On this fieldwork we went to the JCC on 75th and Amsterdam where we watched a documentary about Kitty Lunn and after she performed. Kitty Lunn is a woman who has been seriously dancing for a long time now. When she was younger she danced in classes all over the country because her teachers believed she had tons of potential. When she got older and started trying to dance in Broadway shows, she had a bad accident that paralyzed her from the neck down. She worked through the paralysis and is now only paralyzed from the waist down. The documentary we watched briefly summarized what her past life was like and focused in on what she does now. She teaches a dance class open to anybody but is meant for people with disabilities like herself. She believes it helps the students learn and to be comfortable to have a teacher who is like them. She teaches her students how to use their wheelchairs and other things that help them to add beauty to their performances. From what we saw it seemed as though the wheelchairs added a special component to the dances of her students. After the documentary was over Kitty and Krishna (a blind woman) performed using their wheelchair and white cane(the cane you usually see someone blind holding). As I watched them danced I was astonished at the way Kitty used her wheelchair and the way Krishna knew the space. There were lots of oohs and aaahs throughout the whole crowd as Kitty spun in her wheelchair without using her hands, and Krishna did spins and other dance moves I don’t know the name of. Then Kitty stood up out of her chair and did a roll, this part was amazing because afterwards she explained that she figured out by herself how to move her body in order to make her legs do a spasm that allows her to stand up for a few seconds. On this fieldwork we learned about the hard work that goes into becoming an athlete with a disability. At first Kitty was too scared to go to a dance class because she knew the prejudice of the people in the classes and also was afraid she wasn’t good enough. After a while she gained the confidence to join a class and dance. The next step in becoming a dancer again was being able to dance in the body you have which was one of Kitty’s main points. She said that you have to be able to live with the body you have and not only be able to live with the body you have but to love the body you have. This is what she ended up doing by making her paralysis into a starting point instead the end of her dancing career. This was by far the best fieldwork that I went on, it was the most inspirational and educational experience I had on a fieldwork. Before this fieldwork our group had just went around saying that a disability is a starting point and not a limitation but Kitty was actually proof of this and tells you that no matter what happens life goes on and you can make it what you want.
