An hour before the curtain rises on the most important performance of her life, choreographer Heidi Latsky paces the stage, tortured by questions and doubts.
Will audiences understand her vision, and that of the unique performers they are about to see? Or will they find their performance too shocking, too disconcerting, too weird?
What will they think of the beautiful young woman with the porcelain skin, whose exposed shoulder-blade quivers in a solo that spotlights her missing left arm, or the raw athleticism of another performer whose shortened, twisted arm is groped by her able-bodied suitor in a frenzied, erotic courtship that consumes the center stage?
Will they applaud, or recoil?
Will they even show up?
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Latsky, 51, is best known as a choreographer and one-time principal dancer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane company. Her skill and stage presence have won national acclaim. But until 2006, when she received an unusual commission to compose a piece for a young woman with no fingers and no lower legs, Latsky had never worked with disabled performers.
What began as a huge leap of faith gradually evolved into a performance, and a troupe.
And a name: "GIMP," Latsky says, "is about shattering perceptions, about provoking people to think, really think, about body image and beauty and disability and dance."
Latsky's energy and enthusiasm are infectious. Her toughness is legendary. Dancers say no one pushes them harder, physically and emotionally, forcing them to mine something deep within themselves.
But how could Latsky demand faster turns from someone without legs? How could she ask people who had spent their entire lives controlling how they moved to relinquish that control?
In the end, Latsky said, the work became as much about trust as about dance: trust that they could mix two worlds — dance and disability — and forge a performance powerful enough to showcase the beauty of both universes, and transcend them.
A duet highlighting different walks
Her first recruit was a lanky 40-year-old, with long, stiff legs and a lurching gait that captivated Latsky the moment she saw it.
Lawrence Carter-Long, an advocate for the Disabilities Network of New York City, had never considered his atrophied legs to be anything but a frustrating distraction from the high-energy pursuits of his life. Born with cerebral palsy, Carter-Long has always relied on his strengths — his wit, charm, good looks — to compensate for the fact that falling is part of his life.
And then, at a performance in 2007, Carter-Long met Latsky. Looking at him, she saw a face that reminded her of Nureyev and a gait that was, in its own way, as extraordinary as the famed dancers leaps.
"I think your gait is beautiful," Latsky told a stunned Carter-Long. "I want to create a dance around the way you walk."
Rehearsals were grueling. His limbs ached. His feet bled. He fell constantly. But Carter-Long's confidence grew. And over time, his body changed — as did his gait.
Beautiful, Latsky would exclaim. And Carter-Long felt it too, a sense of pride, of embracing his walk in a way that had never occurred to him before.
Watching them, Latsky had a vision.
What if she created a duet for the two men — one that highlighted their different walks. She knew the terror Carter-Long would feel paired beside Freeze's virtuosity. But Freeze would be equally unnerved by having to slow down. The tension would inspire the dance.
And so "Two Men Walking" was born, in which Freeze soars and struts while Carter-Long stalks after him.
"Faster, stronger, riskier," Latsky urged at rehearsals, even as she marveled at the dynamic that was evolving along with the dance. And then, almost overnight, the dynamic changed. Having found a new strength in his limbs, Carter-Long also found a new dance partner — and a new love.
By the summer of 2007 the performance included "Two Men Walking" and a frenetically paced duet by Latsky and Freeze. Christina Briggs, a professional dancer who had worked with Latsky for years, had joined the troupe and they were starting to perform in small theater workshops.
But Latsky knew GIMP needed more.
And then a beautiful young woman shuffled into her studio, a woman whom Latsky sensed immediately belonged in GIMP.
Catherine Long radiates a soft-spoken reserve that belies her edgy artistic style. At 37, she long ago came to terms with the body she was born with, the perceptions she must deal with everyday.
"People see what is not there long before they see what's there," says Long, an English performance artist who was born without a left arm.
She was introduced to Carter-Long through mutual friends and, after corresponding by e-mail they finally met in London. On subsequent trips to New York, Long's quiet presence became a fixture at rehearsals. She would sit in the corner, beaming at Carter-Long, and they would walk out hand in hand, the tall, lean man dragging his legs, the small, delicate woman swaying beside him.
For Latsky, the contrast was irresistible.
"Catherine," she said. "I want to make a duet for you and Lawrence."
