 at Brigham and Women's Hospital here in Boston. Give you a little bit of information about these two accomplished women. Judy Smith is a native of Colorado. She co-founded the Access Dance Company in Oakland, California in 1987. And that at the time was one of the first contemporary dance companies in the world to create and present dance that featured dancers with physical disabilities who used wheelchairs, prosthetics, and crutches performing alongside non-disabled dancers and people with traditional capacities. In 1997, here in Boston, she was a co-curator and artistic consultant to Jeremy Allager for Dance Umbrella's first international festival of wheelchair dance. Since 2008, she's been working with California State University East Bay to develop a first-ever degree program in physically integrated dance in the U.S. And among her many awards are Isadora Duncan Dance Award, the highest award they give on the West Coast to dancers for sustained achievement. Dr. Sherry Blauette grew up in Iowa and attended Stanford University School of Medicine. She's a specialist in physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Brigham and Women's Director at the Harvard Medical School. She's competed at the Olympic and Paralympic level in events ranging from the 100 meters to the marathon. Sherry went on to win the New York Marathon twice, the Boston Marathon twice, and the Los Angeles Marathon four times. We don't think she's a glutton for punishment, but she did do that, all of those things. So we thought it would be a great opportunity to think about the similarities and differences between these two paths, these two ways of being physical people in the world. And I wanted to start with a kind of open question about hearing the story about what each of their beginning was as an athlete and as a dancer. Sure. So first off, thank you for the invitation to be here this afternoon. This is a really, really cool event, and I've really enjoyed hearing more about the discussions this morning and how everyone's been able to build networks and community around integrated dance. So my introduction to sport was a little bit circuitous, you could say, having grown up in the Midwest in a rural community, there weren't a lot of other athletes or even people with disabilities, visible disabilities around. I didn't have a lot of role models growing up in that regard. When I was in eighth grade, I really just had a lucky encounter in which our high school track coach discovered that the state of Iowa had a wheelchair racing event at their state track meet for both high school boys and high school girls. And he was just a great guy, and he said, you know, Sherry, I've heard about this event and I think that you should give it a try. And at that time, I totally blew him off because I did not consider myself an athlete. I had never been a part of our school's varsity sports program or in a scholastic sports program. And because of that, I had gotten involved in lots of other things like music and student council and other activities. And I always just thought, I assumed that sports weren't for me. And in hindsight, I think I assumed that simply because I, you know, I was sort of self-selecting out of it because I, you know, inherently knew there weren't any opportunities. So it took a lot of coaxing. But in my freshman year of high school, I went out for the team and initially, I was, of course, the only athlete with a disability, but stayed a part of the community. They had a couple of exhibition wheelchair racing events at the local track meets. And then at the end of that season, went to the state track meet. And that was really a breakthrough moment because at that meet, I learned that there was a junior wheelchair racing program that was going on in Des Moines, Iowa. And I learned that there were other adolescents who were participating. And I learned that there was a coach that had specialty knowledge. And that was really the first hook that got me involved and was sustained involvement in this sport because suddenly, you know, more than anything, I latched onto the community and latched onto the fact that there were other teenage girls who also had disabilities that I could just be a part of their world and vice versa. So that was really the initial involvement. And then from there, just kept training. And, you know, the rest is the more basic stuff. Just kept training and getting a little better and a little better over time until I had the epiphany that I could be good at and compete nationally and then internationally. So it was one key person who really opened the door. Great. And can you hear me on this? Well, I was always athletic as a kid. I grew up riding jumping horses. And that's pretty much what I thought I was going to do with my life. And I was injured when I was 17 in a car accident. And, you know, I basically felt my life was over. And through some kind of circuitous routes, I ended up in Berkeley, California from Willam Park, Colorado. And where I think I was the only visibly, physically disabled person in the county at the time. And we had boardwalk sidewalks. So not the most accessible place. I ended up in Boulder and then Berkeley. And, you know, I really, having been so athletic and then becoming so disabled was just pretty alienated from my body. And I met a woman and I started doing improvisational movement. And that really changed my life. And from improvisational movement, I got into conditioning and swimming and was really encouraged to go into competitive swimming. But, you know, having been a competitive equestrian, I really didn't want to go that route again. I got into martial arts