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- Art exposes,

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art reveals what's happening

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behind the curtain.

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♪ There's a fire 
in the freezer ♪

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♪ There's some 
blood on the rose ♪

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♪ There's a broken 
puppet on the wall ♪

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♪ I just saw it's eyes glow

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♪ I thought it was 
just a limp machine ♪

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♪ That was damaged by the road

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♪ But he's awake 
now and I believe ♪

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♪ He's a toy no more

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♪ Broken puppet with 
your strings that fall ♪

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♪ Will you show me how 
you move on your own ♪

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♪ Cut loose like a ladybug

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♪ That's climbing out 
of its rabbit hole ♪

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♪ Free fallin' like 
a corporate rogue ♪

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♪ Will you tell me how 
you bleed on your own ♪

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When I was about three years 
old. I started playing piano.

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I actually recorded 
some music when I was 14

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and I was selling 
it to raise money

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for my trip to Costa Rica 
where I had my injury.

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I have a C5 spinal cord injury,

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so I don't have a 
lot of hand function.

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Three years into my injury,

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found out I could 
still make music.

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Started a band called 
Treading North.

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That band broke up 
and I started Freaque.

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♪ Pinocchio had it wrong

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♪ There's no such 
thing as real boys ♪

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♪ We try and try and try again

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♪ But we'll never fit the mold

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♪ The illusion of 
our freedom rings ♪

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♪ Over bodies that have coiled

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♪ They're drained of 
all their agency ♪

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♪ And deflated leaking joy

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I remember one night I was 
working on music on my computer,

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which is usually the way 
I write, and I was like,

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maybe I'll go downstairs 
and play the piano.

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It was this sort of cathartic,

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deep connection that I'd 
been missing for a long time

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with the piano.

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And so I was able to kind of 
reignite that relationship

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through writing, you know,

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one note at a time and it kind 
of gave me this new avenue,

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this new path to create.

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And I think since those songs 
are so sparse musically,

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I was really able to start 
experimenting with more poetry

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and more lyrics.

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♪ Broken puppet with 
your strings that fall ♪

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♪ Will you show me how 
you move on your own ♪

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♪ Cut loose like a ladybug

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♪ That's climbing out 
of its rabbit hole ♪

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♪ Free fallin' like 
a corporate rogue ♪

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♪ Will you tell me how 
you bleed on your own ♪

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♪ Feel on your own

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♪ Be on your own

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We took that idea of one 
note at a time to the extreme

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and realizing like, well,

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what if I do that 
with my old body?

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(suspenseful music)

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A Cripple's Dance 
is a live music,

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live dance production 
performed and created

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by people with 
spinal cord injuries.

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I would literally get 
on the floor on a mat

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and I would be moving down there

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and I have no movement 
below my armpits,

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so all I was doing

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was sort of gestural 
movements on the ground.

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And there's 
something really like

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really empowering about that.

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What they were gonna see 
was so deeply vulnerable.

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I wanted to bring them into that

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and invite them to be 
vulnerable themselves.

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It's not about letting 
your limitation

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limit you sort of,

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it's more about 
using the limitation

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to burst everything wide open

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and make magic through 
your limitations.

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All right, let's 
spread across the room

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and we're gonna do some 
solo anchoring exploration.

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- Cool.

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- I started at Young 
Dance in fall of 2021.

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As I started thinking about 
what we're doing in class

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and sort of taking a little 
bit more of a creative role,

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things have like really started 
to shift for me creatively.

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I think it comes in 
line with my excitement

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for more improv-based 
performance.

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- That was awesome.

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- That was awesome.

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(calm music)

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- A thing I'm starting 
to discover about dance

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and I think it's been 
a process of discovery

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over the last few years.

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The way that I dance,

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the way that I move doesn't 
need to look a certain way,

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that's not just 
enough but exciting.

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I think similarly 
that I can make music

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that sounds good

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or interesting to my own ears.

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You know, my body is so 
different from the standard

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and I wanna explore 
that and tell that story

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because I think there are 
so many people out there

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who are struggling 
with similar things

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and it is this sort 
of like the floodgates

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are bursting wide 
open kind of feeling.

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And I have no idea 
what is coming next,

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but I know something's coming.

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(calm music)

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(calm music)

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- [Announcer] This program 
was produced in collaboration

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with the Center for 
the Art of Medicine

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at the University of 
Minnesota Medical School.

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And funded by the Minnesota 
Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund

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and the citizens of Minnesota.

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(calm music)