{"id":189605,"date":"2017-04-01T12:27:58","date_gmt":"2017-04-01T19:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/?p=189605"},"modified":"2026-02-12T17:22:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:22:19","slug":"dvp-interview-bonnie-lewkowicz-and-judith-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/04\/01\/dvp-interview-bonnie-lewkowicz-and-judith-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"DVP Interview: Bonnie Lewkowicz and Judith Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">B<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">onnie Lewkowicz interviewed Judith Smith. for the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Disability Visibility Project\u2122 at StoryCorps San Francisco on September 6, 2014. In this clip, B<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">onnie Lewkowicz talks with Judith Smith about the creation of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.axisdance.org\/\">AXIS Dance Company<\/a>, a contemporary dance company specializing in integrated work with dancers of all abilities. Judith and Bonnie talk about the social and political implications of doing this type of dance. Both discuss the challenges of traveling by strange and sometimes inaccessible means with the company for shows abroad. Both describe their work as a passion and activism. Bonnie and Judith share moments of impact both for them and audience members in creating and viewing their integrated dances.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-soundcloud\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1360\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F315589952&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxwidth=1360&#038;maxheight=1000\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><b>Text Transcript:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><em>[Instrumental music \u2013 dancie, bright tone with a peppy drumbeat] <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith:<\/strong> Bonnie and I both have had the experience of having somebody say, \u201cWell Bonnie what do you do?\u201d and Bonnie says\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz:<\/strong> Well, I dance, and then<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith:<\/strong> They say\u2026. \u201cyou can walk!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>\u201cOh so you get out of your chair?\u201d Or it\u2019s the deer in the headlights like, um\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>Yeah, the mind kinda goes blank, you know, so um\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>Remember that\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Both in unison:<\/strong> flight attendant<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>We were on the jet way<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>in San Jose going to Boston<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>and she asked, \u201coh what are you going to a conference or something?\u201d and we said no we\u2019re dancers, we\u2019re going to a performance and she just started laughing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>she started laughing hysterically<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>\u201cno no no, really what are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>We\u2019re a dance company<\/p>\n<p><em>[Instrumental music \u2013 dancie, bright tone with a peppy drumbeat] <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>When we first got together, of course it wasn\u2019t to create a dance company but it was just to explore.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>And to make one dance piece.<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>And to make a particular dance piece.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>Mm hmm<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>You know, in the beginning years were people giving us a standing ovation because what they saw was really great or was it because oh look at those brave people up there. I could never get up on stage and do that if I looked like them. And so, you know, that was a big question I think that ran through our minds for a few years. And I think we decided that it was we were creating good art. I think that was always the focus of AXIS, it was never to go out and make any kind of statement, political statement, but just the fact of who we were and what our makeup was, people with and without disabilities it\u2026 it made a statement without hammering it over people\u2019s heads.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>Yeah, I think it didn\u2019t really occur to us that there was a social, political implication to what we were doing until we started doing it. And the dance community really loved what we were doing right away and so did the disability community and the reason we kept going was because people kept asking us to make work.<\/p>\n<p><em>[Instrumental music \u2013 guitar plucking, energetic, up beat, happy tone] <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>I\u2019ll never forget the story about you in Germany.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>You know, we were at the University of Cologne, and um\u2026 we were getting ready for a dance performance and Thais and I, Thais Mazur was our first artistic director who actually started the company. We had this closet to change in because the dressing rooms weren\u2019t accessible. And we went in and turned on the light and closed the door and turned around and there was this skeleton hanging in the corner and the door locked. [both laughing] We were stuck in Germany in a broom closet with a skeleton. [more laughter] We did bang loud enough that somebody\u2026 they let us out but yeah that was a little bit of a scene.<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>I think we have lots of those stories.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>Another one of my favorites was Siberia. That was such a surreal experience after flying for 36 hours.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>Yeah, we got separated from our non-disabled dancers, um.<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>Plus our passports taken.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>And our passports taken and\u2026we got\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>and our interpreter taken\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>And we got taken into this room with this big Russian nurse because disability is equated to being unhealthy in Russia. And, um, we\u2019re in these like\u2026 we weren\u2019t even in our wheelchairs. We were in those aisle chair things. And they start rolling us across the tarmac and we\u2019re getting chased by feral dogs. And then they roll us to this plane and we\u2019re just hoping to God that it\u2019s the right plane to get from Moscow to Siberia to Novosibirsk. And they pick us up and they toss us to somebody else and he runs up the stairs and tosses us to another person [laughter] who tosses us in our seat. Oh my God it was so hysterical! We\u2019re laughing our heads off and we\u2019re like sprawled in these seats\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>With no one else on the plane\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>With no one else on the plane.