from that and met our Axis Dance Company's first artistic director, Tais Mazer. She asked me if I wanted to be in a dance piece. And I had no dance background whatsoever. But I was really, really interested in movement and really interested in what I could do physically again. And I said, yes. And this was in 1987. And we, she really got us together with the idea of doing one dance piece. But I think what happened for us, we were going to perform a piece in the Dance Brigades Theories Feet Festival for Social Change in 1998. And those of us that were in the first piece just got hooked on what we were doing. We loved it. You know, we didn't know anyone else around the world was doing this. It was before the internet. You know, so it was just hard to know what was kind of going on other than we knew it was happening in contact improvisation. But we got hooked and we did our first dance piece and the dance community got hooked and the disability community got hooked and we just kept getting offers to create work. And before we knew it, it had kind of taken over our lives. And, you know, 29 years later it's kind of become my life's work. And, yeah, so it's not, it's probably the last thing I ever thought I would be doing with my life. I'd like to hear about how each of you got training. You were talking a little bit at the beginning about how you were inspired to participate, but that's, there's a big gap between beginning and developing to be the elite athlete that you have become. Sure, so initially my training was a little bit piecemeal. I kind of patched it together, I would say. So in my younger phases of competing I did train with our high school track team and that was really almost, I gotta say, probably almost more symbolic than anything. I think that the coaches and folks in school felt like it was important for me to be a part of it and for that inclusion to occur because they were great people who, I mean this was in the mid-90s, they were great people who had a great sense of the importance of it. And then I would go on weekends to train with this team in Des Moines which was about a four-hour drive one way. So we had to travel to train. That changed when I went to undergrad and then beyond. So I went to undergrad at the University of Arizona and at that time it was one of only two colleges that had wheelchair racing programs as part of their university infrastructure. And it wasn't through varsity sports or through the NCAA, it was actually more through disability student services but at least it was there. And that's actually still how it exists. People are working to change that because it should be part of sports rather than part of disability student services. But once there, then I got better quickly and had much better training opportunities because I had a coach that I was able to work with almost daily and teammates and all my teammates were initially a little better than me so I had people to look up to and to train up to. And then that's when I participated in my first Paralympic Games and then when I went to Stanford I was a little bit more independent and thankfully I knew my own training program pretty well and I just hired my own coach and worked independently with him because there wasn't a team in the region. There were programs for young athletes like four but no specific programs for higher level athletes at that time. So I trained with cyclists and I had friends who were triathletes and I'd integrate into their trainings and kind of made it happen. So it changed along the way and it was definitely a proactive endeavor of having to seek it out I would say. Yeah. Well I think for me it was really on the job training I literally had two left wheels I knew nothing about dance but we worked a lot together and also the non-disabled dancers in the company had never worked with people who used wheelchairs and so it was kind of learning both ways but what Axis realized really early on was that there are not opportunities there weren't opportunities for disabled dancers to get training 29 years ago and there still aren't very many opportunities now but what we did was we started an education program which has grown up right alongside our artistic program but you know the other thing I did was that I really wanted to know about dance not only about my own dance but I wanted to know about the dance world so I just started going out and seeing everything I could possibly see and this was probably fortuitous because I ended up kind of running the company and you know artistic director and executive director and you know antlers for the hat but what I did was I educated myself about who are the presenters locally who are the choreographers who are the dancers who are the funders who are the donors and then I started doing that nationally I read everything that I could read you know and the training that I could get was minimal we did bring a few people into the company in 97 the company imploded and selfishly I really wanted to one do better art and I wanted to be able to work with other people I wanted more knowledge in and commissioning choreographers to make work on us and I think that has probably been for me kind of the biggest source of education being able to work with 12 or 15 different choreographers bringing people in to teach master classes and you know just learning from learning on the job and what I'm trying to do now we just access just hosted a national convening on physically integrated dance in New York and one of the things that we were really looking at is this whole issue of training for disabled dancers training for choreographers and this is something that now I want