Rossana Peñaloza
The Washington Post profiled prima ballerina Rossana Peñaloza, who decided to spend six months in a wheelchair, and then created a performance from that experience to bring attention to Mexico's attitudes toward disabled people.
"For weeks now, Peñaloza has shocked and shamed Mexico, performing a one-woman show that challenges perceptions of the disabled in a country where people with disabilities frequently live cloistered lives because of the social stigma associated with their condition here," The Post writes. "Though Peñaloza is not disabled -- at age 45, her limbs can still send her shooting artfully across a stage -- she conceived a startling performance almost entirely confined to a wheelchair. A dance on wheels.
"For six months before her debut this spring, Peñaloza chose to live in a wheelchair. She tried to navigate Mexico City sidewalks that have no ramps or that have broken ramps or ramps so narrow her wheelchair didn't fit. She cringed as speeding drivers came breathtakingly close to running her down, even when she was in the crosswalk."
She says she's angry about how Mexican schools often segregate students with disabilities and she complains about the "paternalism" within Mexican society and families that she says often isolates young disabled people.
"My work is a grain of sand in an oyster so that all this will change," she said.
Peñaloza began thinking about the idea for the project several years ago when she gave dance lessons at a center for disabled people in a town south of Mexico City. And she said her childhood spent as a gymnast in Peru also informed the project because she competed in gymnastics tournaments with children from the local deaf school.
