roots and always questioning where I belong,” he said. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the concepts he had been considering creatively — home, borders, and barriers — suddenly imposed real limitations on the production process.

Rehearsals began on Zoom and were conducted remotely for nearly a year, with the dancers learning and devising choreographic phrases wherever they could find space in their homes. When pandemic restrictions finally eased to allow the company to meet in person, Brew, who had been in the United Kingdom, ran into complications with his visa and could not return. Cast and choreographer didn’t rehearse together in person until the month before the premiere.

“The piece is the pandemic,” reflected AXIS dancer JanpiStar. “Everyone is separated and then breaks those walls, including spiritual walls, to come together.”

Roots Above Ground, which premiered in San Francisco in October 2021 and toured to Frankfurt and Dubai, makes its East Coast debut at Rowan. In addition to Brew’s 55-minute work, the evening’s program, re:surge, will include a live performance of Hold Fast. This 15-minute series of duets was created during the pandemic by former AXIS member Sonsherée Giles. The program concludes with a film screening of Flutter, a fast-paced piece choreographed by Robert Dekkers.

The film will be shown with audio description. “It’s still an accommodation that many folks aren’t yet familiar with,” said Debbie Shapiro, director of community engagement and presenting at Rowan. “I find that it’s so artistic in itself … Putting language to dance can help anybody access meaning into the choreography.”

AXIS comes to Rowan through the university’s Marie Rader Presenting Series. This series invites diverse dance, music, and theater artists to campus to perform and provide educational opportunities that go beyond the typical classroom curriculum.

AXIS’ participation coincides with an initiative to expand the university’s dance program, which includes the construction of a new building with wheelchair accessible studios — a current need on campus. While the company is on campus, it will hold an in-person masterclass for Rowan students.

“I really love this part of AXIS, when we go to a university or organization and teach people how to create an integrated class setting,” said AXIS rehearsal director Yuko Monden Juma. “Dance should be accessible for everybody because it’s an amazing tool to find happiness in life.”

The challenges of working and living across different countries during a worldwide pandemic prompted Brew to step down as artistic director at the end of 2021. He is succeeded by Nadia Adame, a Spanish choreographer and actress with a spinal cord injury who began her professional career as an AXIS dancer in 2000.

She returns to the company eager to bring new dancers onboard. Four of AXIS’ six dancers moved on from the company last year. Two have been replaced by new full-time members, who have learned their parts for the re:surge program in record time. The remaining two agreed to stay for the Rowan performance. With choreography tailored to each member’s distinct physicality and without understudies, AXIS cannot easily recreate a work when members of its cast depart.

In growing the company, Adame will prioritize equal representation, if not overrepresentation, of dancers with disabilities.

Although the company is more inclusive than others, selecting dancers remains a challenge. To help establish new generations of talent, AXIS hosts a mentorship program called Choreo-Lab and summer intensives every year.

The Rowan performance marks AXIS’ first time traveling within the United States since the start of the pandemic. It is one of two performances the company has planned this year and is the only show currently scheduled on the East Coast. Adame is hopeful that this year will bring additional opportunities and will begin choreographing a new work for the company in March.

“I hope to expose audiences to that celebration of diversity and show that disabled and nondisabled dancers are as valuable one to the other one,” she said. “I just hope we open hearts and open eyes, and people see the possibilities of dance.”

AXIS Dance Company will perform at Rowan University’s Pfleeger Concert Hall on Saturday, February 19 at 8 p.m. Audiences are invited to a preshow reception at 6:30 p.m. and a Q&A session immediately following the performance. Tickets are $20 and must be purchased in advance. Capacity is limited, and seats are not assigned to allow for social distancing. Campus visitors are not required to show proof of vaccination but must complete a health screening and wear a mask indoors. More info: go.rowan.edu/axis