to start devoting a little bit more time because I don't want people coming into this field you know be they younger having been disabled from an early age or acquiring a disability later in life I want them to have opportunities if they want to pursue dance and I want disabled kids to know that dance is out there and that it's a possibility and a lot of the disabled kids now they don't know that and they don't know what's possible and we started our kids program precisely because a mother called me for a year and a half and said when are you going to do a kids program and then we had to turn it into a teens program and then we realized well you know we really need to we need to have be a pre-professional training ground so we started a summer intensive you know so I don't want people to have the same kind of barriers that I had when they really have a passion and really want to do something and just don't have the opportunity to the notion of expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies the notion that if people don't expect anything of you maybe you won't try if people expect too much of you you may give up and that whole question as disabled people in a community where what you are doing is not mainstream of course we want it to be ever more mainstream how do you deal with that issue of both others expectations for you and your expectations for yourself well I think I would say I think I experienced that I've experienced that importance of setting expectations at the right level I think at all different phases of my career and I think early on early on I would say that it was really important I often when I was first starting to get involved in sports particularly noticed that I would be interacting with other young people who maybe had had different sets of expectations coming from folks at home for example their parents is a big one or coaches or teachers and it became very apparent to me early on how important it was you know I could I'm sure you've experienced this too Judy I could be sitting next to someone with the totally equivalent disability same age really same person but the mindset of the expectations we had for ourselves which was probably placed honest by folks at a young age were super important to what we assumed our goals and dreams and aspirations would be and so I think it's tremendously important I think one of the most important next frontiers in terms of sports and I'd be curious to hear thoughts about dance as well is changing expectations particularly in school based settings so I always say right now most kids with disabilities have to opt in to play sports so they have to seek it out you know it's not a part of their school's infrastructure to support them being athletes there's been a push to change that so in 2013 the Department of Education published what they call a Dear Colleague Letter talking about the fact that inter-classed sports are also are also a part of inclusive education so just like we no longer segregate kids for school in terms of their classroom work and every child is allowed the right to public education they essentially said by the way that's also supposed to be applied to sports and physical activity it's not just what you learn in the classroom or your academic work and so I think we're sort of like on this cusp of that being the next wave of what we need to do to change those expectations at a very young age and I think simply put most kids who do not have a disability kind of have to opt out of sports like you know you interface with it at multiple levels whether it's you know pick up basketball as a teenager or a little league or taking ballet when you're starting ballet lessons when you're three or whatever it may be you know you interface with multiple opportunities along the way so many that you actually have to purposefully not engage you know whereas kids with disabilities it's the opposite you have to actually seek them out and the assumption if you don't seek them out is that you'll never be involved so it has to kind of flip in my opinion and I think schools are probably one of the most important important venues for that change and now we have legal backing to say that that's what we should be doing it just has to be implemented so I would say that's one of the more important things and one of the most important frontiers I know that that was very important for me and I think a really important next step towards changing our expectations and of course the expectations we place on young people shape the expectations of adults too so it all starts at a young age I actually have to say that I really love that we're talking about dance and athletics together because I have found in my attempts to infiltrate disabled sports and you know tell them about dance that you know there's this kind of assumption that dance is through through and you know it's not physical and it's you know it's fluff and it's not it's really tough and it's tough on every level I mean when you're dancing at a professional level you know it's you have to engage your emotions and your brain and your body and everything in the same way that you do with athletics so I love being able to share the platform and I think especially because I think dance has a lot to offer athletics and I know that athletics has brought a lot to this company we've had a lot of disabled athletes come in who are kind of no no longer really interested in competing or you know they find dance and they're like oh this is actually what I really want to do for me I mean it was very different expectations you know when I was a young kid jumping big horses over jumping over big fences