Axis Dance Company takes a daring new turn

Rachel Howard

Friday, November 7, 2008

One of the most riveting Bay Area dances of 2008 starred a tiny, fierce redhead and a brawny, burningly intense man in a wheelchair. In Alex Ketley's duet "To Color Me Different," Axis Dance Company members Sonsheree Giles and Rodney Bell toss themselves into a torrent of volatile intimacy. Giles flips herself over Bell's shoulders and across the stage; Bell throws the wheelchair, tightly lashed to his immobile legs, to the floor and rolls upright again, in full command of his essentially three-limbed physicality.

No doubt part of the fascination of the piece comes from seeing an unconventional body fearlessly attempting unexpected things. But watching "To Color Me Different" at various local dance festivals this summer, there was no separating the power of Bell's physical determination from his passionate connection with Giles.