Ballerina dances in wheelchair, advocates for change
June 5th, 2008By Manuel Roig-Franzia in the Washington Post:
To prepare for her latest production, Peruvian prima ballerina Rossana Peñaloza chose to spend six months using a wheelchair in Mexico City, where streets lack wheelchair access and drivers don’t yield for wheelchairs.
After years of catching bouquets and taking bows, she suddenly was “the other,” a freak, an annoyance and, maybe worst of all, an object of pity. She cried every day. And she was furious.
Peñaloza performs her new one-woman show in a wheelchair, challenging perceptions of people with disabilities in a country where they frequently live cloistered lives because of social stigma. The performance in Mexico City has “shocked and shamed Mexico,” Roig-Franzia writes.
In an interview, Peñaloza said Mexican schools too often segregate students with disabilities. “My work is a grain of sand in an oyster so that all this will change,” she said.
Readers commenting on the story complained about the Post’s use of outdated terms like “confined to a wheelchair” and “the disabled.”
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on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 12:45 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, general news, international, public attitudes, stereotypes, stigma, wheelchair.
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