And so Long was swept into GIMP, into a sexy, tender dance with Carter-Long, and an exquisite solo in which, back to the audience, she performs a moving sculptural piece that explores the beauty of her form.
Long had never worked her body so hard, never felt such pain.
But she has evolved into a luminous dancer. And she has grown to love how strong performances make her feel, not in an empowering way, but in a way that makes her believe, truly believe, that GIMP is changing perceptions far greater than only in dance.
‘What is YOUR risk?’
By the summer of 2008 the troupe has grown to six — three able-bodied and three disabled performers — and they are rehearsing hard for a fall dance festival in Albuquerque.
"Too precious, too safe," Latsky complains, watching Freeze coil around Carter-Long before crashing to the ground.
And though they have rehearsed for three hours, and though Carter-Long's feet are killing him and Freeze says he has nothing left but "bones and grunge," they pick themselves up and do the piece over.
"Better," Latsky says. "We want to be provocative enough so that something really shifts." The dancers talk about this all the time — the provocation of GIMP, even the name. Was it too disparaging, too contrived?
"What is YOUR risk?" Freeze was once asked at a talk-back session with the audience. The question startled him. Now it is something he thinks about all the time.
On the surface, the risk for the disabled dancers seems clear. They are allowing the spotlight shine on bodies that are usually stared at not for their beauty, but for their difference.
"GIMP allows people to see me as I see myself — strong, fierce, sexy," says Lezlie Frye, whose shortened, left arm bends into what she describes as a knotty, treelike limb.
Frye is the spitfire of the troupe, loud, energetic, passionate about everything. The 30-year-old doctoral student at New York University has long explored her body through sport, performance and poetry.
But Latsky saw a softness beneath Frye's toughness, and a wonder in her physical strength.
"With Lezlie, the task was to peel away some of that fierceness," Latsky says, "and allow her vulnerable side to show through."
They began working on a solo in which Frye caresses her misshapen hand, losing herself in movement and emotion as Pergolesi's "Salve Regina" plays in the background.
The piece is at once so haunting and emotional, it moves some audiences to tears. And it makes them wonder: Are they viewers or voyeurs?
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By November 2008 the troupe have performed excerpts in Vermont and a full run in Albuquerque. But they know if GIMP is to succeed in the dance world, it needs reviews in New York.
By now Latsky is dreaming of taking GIMP it all over the country, all over world.
Then she catches herself. She knows the odds. For all the commitment of her dancers, the reality is that they are like every other small troupe operating on a shoestring and fighting for survival. They all juggle other lives — jobs and studies, rents and relationships, kids.
Latsky herself has a life filled with other responsibilities, including being mother to 9-year-old Charlotte. When she is not composing or rehearsing, she spends her days applying for grants, hunting for studio space, trying to drum up funds and publicity.
No wonder that, in the dressing room an hour before the New York premiere at the Abrons Arts Center, Latsky is a bundle of nerves.
"I just hope we have a house," she says.
"Five minutes!" bellows the stage manager.
The dancers hug. They creep up the stairs and huddle in the wings.
Then GIMP explodes onto the stage.
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For three nights in March GIMP electrified the Grand Street theater on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Audiences clapped and cheered and cried and standing ovations continued long after the performance had ended.
People didn't want to leave the theater, didn't want to break the spell. Many seemed as perplexed as they were moved. Many struggled to figure out exactly what they were feeling.
Exhausted and exhilarated, the dancers struggled, too. All their work, all their faith, all their pain, had amounted to this singular triumph on stage. There was something both overwhelming and unsettling about it all.
Long wept. Frye glowed. Carter-Long was mobbed by admirers. Briggs and Freeze were swept up in hugs.
Latsky seemed dazed as she moved through the crowd, clutching a bouquet of flowers, listening to the praise that rained all around.
"Bravo!" strangers cried. "Magical!"
A teenage girl who suffers from seizures so severe she is unable to speak, clapped wildly.
A disillusioned ballet dancer who had abandoned the profession, said she was inspired to return.
A 49-year-old lawyer, strapped into a wheelchair, breathing through a tube, called it the most intellectually stimulating night of his life.
But, for Latsky, the most gratifying response was the way people told her how grateful they were — for the beauty of the performance, for its power to sweep them into another world, a world where dance and disability and differences collide, a world of risk and passion and art, a world so utterly different from their experience that they felt honored to have been wrapped in its spell.