“From a choreographer’s point of view,” Portland choreographer Yulia Arakelyan told ArtsWatch in 2015, “the more body diversity there is, the more opportunity for creativity and uniqueness.” Arakelyan and her artistic and life partner Erik Ferguson have spent the last decade and a half contributing their unique creativity to Portland’s dance and film scenes, in multifaceted, sometimes whimsical performances whose movement and imagery resemble nothing else in Oregon.
In 2006 the pair, both of whom use wheelchairs, created Wobbly, a Portland multidisciplinary performance company influenced by improvisational dance and Butoh. Their work focuses on “the unavoidable exploration of the body weathered by life,” according to its website. “Wobbly is a way of life, an expression of the belief that disability is a natural variation of the human form and in this variation there is art.”
