The heart of AXIS is the commissioning, creation, and performance of contemporary dance developed in collaboration with disabled and non-disabled dancers. AXIS builds the bridge between contemporary dance, integrated dance, and disability culture.
Piel de Luna
Piel de Luna draws inspiration from the mystical energy of the moon – exploring how its gravitational pull not only affects the tides but also weaves invisible threads connecting the human spirit.
Harmony of Souls
Harmony of Souls is a duet from Bay Area choreographer dazaun soleyn that investigates trust and our innate sense of connection. Through movement, music, and visual storytelling, this piece blurs the boundaries between our individual and interconnected experience. It moves through spaces of beauty, tension and eventual release, capturing the essence of the bonds that make us human.
Blueprints of being
In Jorge Crecis’ Blueprints of being, each dancer represents both a real individual and an emblematic archetype, inviting audiences to see parts of their own stories and identities echoed on stage
Breathe Again
In her first work for AXIS as Artistic Director, Nadia Adame’s Breathe Again explores the most suffocating parts of our collective and individual journeys.
Desiderata
Choreographed by award-winning Spanish Choreographer Asun Noales, Desiderata explores the idea of desire as something universal and intimate at the same time. Epiphany of the being that looks, listens, vibrates and touches another body. Universe that is revealed by discovering the other.
Tread
Choreographed by AXIS Choreo-Lab alum Ben Levine, Tread is a joyful exploration of momentum, friction, and gravity that uses wheeled children’s toys to level the playing field between disabled and non-disabled dancers.
Roots Above Ground
Roots Above Ground explores the multiple meanings of home as it peels back the layers to uncover the human need for belonging.
Hold Fast
A series of duets that reflect on how we struggle, fight, yield, resist and surrender to the constant changes of our landscape. We hold fast and steady ourselves as she goes.
Flora Hereafter: how flowers survive
an alt waltz of the flowers growing on the brink of mass extinction.
Learn About the Work > - Flora Hereafter: how flowers survive
Flutter (film)
Robin Dekkers’ Flutter was originally created for Post:ballet in 2010, and premiered live with AXIS Dance Company in 2019. In 2021, the Lincoln Center commissioned AXIS to create a dance film version of the piece – where complex musicality, spatial shifts, and physicality showcase the AXIS dancers’ strengths as individuals and as a collective.
Petrichor – the smell of earth after rain
Archibald offers snapshots of intimate connections and pushes the dancers of AXIS to face how gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Learn About the Work > - Petrichor – the smell of earth after rain
Alice in Californiland
Arthur Pita and his long-time collaborator set and costume designer Yann Seabra have developed an aesthetic that effectively reaches audiences and invites them to look deeper at social issues and question our culture and society.
Flutter
This work has been refocused by Robin Dekkers through the lens of physically integrated dance as a way of highlighting the skills of the individual AXIS dancers as well as how they come together as a cohesive company.
Historias Rotas / Broken Stories
Historias Rotas (Broken Stories) explores how our stories start with our ancestors: their struggles, their tears and their smiles. They have paved our road and our journey contains their broken stories.
Radical Impact
Choreographed by Marc Brew, this work draws on each dancer’s unique experiences and how their stories can be told through the medium of dance.
In Defense of Regret
In Defense of Regret was collaboratively created by three separate choreographers, Maurya Kerr, Alex Ketley and Bobbi Jene Smith. Each Choreographer has a unique voice and interest in working with AXIS, but all three share a similar aesthetic sensibility regarding the idea that movement can be an amazing map of our interior landscapes, instead of creating dance through a more graphic or architectural vantage point.
to go again
AXIS collaborates with Joe Goode on to go again, a dance theater work that brings to light issues facing our nation’s veterans and addresses their resilience following severe life changes.
Full of Water
Just Add Water is a whimsical how-to guide for making and appreciating dance.
Trio A Pressured #X
Its then radical form, movement vocabulary and performance approach forever changed the thinking about what could be defined as a dance, who could be a dancer, and the dancer’s relationship to performance.
Divide
Choreographed by Marc Brew, Divide is an abstract work exploring the divide in human interaction in movement, space and time.
The Gift (of Impermanence) – Dance Film
Through a revue collection of snippets, excerpts and remembrances, dancers meet, interact with each other through movement and then part.
Learn About the Work > - The Gift (of Impermanence) – Dance Film
Dix minutes plus tard
This duet is an intimate partnership to Schubert’s Andante from the String quartet no 15 in G.
The Reflective Surface
Bay Area choreographer Amy Seiwert pushes AXIS to a new level of rigor – beginning with a ballet foundation and transforming it with her unique quirkiness, kineticism and layered partnering. This quartet is sure to incorporate new risks for both AXIS and Amy.
what if would you
In honor of AXIS’ 25th Anniversary, this collaboration between choreographer and Guggenheim Fellow Victoria Marks and composer/musician Beth Custer revolves around notions of how deductive thinking leads to if/then assumptions.
Ricochet
Ricochet draws its movements from the specific movement qualities and movement vocabularies of the dancers. The piece is about how we, as people, affect and influence each other by being close or far, in contact or in conversation.
Full of Words
The physical conversations, encounters and interventions about what it is to be human and who might dance.
