Dancer stages comeback after serious accident
Is there enough strength and coordination in your hands to open a can of tomato soup?
Can you run up the stairs two by two? Can you hop over a puddle?
Can you walk?
 Li Chiao Ping (center) works with dance troupe members Susan Haskell (left) and Andrea Harris during a rehearsal at Li’s home studio. Photo: Jeff Miller
Details: Li Chiao-Ping, 8 p.m., Thursday, May 18,Lathrop Hall’s Margaret H’Doubler Performance Space. There also will be a 2 p.m. matinee on Saturday, May 20. Tickets: $12 general/$8 seniors and UW students. Call Li Chiao-Ping Dance, 835-6590. |
Until quite recently, dancer Li Chiao-Ping navigated even the simplest of physical activities day-by-day, following her much-publicized car accident last year.
In fact, the intervening months have brought a good deal of speculation as to whether Li’s performance career was finished.
Hardly. Li’s post-accident debut will be Saturday, May 13, at Alverno College in Milwaukee. She will follow up with performances here May 18 and 20.
Li joined the UW–Madison dance faculty in 1993. During the last decade she has created, produced and performed more than 50 pieces for stage and video. All have been showcases for striking visual design and highly physical movement.
“It’s been interesting to see how she’s working to get herself back to where she wants to be as a dancer,” says Lori Dillon, a UW–Madison undergraduate and member of the Li Chiao-Ping Dance company. “Watching her has taught me a lot about myself and about how integral the body-mind connection is.”
Audiences in Milwaukee and Madison will see a different Li than the one who perfected the Extreme Moves technique before the accident.
“I coined Extreme Moves to refer to a kind of movement that deconstructs the traditional dance vocabulary, as well as challenges physical limitations,” she says.
Trained as a competitive gymnast, Li began in the 1980s to develop an artistic life for gymnastic maneuvers. She subsequently went on to marshal unorthodox areas – shins, head, forearms – for balance and support.
“As the choreographer and dancer of my own work, I was able to move from floor to air, from upside down to right-side up, with speed, agility, grace …”
… and ease. But she has not recovered those abilities completely. “Though I am able to endure more and more weight-bearing on my foot, I still deal with constant pain and lack of sensation. Even regaining a relatively simply physical function like walking has felt monumental and profound,” Li says.
Her left foot was mangled in the crash, and to date, she is the veteran of nine surgeries. Then there are ultrasounds, work on a Balance Master machine, a Pilates Reformer bed and more.
While just now returning to the stage, Li has been far from idle during her recovery. She has traveled with her company to Washington, D.C., Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco and other venues. She says working with her dancers has kept her in touch with Extreme Moves.
“In a strange way, Extreme Moves has taken on a new meaning for me with my current physical limitations,” she says. As an example, she executes a quick, sharp, rapid-fire leap. A jarring little thud and the furrowing of her brows as she lands are the only clues that all is not yet as it should be.
Still, dance goes far beyond sheer physical movement. Dillon, who’s been with Li since December 1998, has been able to apply all kinds of principles observed in the studio.
“In my own case, I’ve learned a great deal about three-dimensional composition that I’ll be able to use if I work as a dancer, choreographer, art critic, museum curator” or whatever career path Dillon takes when she receives her B.A. in December.
Meanwhile, Li’s own dancing future seems secure, regardless of the shape-shifting it undergoes. One possibility she might pursue is work with physically challenged dancers. “They would be a great source of inspiration to me,” she says.