In a one-room studio tucked down an alley in Burbank, 4 dancers spin in unison round an orange-walled room. Two on foot and two in wheelchairs. It’s late and it’s scorching — the AC is busted. However their unrelenting positivity and persistence are in full power as they put together for a music video shoot.
They’re members of Infinite Move Dance, which employs disabled and non-disabled dancers of various identities.
Infinite Move founder and CEO Marisa Hamamoto has spent her complete life dancing. She suffered a spinal stroke in 2006 throughout a rehearsal, which initially left her paralyzed from the neck down. She walked out of the hospital two months later with a brand new grasp on life. “I saw the human body different,” she stated. “I saw dance different.” She additionally realized that there wasn’t sufficient entry for disabled dancers. One factor led to a different, and he or she based Infinite Move.
Since opening in 2015, Infinite Move has carried out at greater than 350 occasions, from Ok-5 college assemblies to 100-person flash mobs. Their movies have been seen greater than 100 million occasions mixed throughout social media.
From poignant and gravity-defying duets to electrifying group routines, the dancers’ variations make their work uniquely lovely. Generally choreography is customized to a wheelchair-friendly format, and different occasions the wheelchair is the centerpiece of the routine. The alternative ways you possibly can transfer in a wheelchair — with the power to roll, spin and hold a decrease heart of gravity — create alternatives for revolutionary choreography that may in any other case be not possible.
“When working with such diverse bodies, you by default start to become more innovative and more creative than you would otherwise,” stated Phillip Chbeeb, an Emmy-nominated choreographer who has collaborated with Infinite Move on a number of events. “You’re developing a brand new set of vocabulary from scratch, which is a really cool experience as a choreographer.”
Over the past 10 years, Infinite Move has grown right into a change-making behemoth that rests on 4 pillars: award-winning inclusive dance leisure, youth schooling, neighborhood constructing and dance trainer coaching for incapacity inclusion.
Infinite Move falls into step with an extended historical past of disability-driven innovation. The typewriter was invented for a blind girl to jot down letters in privateness. E mail was created so an engineer may talk remotely together with his deaf spouse. A software program engineer made the contact pad to accommodate his carpal tunnel.
In the present day, about one in 4 Individuals and 16% of the world inhabitants — 1.3 billion individuals — stay with a incapacity.
The ball first bought rolling on Infinite Move’s improvement when Hamamoto reached out to aggressive paraplegic bodybuilder Adelfo Cerame Jr. by way of Fb and requested if he’d be all for turning into her wheelchair dance companion.
Hamamoto stated she was initially terrified to bop with Cerame however rapidly realized it wasn’t any completely different from dancing with anybody else. “When you’re dancing with someone, you see beyond the labels — whether it’s race, color, size, age, disability, sexual orientation,” stated Hamamoto. “Dance is the universal language, and it belongs to everyone. We all have different bodies; we all have different identities. We can all coexist together and create something beautiful.”
Infinite Move founding member Adelfo Cerame Jr. holds up dance companion Marisa Hamamoto from his wheelchair, showcasing his aggressive bodybuilding power.
(Michael Hansel / Infinite Move Dance)
Infinite Move initially dubbed itself “a wheelchair dance company” and has since expanded to incorporate “just about anybody,” stated founding member and hip-hop dancer Mia Schaikewitz. A spinal AVM rupture left Schaikewitz paralyzed at 15. She stated a big a part of constructing the corporate was determining how you can dance with all varieties of dancers and our bodies.
Dwelling with a incapacity, “you learn how to problem-solve,” Schaikewitz stated. “There’s really not a limit unless you place a limit on yourself.” After being paralyzed, she went by means of a trial and error course of to “[make] the chair work for me.” After numerous journeys to Dwelling Depot on the lookout for the fitting materials to safe her ft to the chair’s footplate throughout dances, “I finally found the perfect Velcro,” she laughed. Due to her experimentation, everybody at Infinite Move now makes use of the identical adhesive.