The Narrowing
Looking at the world of performance and the roles that we take on by participating in it.
Find a Way to Fall
Site-specific work for the beautiful urban environment of Yerba Buena Gardens.
ODD
This piece in collaboration with Shinichi Iova-Koga and inkBoat is inspired by the Norwegian figurative painter, Odd Nerdrum.
Light Shelter
Choreographed by David Dorfman, this work unifies AXIS dancers with Community performers.
Point to Something
This piece explores how contact or lack or contact and music can change the perceived experience of both the performers and the audience.
Bounce Back
A piece created specifically for AXIS’ Dance Access/KIDS! program for K-5 youth assemblies.
Vessel
Vessel is a performance work using dance and voice to explore the concept that all aspects of our bodies, each and every cell, retain our memories and underlie our imaginations.
To Color Me Different
To Color me Different is a work for AXIS Dance Company that loosely explores how our intimate interactions with people alter us personally.
A Room with No View
A work by longtime AXIS collaborator Sonya Delwaide
the beauty that was mine, through the middle, without stopping
What do we see? Is the actuality of the “seen” entity ever close to what we presume it to be? Is “seeing” somehow limited?
Learn About the Work > - the beauty that was mine, through the middle, without stopping
One Breath is an Ocean for a Wooden Heart
A duet created by Lisa Bufano and Sonsherée Giles, is informed by the relationship between physical transformation and identity. In this performance, the dancers wear 28″ wooden stilts secured to their arms and legs, constructed from queen-Anne style table legs.
Learn About the Work > - One Breath is an Ocean for a Wooden Heart
Foregone
Foregone is a dance about loving – how painful, raucous and foolish it can be, and how we go on doing it no matter what.
Dancing to Music
Dancing to Music was made in 1988 in the midst of a year-long Fulbright Fellowship in London and re-staged for AXIS in 2006.
Waypoint
Choreographed by Margaret Jenkins with Melanie Elms, with dancers Margaret Cromwell, Sonsheree Giles, Bonnie Lewkowicz, Sean McMahon, Alice Sheppard, Judith Smith
Room 5600
Based on Ernesto Cardenal’s poem “Room 5600”, the dancers struggle with each other, with themselves. We all struggle through the choices that we make as we make our way through the world.
Terre Brune (Brown Earth)
The inspiration for this quartet came from the work of two talented women artists : composer/performer Joan Jeanrenaud and French Canadian writer Marie Savard.
Additional Repertoire
Two Lights (2004) |Choreography by Alisa Rasera
Decorum (2004) | Choreographer: Katie Faulkner
Flesh (2004)| Choreography: Ann Carlson
Air Mail Dances (2003) | Choreography: Remy Charlip based on his Air Mail Dance scores
Dust (2003) | Choreography: Victoria Marks in collaboration with the performers
Wheels (2003) | Choreography: Alisa Rasera
into/in, too (2003) | Choreography: June Watanabe
El ultimo adios (2002) | Choreography: Nadia Adame
Sale (2002) | Choreography: Alisa Rasera
Sans Instruments (2002) | Choreography: Sonya Delwaide
Secret Ponies (2001) | Choreography: Stephen Petronio
Do Something! (2001) | Choreography: Sonya Delwaide
UpSyncline (2001) | Choreography: Alisa Rasera and Megan Schirle
Suite sans Suite (Part 2) (2001) | Choreography: Sonya Delwaide
Fantasy in C Major (2000) Choreography by: Bill T. Jones
Chuchotements (Whisperings) (1999) Choreography: Sonya Delwaide
Jane Eyre (1999) | Conceived, choreographed and written by Joe Goode in collaboration with the dancers
Descending Cords (1999) | Choreography Directed by: Joanna Haigood, Artistic Director of ZACCHO Dance Theater.
Ta Kala (1998) | Choreography Directed by: Stephanie McGlynn and Nicole Richter
Hidden Histories/Visible Differences (1997) | Directed by: Thais Mazur, Assistant Director: Leigh Lightfoot
of Air (1995) |Directed by: Thais Mazur, Choreography: Uli Schmitz and Lynelle Sjoberg
Prayer (1995) | Directed by: Thais Mazur, Choreographed by: Stephanie McGlynn and Megan Schirle
Vida Sintonia (1995) | Directed by: Thais Mazur, Choreography: Nina Haft, Bonnie Lewkowicz, David Russell, Megan Schirle, Uli Schmitz, Judith Smith
The Way In (1994) | Directed by: Thais Mazur Choreography and Text: Nina Haft, Bonnie Lewkowicz, David Russell, Megan Schirle, Uli Schmitz, Lynelle Sjoberg, Judith Smith
Urban Survival (1994) | Directed by: Nina Haft, Choreography and Text: Nina Haft, Lynelle Sjoberg, Judith Smith
Light (1993) | Ready To Go (1993)
Corazon Madura del Sombre (1993) | Directed by: Nina Haft
Opening (1992) | Tellings (1992)
Stares, Stairs, and Other Aberrations (1992) | Navigation (1992)
Helix (1991) | In This Body (Restaged 1991)
Red Dress (1991) | On The Rim of the Well (1990)
Ellipsis (1990) | Bamboo Tiger (1990)
Wheels (1989) | In This Body (1988)
Celebrating Life (1988)