Photo Credit: Paula Vasone
Kitty Lunn, founder of Infinity Dance Theater and a pioneer in dance for people with disabilities, died last month in Manhattan at age 76.
Lunn began dancing as a child and earned a scholarship to the Washington School of Ballet before moving to New York. In 1987, months before she was scheduled to appear in the Broadway production Sherlock’s Last Case, Lunn slipped on ice and sustained a spinal cord injury that resulted in paraplegia.
When Lunn returned to ballet using a wheelchair, she encountered resistance. At one school, she arrived with a copy of the Americans with Disabilities Act and insisted on being allowed to take class. When warned that she would have to leave if another dancer complained about her wheelchair, Lunn responded, “I can promise you that I will not run into anyone, but I cannot promise you that they will not run into me.”
In 1995, Lunn founded Infinity Dance Theater, bringing together dancers with and without disabilities. She developed an approach she called “transposing” ballet, adapting traditional technique to the upper body and wheelchair without sacrificing the movement’s form or intention.
Lunn went on to perform in hundreds of productions with Infinity, teach for decades and develop a wheelchair dance curriculum for the National Dance Institute.
Years later, she summed up the philosophy that guided her life and work: “I had an accident … but I choose to live … I choose to dance!”
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