was you know I wanted to win those blue ribbons and I often rode in classes with people that were better than me and that's kind of how I learned you know I think when we started this company I didn't really have any expectations because I didn't know what I didn't know what it was I didn't you know we just made it up as we went along but then when I started seeing what other companies were doing you know that weren't physically integrated in any way but I saw the level of art that they were doing then my expectations were that I wanted to be on the same stages as them I wanted to get the same funding as they were getting I wanted to have critics reviewing us critically you know and not just isn't that nice what they're doing so that became my expectation is how are we going to make access you know that kind of a company that's operating in the contemporary dance world at the same level as other repertory companies and I probably like Sherriam a fairly driven person and you know when I wasn't able to ride it it was really hard for me to find a place to put that drive and I think in trying to build access to the company that it is you know more than just my own self that just gave me a place to put my drive training you were just talking about building the company and we sometimes think about even competitive team based athletics as very individual driven and the participation being very individual but both of you seem to have a kind of much more communal sense of how your fields developed and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about why a sense of community within athletics within dance is important to you and kind of how that moves you forward individually I think along the way particularly as I started to compete nationally and internationally I think along the way it was always very clear to me that what we were doing well something that was an individual passion was far more than just a sports performance on the field of play it was also a social movement really and I think that most of the people I found very few athletes that I competed alongside whether I was their competitor or their teammate I think there were very few that didn't feel the same way and so I think all of us were there in a way at the end of the day you love playing the sport you love competing you love winning otherwise you wouldn't be there wouldn't be competing for your national team or at the Paralympics so there's always that inherent sense of healthy competitiveness but we all knew that we were in it together to try to change perceptions about what we could do and about what the next generation could do that came in a lot of different ways you know for example in 2004 it used to be it's actually not the case anymore but it used to be that there was a wheelchair racing exhibition event at the Olympics it was the 800 meter for women and the 1500 meter for men and that actually started back with the Los Angeles games in the 80s and it had stayed in the games this one event for many years and by the time 2004 rolled around which was when I was kind of at the peak of my career you know people were starting to kind of get this uncomfortable feeling about it because it was an honor to compete at both the Olympics and Paralympics and if you were talented to qualify to compete in the Olympic exhibition it meant that you were really one of the best eight in the world at that event so eight athletes but as the movements progressed and as the Paralympic movement progressed it became to be more uncomfortable because all of us as athletes were starting to sense that this exhibition status are sort of showing up for the little head patty type of feeling you know didn't feel good anymore whereas it might have been conceived completely differently back in the 80s when they started it but that feeling was the result of the fact that the movement had moved so far forward and athletes had such a better sense of what their rights should be and so one example is that for the U.S. team so there was myself and one guy and we both qualified for this Olympic exhibition but we were essentially told we could come in for 48 hours like come in live in the village one night race to race and leave and we said well you know if we're coming to do this exhibition event and we're wearing this jersey that says USA like shouldn't we be able to be there for the whole games or shouldn't we be able to march in opening ceremonies with the team and you know the response was well it's not actually an Olympic event it's a Paralympic exhibition event and we're like well what's that this is a very gray and it doesn't feel right that you know we're not being welcomed as part of the full U.S. contingent and that level of discomfort certainly from our standpoint but from athletes from other countries as well actually kind of led to this the event fizzled out because athletes were essentially saying well if we're not going to be there in full then we don't want to be there then we'll prepare for our marquee event which is the Paralympic Games which occurs shortly after and so it's that but you know we made that decision together as athletes and if we hadn't spoken up about it nothing would have changed and so those types of moments happened a lot that's one example but we interfaced with those kinds of decisions frequently even as athletes and as a Paralympian you know your ability to stand up for yourself and make sure that the the the event you're going to or the travel or you know the speaking that you're doing making sure that it was on par with what you felt like you know you should be able to do as an athlete was really important and that created the