Crutchmaster has leg up on dance performance

“Disabled” dancer does acrobats despite all odds

By: Emma Sanders

Posted: 11/11/04

Before Disabilities Awareness Week began, signs advertising the “Crutchmaster” appeared in residence halls all over campus. “You will not want to miss his unique performance as he ‘dances’ using his crutches,” the sign read. It turns out that the Crutchmaster’s performance was about more than just dancing with crutches. Bill Shannon, the Crutchmaster, presented on Nov. 1 with a humorous narrative about his life, dance pieces with crutches and footage of his street performances. Shannon began by explaining why he uses crutches.

Shannon was born with a deformed femur bone, which eventually lead to the degeneration of his hip joints and now makes it difficult for him to walk for long periods of time. Despite this challenge, Shannon employs a variety of methods to cope with his impediment, including the use of crutches, with which he has incredible mobility and ease, as well as creative uses of skateboards.

Shannon almost resembles a cross-country skier on his board as he glides along, using his two crutches to push off and keep him moving. Sometimes, in the city, Shannon even grabs on to the back of a cab on his skateboard as a quick way to get around.

Shannon not only dances, but performs his art form in public cities employing a variety of different methods. Shannon classifies his performances in two categories: theater performances, like the one at Muhlenberg, and public performances. At the former, Shannon not only performs, but also shows taped footage of street performances and slowly analyzes and explains it to the audience. At the latter, Shannon’s “audience” is the public, and they often do not know that he is putting on an act. His public street performances include crutch dancing, acrobatics, making it appear as if he needs assistance and performing everyday actions that are harder on crutches.

Shannon has names for the different displays of performance art he does publicly. First, there’s “help as an obstacle,” which he defines as someone’s attempt to help him when he doesn’t need it. Once, Shannon tells the audience, he finished performing an impressive array of acrobatic tricks on his crutches when one man watching noticed Shannon’s hat was on the ground, and asked if he needed assistance picking it up. This question surprised Shannon. He wondered if the man had been completely oblivious to the remarkable routine he had just performed. It is this ignorance in the average everyday person that Shannon hopes to alleviate through his art.

Another performance is called “peripheral fluctuation.” A video clip showed this in action. On crutches, Shannon struggles to bend down and pick up a water bottle, while a man clearly stares at him from the side (Shannon’s periphery). Shannon may indulge in a few activities that make the simple task he is performing slightly more difficult than it actually is to lure in the onlooker. When Shannon turns to face the man, the person who had been gawking at him from a distance quickly looks away. This embarrassment of curiosity is something that many people who are not disabled go through, and there really is no reason. Shannon encounters this phenomenon on a daily basis and has learned to make light of it.

A third is named “mind’s eye imagine manifestation.” This, Shannon tells the audience, is when he attempts to act in a way that he feels other people must view him, based on their treatment of him. By playing this stereotype of the “stumbling cripple,” he forces others to see how their immediate assumptions of him, and of disabled people in general, are flawed. One video clip showed him slowly limping along, even though he has as much mobility with his crutches as a person that is walking does. Sometimes Shannon feels like everyone sees him as the limping cripple, just because of the crutches, but in all actuality, he is quite possibly more mobile and fluid with his crutches than many people are who have full use of their legs.

One video clip presented a simple performance. Shannon walks along a New York City sidewalk with the assistance of his crutches when he comes to the back of a bench and flips over it. Initially, it looks like an accident or some kind of terrible mistake. But once on the other side of the bench, right after flipping, Shannon freezes his legs above his body in midair, and holds the pose. This is meant to demonstrate the fine line between failure and success. It also gives onlookers a different perspective on what they see as “handicapped.”

Shannon is quick to point out that his street performances are not meant to educate people about his disability. Rather, Shannon hopes to teach those who view his theater performances to question people in situations similar to his and how to respond to them the next time they observe them. In this manner, he is giving his audiences a different aspect of what it means to be disabled. By introducing the thought that disabled does not mean unnabled, he is changing the world, one person at a time. Essentially, Shannon wants to reduce the number of assumptions made by people, and teach them to think differently about what they see everyday.