This Saturday, Company d dancers with Down syndrome invite Memphians to their performance of LOCAL: Art Moves Memphis, inspired by public art installations found throughout the city.
For the show, Company d engaged a cohort of guest choreographers: Noelia Garcia Carmona, Patty Carreras, Wayne Smith, Steven Prince Tate, and Yosek Prieto. Each of them, plus Company d’s own artistic director Darlene Winters, selected a piece of public art as a source of inspiration for the dances that’ll be performed this weekend. Choices range from Joe’s Wines & Liquor’s spinning sputnik sign to the mural inside the Renasant Convention Center by Kong Wee Pang and Jay Crum.
“Whenever we’re developing the show, it’s with the intent of also developing and enhancing the dancers’ cultural literacy skills,” Winters says. “So most of our programs have been based on things here in the Memphis area. It’s important for me for them to see to connect the dots and in turn make them feel more part of the community, and to be contributing citizens in the community.”
Winters founded Company d in 2001 after choreographing a dance for six dancers with Down syndrome for a one-night benefit celebrating 15 years of Special Kids and Families’ early intervention service. “We rehearsed for three months, and when it was over, we were just like, ‘Let’s keep doing this.’” Today, the nationally recognized Company d operates in Collage Dance’s studios, and student dancers represent three counties in the Mid-South, six high schools, post-secondary education at the University of Memphis, and various places of employment.
A speech-language pathologist by trade and a lifelong “student” of dance, Winters says, “[Company d’s ongoing success] has totally been driven by [the dancers’] abilities and their desire to learn.”
The resulting program, Winters adds, has been a “beautiful infusion of my two worlds” — dance and speech-language pathology. “Some of the dancers have strengths and weaknesses in their abilities of their verbal skills, so this is an opportunity to express themselves through the performing arts through dance,” she says. “It also is giving them those same life skills that can be applied to their daily life and to future employment as far as commitment, supporting each other, accepting feedback, and [working through challenges] to improve on some things.”
But, Winters reminds, these young adults have an “inherent aptitude for the performing arts.” The classes are conducted “in a performing arts training model equal to [the dancers’] age-matched peers,” as the Company d’s website states, but the classes are catered to the students’ specific learning needs — “modifying as needed and giving them access to more time,” Winters says. “Guest teachers will say, ‘How should I prepare?’ And I’ll say, ‘As if you were preparing for any other master class or commissioned piece of art.’”
Further, guest teachers, like the choreographers for LOCAL, allow “dancers the opportunity to work with professional artists and to receive quality technique and training in expressing themselves. They’re all involved in this creative process of art-making.”
“Not only people with Down syndrome but any other people with disabilities are often defined by their deficit,” Winters continues. “So this is an opportunity to shift the community’s perceptions and promote them and include them in the performing arts, so others can see that, yes, there is a disability, but there are also many abilities that need to be showcased.”
Catch Company d’s LOCAL: Art Moves Memphis on Saturday, March 23, at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. at Hutchison School’s Wiener Theater. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased here.
