You Too Are Made of Stars (Wobbly Dance)

Yulia Arakelyan remembers the first day

of an improv dance class led by an experimental choreographer from San

Francisco. "€œThe elevator was broken that day," she says. "€œI was carried

up three flights of stairs, paid for this class, and then the first

thing he said was, '€˜You know, I don't think this class is appropriate

for you.'€™ I was just like, bloody hell."

As a

disabled dancer, the 31-year-old Arakelyan can't do everything other

dancers do, but she doesn't let them set the rules. "I'm going to decide

what's appropriate for me or not," she says. In 2007, she became the

first disabled graduate of the University of Washington's dance program.

The year before, she and husband Erik Ferguson, also a wheelchair user,

founded Portland dance company Wobbly. She and Ferguson perform this

weekend, both in chairs and out, as a part of Arakelyan's New Expressive

Works residency at Studio 2.

"Associating

disability and dance creates a seeming contradiction," says the

38-year-old Ferguson, who was born disabled. "By not arguing with the

contradiction, we force people to think differently about what

disability is."

Arakelyan

was also born disabled. Her family, Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan,

moved to Seattle when she was 10. At 19, she first saw a performance by

Seattle's Light Motion Dance Company, a duo with one able-bodied dancer

and one, Charlene Curtiss, in a wheelchair. The classic fluidity of

Curtiss' movement and the athleticism of her wheelies and spins awoke

something in Arakelyan.

"It

opened up my world," she says. "I discovered my body. I realized before

that I kind of ignored it, like it was not my own. All these medical

things were done to me—surgeries and therapy, and I hated all of it. I

remember the very first dance class, I was like, 'Wow.' I have these

cells and muscles, and they all just started moving. Life made sense."

In

her ballet classes, while other students extended their legs in tendus,

Arakelyan stuck out her arm. Instead of pirouettes, she'd roll her head.

Constant adaptation made her a good improviser. Same goes for Ferguson,

a farm boy from rural Michigan who dove into contact improvisation in

college. The two met in 2005, when Ferguson asked Arakelyan to perform

with him. Arakelyan, painted white, threw scoured lemons around the

stage as a woman on crutches squashed them. Ferguson, wearing a skirt

weighed down with 30 pounds of lemons, was held up on his feet by two

able-bodied women.

This weekend, in a piece called You Too Are Made of Stars,

the two cover themselves in white paint and medical tubing. It's a

common theme for them, as Arakelyan's ventilator tube is part of her

daily life. They focus on presence and intention with their gazes,

leaving their movement slow and simple. At one point, the two hold a

long medical tube between their mouths. The moment begins romantically,

almost sexually, but then turns dark: Arakelyan wraps the tube around

Ferguson's neck and leaves him, dragging him a little on the floor.

They

had several arguments in creating the piece—it's only the second duet

the two have created and performed. Yulia likes to go over details with a

level of repetition that bothers Ferguson, who thinks in big ideas. In

the end, though, they say that tension adds a palpable energy to the

piece. "It's very much about all that happens between the gaze of two

people," Ferguson says, "all the ways you express anger, passion, love

and truth in very few movements."

SEE IT: Wobbly Dance is at Studio 2, 810 SE Belmont St., studiotwozoomtopia.com. 7:30 pm Friday-Sunday, March 28-30. $12.

Willamette Week