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SATURDAY
Mixed-ability dance troupe Seize the Day may risk too much message in its medium simply by existing, but the group’s new Dances on Wheels: A Gliding Improvisation never gets bogged down in “disability issues.” Instead, choreographer Patty Krauss touches lightly on the view from a wheelchair by moving eight dancers on and between two planes: Two are in rolling office chairs, two in wheelchairs, and four on Rollerblades. There’s nothing solemn about the piece, which includes a harried office worker drawn into a lurching game of Crack the Whip and two Rollerbladers bent butt-to-butt in an inverted “V,” propelled by their hands pushing off the floor. Dancer Berto Robie calls it “one of the more zany pieces” put on by Seize the Day, which he joined two years ago. (Robie contracted polio when he was 3 and moved between crutches and a wheelchair until six years ago, when a broken leg put him in a chair fulltime.) In the first half of Dances on Wheels, the dancers regroup continuously into duets and trios of varying speeds and heights. As they intersect with the dancers in the chairs, the Rollerbladers’ heads and torsos swoop down to the others’ eye level. These tiny migrations give an unexpected fillip to the huge arcs and circles tracing the floor, resonating long after the performance ends. Never lecturing or guilt-tripping, Dances on Wheels is beautifully humane. The performance fills the dance floor at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, May 16, at Glen Echo Park’s Spanish Ballroom, 7300 MacArthur Blvd., Glen Echo. Free. (301) 927-2311. (Virginia Vitzthum)