A jagged journey told in dance

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Twenty years ago, Leymis Bolanos-Wilmott and Stephanie Bastos were best friends and fellow dancers at New World School of the Arts when Bastos lost her right leg below the knee in a car accident that followed a night of salsa dancing at a Miami club. That tragedy would send reverberations through both of their lives. But it also cemented their friendship, even as their careers went in diverging directions following graduation. Bolanos-Wilmott would eventually found Sarasota’s contemporary dance troupe, Fuzion Dance Artists, while Bastos moved to California to dance with AXIS, a mixed ability company, and then to teach and perform as a freelance artist.

Read more about the friendship of Stephanie Bastos and Leymis Bolanos-Wilmott

Sunday afternoon, in the wood-paneled serenity of the New College of Florida’s College Hall, with afternoon sunlight streaming in through the western windows, the two dancers came together again during a special Fuzion "Behind the Curtain" session, to showcase the beginnings of a solo Bolanos-Wilmott is developing for Bastos. The work, as yet untitled, represents their first creative collaboration since high school and is based on a “timeline”of Bastos’ memories from before and after the accident. From the tears on the faces of many of the spectators – including Bolanos-Wilmott herself, and Bastos’ family, who made the trip from Miami to see it – it will be a moving work, in every sense of the word.

Stephanie Bastos, who lost the lower end of her right leg in a car accident, dances the as-yet untitled new work her childhood friend, Leymis Bolanos-Wilmott, is creating for her based on her life experiences. / Photo by Barbara Williams

Stephanie Bastos, who lost the lower end of her right leg in a car accident, dances the as-yet untitled new work her childhood friend, Leymis Bolanos-Wilmott, is creating for her based on her life experiences. / Photo by Barbara Williams

It begins with Bastos’ dancing without the prosthetic leg she now typically uses both for everyday perambulation and performance, and ends with her prosthetic attached, as she stands triumphantly on both feet, her arms in a wide embrace, her face turned upward to the sky. In between, she uses gesture, percussive rhythms, pedestrian movement, spoken word and song to illustrate her jagged emotional and physical journey.

While not specifically narrative or chronological, Bastos covers the gamut of her evolution, using a variety of expressions: a song in Portuguese about dreams, one she sang in childhood with her Brazilian family; a litany of the questions she is constantly asked by the curious (“Is it hard to balance? Do you sleep with it on? What kind of shoe do you wear?); a physical display of the strength, power and the perfection of her body and a corresponding rejection of pity and fear.

In a final gesture, Bastos moves along the audience, seated in the round, seamlessly flowing, rotating and reaching out to each viewer. At this first showing, an unscripted “I love this part!” irrepressibly escaped from her lips.

In a talk-back after the performance, Bolanos-Wilmott, an award-winning choreographer, said she tapped Bastos’ journaling– the pages of the timeline were strung in a line at one corner of the dance space -- and used guided imagery to take her friend back to key moments and to solicit corresponding movement. She and Bastos will continue to build on the piece – “We feel like this is the middle and there is still a beginning and end to come,” Bastos said – in preparation for a full production of the work in a future Fuzion concert. Their ultimate goal is to record it on film, capturing the multi-dimensional dance from a variety of angles.

Stephanie Bastos/ Photo by Barbara Williams

Stephanie Bastos/ Photo by Barbara Williams

Bastos said the creation process was both rewarding and challenging and that her trust in and close friendship with Bolanos-Wilmott was an essential factor.

“I’ve done so much work to make my life positive and full,” she said. “Sometimes I resist going back to those painful moments. But they are also what give this piece its substance and power.”

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Carrie Seidman

Carrie Seidman has been a newspaper features writer, columnist and reviewer for 30 years...and a dancer for longer than that. She has a master's degree from Columbia University Journalism School and is a former competitive ballroom dancer. Contact her via email, or at (941) 361-4834. Make sure to "Like" Arts Sarasota on Facebook for news and reviews of the arts.
Last modified: July 27, 2015
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