Quick ahead to as we speak: Infinite Move is finalizing its newest routine, “Back to the Boyband.” The piece was spearheaded by Danny J. Gomez, actor turned Infinite Move dancer, as a part of the “concept project” initiative, the place dancers execute tasks with extra artistic freedom.
After 5 rehearsals, ample workshopping of the choreography and music (a mashup of boy band hits from over time) and stretching a bootstrapped price range, the challenge got here to fruition. The routine, Gomez stated, got here out of his love — and maybe nostalgia — for boy band tradition, but additionally the shortage of illustration for disabled male dancers. “Most men, when they recover from an injury, turn to sports, not art,” stated Gomez, who’s paraplegic.
The “Back to the Boyband” solid — Dushaun Thompson, Danny J. Gomez, Travis Ammann and Mauricio La Fuente — strike a pose in the course of the closing video shoot.
(Colin Oh / Infinite Move Dance)
Fellow “Back to the Boyband” dancer Travis Ammann famous that a whole lot of speak concerning the intersection of incapacity and dance “can be really serious. This is just boys having fun. It’s important for people to see.”
Infinite Move is proud to be based mostly in L.A., however the Hollywood backdrop has its cons. The business usually dismisses dancers due to their physique sort, ethnicity or race. Many are accustomed to being informed that they merely “don’t look the part,” stated Hamamoto.
“I felt bullied when I came to L.A.” Gomez stated. However beginning at Infinite Move felt “like I just rolled into this family.”
Infinite Move has nurtured a tight-knit neighborhood and is inclusive in additional methods than one. “The dance class culture in L.A. isn’t always very positive,” Hamamoto stated. “A lot of these dance classes feel more like an audition. It’s intimidating.”
“We eliminate all of that and say, ‘This is a safe space. If you’ve got a chronic illness and you need to rest, you can rest whenever you want.’ We have a way to teach people with various learning styles,” she stated.
There are a whole lot of dancers in L.A. who need to stand out and be seen, Schaikewitz famous. “We naturally stand out because we are different, but we’re just being ourselves.”
To have fun its tenth anniversary, the group launched a video Monday as half of a bigger marketing campaign to make use of dance as a automobile to advance incapacity inclusion. Hamamoto enlisted Chbeeb to collaborate together with her on a fowl’s-eye view video, a format he has been exploring all through his profession.
Hamamoto initially envisioned a top-down view over 4 wheelchair dancers. Ultimately, the “Envision” challenge advanced into a contemporary piece impressed by director and choreographer Busby Berkeley — kaleidoscopic and filmed from above, with synchronized dancers forming geometric patterns. Infinite Move’s model featured 9 dancers, 4 of whom used wheelchairs and 5 who didn’t.
“There is really infinite — no pun intended — potential with utilizing wheelchairs in unique, different capacities that I don’t think necessarily have been used,” stated Chbeeb. “Particularly on the floor, which was a really fun, different way of approaching aerial view work.”
The dance firm is utilizing its anniversary — which additionally coincides with the thirty fifth anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Act — as a chance to look towards its brilliant future. “In the next 10 years, I definitely want to expand our filmmaking, our content creation,” Hamamoto stated. “On the stage side, I’m always thinking, ‘How can we be the Cirque du Soleil of what we do?’”
The workforce behind Infinite Move additionally has Olympic aspirations. “My hope is that we’re fully immersed and involved in the Paralympic and Olympic opening ceremonies,” stated Hamamoto. “At Infinite Flow, we are disability-led, specifically BIPOC disability-led. For anything on [the Olympics’] scale, it’s really important to have disabled people, disabled artists or anyone doing this work, to be at the forefront of making decisions.”
The solid and crew of the #ThisIsDance “Envision” video smile for a bunch photograph after wrapping up filming the challenge.
(Kenzo Le / Infinite Move Dance)
Hamamoto and Schaikewitz share a imaginative and prescient for the corporate’s future: to get to some extent the place Infinite Move isn’t thought-about a “different” dance firm. “I hope all dance companies are as inclusive and so it really won’t be so unique. I see that, hopefully, for the world in general.”
