By 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Readers commenting on the story complained about the Post’s use of outdated terms like “confined to a wheelchair” and “the disabled.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 12:45 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, international, public attitudes, stereotypes, stigma, wheelchair. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post