Pioneer of Integrated Dance Celebrates 25-Year Milestone
with America's First-Ever Touring Integrated Dance Festival

Cleveland, Ohio - Dancing Wheels – the nation's first modern dance company that integrates both stand-up and sit-down (wheelchair) dancers – is marking its 25-year anniversary season with a host of special performances, collaborations and an extended tour across the country. The tour includes the nation's first-ever Integrated Dance Festival.

America's first professional wheelchair dancer, Mary Verdi-Fletcher, Dancing Wheels president and founding artistic director, created Dancing Wheels in 1980 as the prototype for a new integrated dance form in which both professional stand-up and wheelchair dancers perform together. In the past 25 years, this groundbreaking concept has not only transformed the world of dance, but has also changed the way in which people with disabilities are perceived.

During its 25 years of operation, the company has performed for more than 3 million people all over the world, carrying the message of access to the arts for people of all abilities. Dancing Wheels, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, has been featured in numerous national publications and broadcast programs, including the ABC television special Christopher Reeve: A Celebration of Hope, CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC's Good Morning America and CNN Headline News.

Dancing Wheels has collaborated with a host of talented and distinguished performers, including Grammy-award-winning vocalist James Ingram; Ben Vereen, internationally acclaimed dancer and star of the Broadway musical Wicked; the multi-talented Tommy Tune, winner of nine Tony Awards; and beloved actor and disabled rights activist, Christopher Reeve.

As the pinnacle of its landmark 25th anniversary, Dancing Wheels will inaugurate America's first-ever touring Integrated Dance Festival. This unprecedented tour begins on May 13, 2006, at the prestigious Allen Theater at Cleveland's Playhouse Square. The theater is the first site of the tour that will bring together the top three integrated dance companies in the nation. Full Radius Dance from Atlanta and AXIS Dance from Oakland, California, will be joining Dancing Wheels at these three host sites to present some of the most spectacular dance performances in America. The Company's national tours, that take them from Playhouse Square to the Kennedy Center, are sponsored by MetLife Foundation.

At the Allen Theatre performance, Dancing Wheels will present the world premier of a work exclusively created for the company by Pilobolus. Pilobolus is the groundbreaking experimental dance company from Connecticut that artfully combines innovative dance and athletic movements to create visually stunning performances.

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