Trailblazing artist, educator, and disability-rights activist Kitty Lunn handed away on August 18 at her residence in New York Metropolis. She was 76. Lunn’s legacy will proceed within the transpositions of ballet, Horton, and Graham approach that she created for dancers with disabilities, and within the works she choreographed for Infinity Dance Theater, the corporate she based in 1995. Lunn led by instance: She shared her sense of resilience, creativity, and self-discipline with college students of all talents, remodeling the dance world’s understanding of who belongs.
Lunn was born in New Orleans on August 5, 1950. She fell in love with ballet on the age of 8 after seeing a screening of The Purple Footwear. She made her skilled debut at 15 as Swanhilda within the New Orleans Civic Ballet’s manufacturing of Coppélia, and was then awarded a scholarship to review with Mary Day and Edward Caton on the Washington College of Ballet. In Washington, DC, Lunn carried out the classics and took lessons with luminaries together with Martha Graham, Agnes de Mille, José Limón, and Erik Bruhn. In an oft-shared reminiscence, Lunn, who was petite, recalled asking de Mille if she ought to bear a limb-lengthening surgical procedure, to which de Mille presciently responded, “You need to be taught to bop within the physique you will have.”
In 1987, whereas residing in New York Metropolis and in rehearsals for her first Broadway present, Lunn slipped on ice and fell down a flight of stairs, leading to a spinal wire harm that left her paraplegic. In a 2023 interview with Dance Instructor, Lunn mirrored on the three years that adopted, spent out and in of the hospital present process spinal surgical procedures. “I assumed my dancing days had been over,” she mentioned. “I contemplated taking my very own life. As a result of if I wasn’t a dancer, I didn’t know who I used to be anymore. I felt like my id had been stripped away from me.”
Finally, Lunn realized that the one particular person stopping her from reclaiming that id was herself. She labored diligently with bodily therapist Shaw Bronner and finally returned to ballet class; this time, in her wheelchair. “After class, I might come residence and write down the transpositions that I had made,” Lunn advised Dance Instructor. “Lastly, I acquired right through a category, together with petit allégro and grand allégro, and I began taking class every single day.” Lunn’s husband, actor Andrew MacMillan, who died in 2016, made positive Lunn had the instruments she wanted by studying to construct and optimize wheelchairs for dance. Later, he’d do the identical for a lot of of Lunn’s college students.
Lunn discovered herself a pioneer within the discipline of incapacity dance and began passing on her discoveries. She was a deeply dedicated educator: A member of Dance Instructor’s advisory board from 2022–24, Lunn taught workshops and lessons at LaGuardia Excessive College of Music and Artwork and Performing Arts, Hunter Faculty, and Gibney Dance, amongst others. She created a nationwide teacher-training program to share her technique of transposing motion for wheelchair customers, and, beginning in 2007, she led weekly tuition-free lessons for individuals with disabilities, transitioning them on-line through the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing her attain even additional.
Lunn was an important mentor to Marc Brew and Alice Sheppard, each main incapacity artists of in the present day. “Kitty’s legacy speaks for itself by the previous college students who’ve gone on to guide dance corporations and revolutionary dance-education initiatives,” says Chris Frerichs, Lunn’s longtime supervisor. “Kitty was forward of her time by asserting that earlier than you’ll be able to obtain programmatic entry for individuals with bodily disabilities, you could first handle the numerous gaps in entry to the schooling and coaching essential to pursue a profession as an expert dancer.”
A consummate multi-hyphenate, Lunn shone as an artist and an activist. She appeared in performs on the Public Theater and the Kennedy Middle, and in a recurring position within the daytime tv drama “Because the World Turns.” As a Councilor for the Actors’ Fairness Affiliation, Lunn’s advocacy helped put in place necessities for accessible location choices for auditions, and necessities that actors with disabilities be notified first for auditions for characters with disabilities.
Lunn additionally continued performing with and choreographing for Infinity Dance Theater, her troupe for dancers each with and with out disabilities. Infinity Dance graced levels round New York Metropolis and toured nationally and internationally. Dance artist, educator, and choreographer Alison Cook dinner Beatty, whose personal dance firm ceaselessly collaborated with Lunn’s, remembers one efficiency by which the businesses shared the stage at The Riverside Theatre. “That was Kitty’s imaginative and prescient: Dancers with and with out disabilities coaching, creating, and performing collectively—not separated into totally different worlds,” says Beatty. “Kitty opened doorways. However much more importantly, she opened minds.”
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