Reimagination has been an integral part of Mary Verdi-Fletcher’s dance career. Born with spina bifida, she helped carve a path to professional dance for disabled dancers, founding Dancing Wheels Company, the oldest physically integrated dance company in the U.S., in 1980. Now, Verdi-Fletcher is producing Rodeo Reimagined, an original piece with choreography by Amy Hall Garner that takes inspiration from Agnes de Mille’s iconic Western-themed classic. Dancing Wheels will premiere the work June 14 in Cleveland as part of a gala production that also includes a new work by choreographer Catherine Meredith.
You met Agnes de Mille in 1990 when Cleveland Ballet reprised her Rodeo, which she had set on the company a decade earlier. Was that when the seed of Dancing Wheels performing a version of the work was planted?
Yes. I knew I wanted to someday do a work or storybook ballet with a Western theme. I had done a lot of research on Ms. de Mille and found we were very much akin in terms of our work. She was about the human movement versus any particular style. When she created Rodeo, she wanted to go beyond the Russian ballet techniques of that time. So, she infused tap and folk dance into the work. That rang true to the work that Dancing Wheels does: infusing movement from a wide range of genres and being inclusive. She was about inclusivity as well. She saw what we were doing back then and told me shethought it was awesome. She could appreciate someone with what she considered limited movement being a dancer in their soul.
What is it about de Mille’s Rodeo that spoke to you?
I am a cowgirl at heart. When I was a child, I used to pretend I was Annie Oakley. I loved horses and Westerns, and with Rodeo there was the excitement of cowgirls and rivalries that drew me to it.
Why not perform de Mille’s original instead of reimagining it?
At first, I wanted to adapt the original to our company of stand-up and sit-down dancers using wheelchairs and make it inclusive, but a representative of The De Mille Working Group, which controls the rights to the work, would not grant us licensing permission. Over time, I realized that we should reimagine our own.
Dancing Wheels Company in rehearsal, with Mary Verdi-Fletcher in teal. Photo by Dale Dong, courtesy Dancing Wheels Company.
You have engaged Paul Ferguson, artistic director of the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, to compose original music for Rodeo Reimagined. Will it have a Western and Americana flavor to it à la Aaron Copland’s iconic music for Rodeo?
Paul’s vision is to have a refreshed and relatable score to our current times. It will have a Western theme and be stylistically diverse. The Cleveland Jazz Orchestra will perform it live.
What is your vision for this reimagined version?
I conveyed to the work’s choreographer, Amy Hall Garner, that, like Rodeo, I wanted the work to be infused with several styles of dance. Amy is brilliant at that and has had conversations with the dancers about the other styles of dance they are proficient in, like hip hop, tap, and ballet, which could be incorporated into the work.
I envision a story about equality that tells of a tough female character like Annie Oakley or the Cowgirl in Rodeo, who, while desiring the attention of men, remains strong-willed, independent, and competitive with them.
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