07-05-2025
Axis Dance Explores New Frontiers With Mobility Technology
What are crutches for? To help an injured or disabled person get from Point A to Point B?
Like most mobility devices, crutches are often designed and viewed in a matter-of-fact medical framework. There is a problem to be fixed; the device is the solution.
Performances by Axis Dance Company routinely explode that idea. For Axis — an Oakland, Calif., ensemble of both disabled and non-disabled dancers — a crutch brims with creative possibilities: It might be a partnering support, a third leg, an elongated arm.
But what happens when that expansive way of thinking is applied to the design of the device itself? What kinds of movement might be possible if, for example, a crutch could extend and retract?