social community although training together is also really important and all those nuts and bolts too as an athlete well I think being in a company you know it takes a company and what I love about this form of dance is that I do feel like it has a message and you know I didn't grow up in a political family or an activist family but you know I became disabled at a young age when we didn't have the ADA and you know you become an activist and you become an advocate just for yourself and so what I do love about the work that Axis and other companies like us do is that I feel like there is a social relevancy to it and I'm not sure I love art for art's sake but personally I don't think I would work this hard for art for art's sake because it's taken a lot to build this company and to do this work so the fact that it does have a message and that it does change ideas about dance and about ability for me is really important and you know the community part what I love about physically integrated work is that when you bring dancers who are not disabled together with dancers who are you know we can do things that a company of all disabled dancers wouldn't be able to do and a company that all non-disabled dancers wouldn't be able to do so it's really that kind of marriage of the two of them that makes the work possible and you know when you're working that closely and that intimately with people you know you have to learn to trust each other not only on an emotional level but also on a kinesthetic level and you get to know people so well and your bodies fit together well and you know all of that and just having for access the community is everything it's our support system it's our funding system our participants are our community I love that about the work is that it really it takes a lot of people to make it happen and it takes a lot of people to make it worthwhile I think you know before we open up to questions I wanted to give each of you a chance to ask the other one a question so I have watched over the years so I my ears perked up when you had mentioned the the initial or maybe historic lack of receptivity between dance and sports because I think I although I can't personally say that I personally would not have been receptive I can understand how there may have initially been hesitancy you know in times past so I would love to know do you see that changing at all and if not what can we do to make it better well I think it is changing some and I believe in the Olympics now don't they have wheelchair dance sport so I think I think it it's changing some not as much as I would like it to you know I think the fact that disability sports, disabled sports are getting so much more coverage not enough coverage but way more than it used to be it's better especially with all of course the wars and the veterans coming back and so many disabled veterans going into sports you know I think that that really brought the visibility up but I think there's a lot of room and I still have to figure out those ways to infiltrate because you know I think that disability sports are kind of a a good would be a great ally you know because when we have you know it's often not often that we find a disabled dancer that comes with a lot of experience or a lot of training unless they were trained before they became disabled but a lot of the athletes that have come to us as dancers you know they have that self-discipline they have the motivation to work hard they can train you know so those are all really good qualities in a dancer you know so I would love to see a little bit more cross-pollination actually and I think it's a logical next step for athletes who still want to do something physical and want a career but maybe they're just not not competing anymore yeah I know several oh good well yeah so we'll get to ask Sherry gosh I wish you had prepared me for this well Sherry and I first met at Stanford through Larry Zeraff who was a nutty professor he was a doctor who was very interested in how art heals he always wore an Elmo cap he was lovely and so I guess from one question for me for you would be has art played any part in your life in terms of shaping who you are or supporting your sports or your medicine career so yes I would say it has so like a lot of kids well I think I mentioned that before I got deeply involved in sports and I kind of claimed that identity as athlete one of the things that I had latched onto and was really embracing was music and so I was involved in I was a piano player through a lot of high school and even through college actually and at one point in my life before sports sort of took over my life I felt myself at a crossroads you know I felt like I had to invest more so in one or the other but music was actually really important to me and I think it was something like for a lot of young people something that gave me initial discipline and confidence and that sense of performance so going to competitions and even recitals and competing at the high school level for different opportunities music related to music different parts of sports and there are a lot of great athlete musicians out there athlete artists and people who have found that they are very mutually beneficial endeavors for a lot of reasons and I think that's why I think particularly when I got to higher levels of sport I always compared particularly if you're going to something like the Paralympics it's just like a big performance and you have to control your own energy and nerves and control your own sort of internal environment to be ready to put it out there for the world and I think that's exactly the same thing that happens in the lives of