<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>Not even any stewardesses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>And we don\u2019t even know if we\u2019re on the right plane.<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>And we waited for probably about\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>oh\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Both:<\/strong> a half hour\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith:<\/strong> or so\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>And who pulls us in a Mercedes truck\u2026 the rest of the passengers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>All of the rest of the passengers.<\/p>\n<p><em>[Instrumental music \u2013 dancie, bright tone with a peppy drumbeat] <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>Our beginning stages some people would call what we were doing therapy. What do we call this work? And\u2026 I don\u2019t know, do you think there is still some\u2026 are you satisfied with the term that AXIS came up with\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>Well, you know we\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>Physically integrated dance?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>Well, we didn\u2019t, that kinda, that term physically integrated dance came out of the UK. You know, the way we describe ourselves now. We\u2019re a contemporary dance company doing physically integrated work. It occurred to me that I didn\u2019t want to use the work adapting anymore. That I wanted to change that paradigm and start calling what we did translating movement because it\u2019s not just the disabled dancers learning non-disabled movement. It\u2019s the non-disabled dancers who have to translate what we do too. So I felt like that was so much, um\u2026 it leveled the playing field a lot for me. And it put the onus on all of us instead on just the disabled dancers to you know\u2026 go in the corner and figure it out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>As a disabled dancer, it\u2019s still not that easy to go out into the community and take dance. You know, the less disabled you are, the easier it is. Um, but when you have a really significant disability like Bonnie and I do, most teachers just kinda\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>B<\/strong><strong>onnie Lewkowicz: <\/strong>\u2018what do we do with them?!\u2019 [imitating the dance teachers]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Judith Smith: <\/strong>Wanna run screaming out the back door. So the more people that we bring in to work with us, the more people that aren\u2019t going to be freaked out if someone shows up in their class or you know, in an audition.<\/p>\n<p><em>[Instrumental music \u2013 three repetitive guitar chords and strong drum down beat, anticipatory tone] <\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Music Credits: (\u201cLovely, Lonely, Instrument\u201d by YEYEY, \u201cQuand Le Dsrt Recule\u201d by Guili Guili Goulag, and \u201cRaiz Latina\u201d by Chicken Jones.) Music under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Source: Freemusicarchive.org<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align:center;\"><b>Support Disability Media and Culture<\/b><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align:center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/donate\/\"><b>DONATE<\/b><\/a><b> to the Disability Visibility Project\u2122!<\/b><\/h2>\n<h3><b>Suggested Reference<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Disability Visibility Project\u2122. ( <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">March 31, 2017 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">). DVP Interview: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">B<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">onnie Lewkowicz and Judith Smith.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Retrieved from:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/04\/01\/dvp-interview-bonnie-lewkowicz-and-judith-smith\/\">https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/04\/01\/dvp-interview-bonnie-lewkowicz-and-judith-smith\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Image Description:<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">A photo featuring B<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">onnie Lewkowicz and Judith Smith<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> was taken on September 6, 2014: Close up portrait of two women sitting side by side in their wheelchairs outside the StoryCorps Booth, in front of a silver StoryBooth exterior wall. The woman on the left, Bonnie, has brown eyes and gray hair with shorter bangs and sides cropped just below her ears. Bonnie smiles at the camera and has her left arms leaning on the right armrest of Judith\u2019s wheelchair. Bonnie appears to be white and is wearing an orange shirt with an open gray sweater, along with a black string necklace with a vertical rectangular pendant. The woman on the right, Judith, has blue eyes and long gray hair that reaches to her shoulders. Judith smiles at the camera and has both her hands folded in her lap. Judith appears to be white and is wearing a turquoise AXIS t-shirt and black pants.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Credits:<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Produced for the Disability Visibility Project\u2122 by Yosmay del Mazo and Alice Wong with interviews recorded by StoryCorps, a national nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the story of our lives. For more:<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/exit.sc\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.storycorps.org\"> <b>www.storycorps.org<\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> and<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/exit.sc\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.disabilityvisibilityproject.com\"> <b>www.disabilityvisibilityproject.com<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">For any questions, please refer to the<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/about\/terms-of-useprivacy\/\"> <b>Terms of Use<\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bonnie Lewkowicz interviewed Judith Smith. for the Disability Visibility Project\u2122 at StoryCorps San Francisco on September 6, 2014. In this clip, Bonnie Lewkowicz talks with Judith Smith about the creation &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/04\/01\/dvp-interview-bonnie-lewkowicz-and-judith-smith\/\" class=\"read-more\">Continue Reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">DVP Interview: Bonnie Lewkowicz and Judith Smith<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":189896,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[548705951],"tags":[3471,1907,522966018,1337,3990,40576,4572256,25675],"class_list":["post-189605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dvp-interviews","tag-accessibility","tag-artists","tag-axisdancecompany","tag-california","tag-dance","tag-disability","tag-disabled-artists","tag-oakland","post-has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/sfb002897_g1.jpg?fit=5184%2C3456&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4H7t1-Nk9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}