WATCH: Disabled Dancers Inspire With Stunning Moves

You’re at an Axis Dance Company performance, and the stage is set for something magical.

Soon, a trio of dancers emerges from the darkness. With a practiced precision honed over many years, the dancers begin a dramatic and athletic series of motions.

Pirouettes. Spins. Handstands. Leaps.

And the fact that one of them is in a wheelchair only makes it all the more special.

According to the AXIS website, the nationally touring dance company grew out of a movement class for women who use wheelchairs. The success of the class and the overwhelmingly positive public reaction eventually inspired the ensemble members to take things one leap forward, all with the goal of “changing the face of dancing and disability.”

Two decades later, the troupe has more than 75 works in their repertory and has toured major dance venues and festivals in more than 100 cities across America, including the Kennedy Center, the 2002 Olympic Arts Festival and the World Trade Center.

The company has also been featured on the nationally broadcast FOX television show “So You Think You Can Dance” in 2011 and 2012, and engages in a variety of youth-related initiatives and workshops.

“We specialize in working with people with and without physical disabilities,” the company explains on their website. “We have a much different dance vocabulary because of the incorporation of people who are disabled and the different ways and apparatus that they use to move.”

The dance routines that come out of the AXIS performance space are both “art” and “therapy,” according to the company.

“There were and continue to be physical access issues in studios and theatres, both for performers and disabled audience,” AXIS states. “Attitudes are another obstacle as some people still don’t consider what we do to be ‘real’ dance.”

Watch a video of an Axis Dance Company performance below.

In a special dance symposium commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Axis Dance Company will show their stuff at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) at 7 p.m. in Newark on Nov. 17.

Tickets for the show can be purchased online here.

The NJPAC performance will be followed by two free community dance classes at Rutgers University-Newark on Nov. 18, and at the Minnie B. Veal Recreation Center in Edison on Nov. 19.

For more information about either community class, click here.

Video courtesy of the Axis Dance Company

Photo by David DeSilva.

Photo caption: The AXIS Dance Company’s Dwayne Scheuneman and Sophie Stanley show off some moves.