artists particularly successful artists so I think they're very very similar in many ways and it certainly benefited me so I want to just open it up for a couple of questions if you need them just make sure that we get them on the live stream so yes your big chance yeah Mary Ann the question really is about the response of people who don't necessarily understand the demands of wheelchair athletics and why you would be doing it and that you have to feel that you have to keep explaining it over and over again and Mary Ann is saying that she's also been very interested in wheelchair dance and figure skating and those ideas being very fruitful to even consider much less put out in the world sure so I think I think I've seen things change over maybe the last 10 years or so but still today there's certainly a lot of people who don't necessarily have a great initial concept when you describe to them that you competed currently I always say I had a whole first chapter in life or a whole first profession really and that was being a professional athlete for many years and people don't really know what that means in the context of being a wheelchair user or being a professional athlete in the sport of wheelchair racing now there's a lot of exceptions to that like for example here in Boston people are very familiar with the marathon and because the marathon has such a huge cultural hook here people often have seen it and they've seen the wheelchair division come through and they know they can visualize that they get it they know what you mean and that's a very athletic they can see the athleticism in that and so it's an easier way to explain it but I think particularly when I was competing like through the late 90s it was far before there was any coverage here in the US of high level disability sport that people would initially assume that it was something that was recreational something that you did as a means of rehab and that sort of thing those opportunities exist and they're very important opportunities but the important thing to understand in the really big educational moment is just describing to folks that that exist just as it does for anyone you know if you want to go out and do something very recreational just to be with your family and friends versus you know doing something to rehabilitate an injury versus competing internationally and the importance of that is that we have that spectrum and that people can access it wherever they are wherever they want to access it and so it's changed people have a better sense now than they did 10 years ago and I'm sure that was the same 10 years prior to that so the more we get it out into the community and out into the public then the less explaining I have to do and I would say that there are certainly times when it gets frustrating and I usually as with most advocacy issues decide how much emotional energy to invest in it at a given point in time and sometimes I just walk away or wheel away because I don't necessarily like explaining it at this moment in time versus others moments it might you have the energy to explain it and really you know hopefully you know help the individual to get a better sense I have a couple things to say about that because I think trying to explain the Paralympics when a lot of people have the idea that it's very special Olympics and then you get the that's so sweet so I think that that's one thing that's hopefully changing is that there's yes there's the very special Olympics and yes these are professional or amateurs competing at the international level they're two different things I have had the experience of having somebody say well what do you do and I say I'm a dancer and they say oh you can walk and I'm like no I can't walk and they're the brain goes kind of blank you know because anybody can conjure up an idea about what ballet is but very few people can conjure up an image of what somebody in a wheelchair or somebody without legs or somebody on crutches dancing might be so we had an experience I think the first time we came to Boston we were on a flight out of San Jose and the flight attendant asked us what we were doing and you know we said oh we're going to perform at a dance festival in Boston and she laughed at us you know ha ha ha ha and then we get off the plane and this was when people could meet you at the gate and our presenter Jeremy who happened to know the flight attendant was waiting there for us and she got off the plane she said oh what are you doing you said oh I'm picking up Access Dance Company and she was kind of like you know so it's just it's funny because people really you know you say you're a dancer and they're like yeah right that's sweet for sure for the Special Olympics things happen pretty constantly but I never want to discredit the Special Olympics a fantastic group, fantastic movement they're doing wonderful things also incredibly important different goal but you know it's it's just this idea that you know we still have in the society such a limited view of what people with disabilities can do one of the things that both Sherry and Judy really represent is this notion that there are in fact no limits and that there are not limits to their abilities and that there are not limits to our abilities to see, appreciate, understand learn have exchanges with these different issues and we're just so grateful that we've had this conversation I want to thank the folks at HowlRound for putting this on HowlRoundTV so that people will be able to participate who are not here in this room and Boston Dance Alliance is very grateful to our lead sponsor the Barre Foundation for making this possible Thanks so much