Fuzión Dance Artists to perform in Argentina

After its 10th anniversary season celebration on September 18, the Fuzión Dance Artists won't have much extra time to celebrate. The company, artistic director Leymis Bolaños Wilmott and longtime friend Stephanie Bastos, who dances with the aid of a prosthetic leg, will hop on a plane for South America to launch their 10th season in even warmer climates.

The company will represent the United States at the Conference of Physically Integrative Dance in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Hosted by the professional dance company Dance without Borders, the conference aims to create and advocate for dancing that involves and incorporates dancers of all abilities to the concert stage and everyday public spaces. Running from Sept. 20 through 30, Fuzión Dance Artists will be collaborating with the Concuerpos Danza Inlusiva from Bogota, Colombia and the AM-Danza Campania De Habilidades Mixtas from Caracas, Venezuela. 

"I am thrilled to be sharing and learning along side the trail blazers of Physically Integrative Dance in Latin America, who work with the mixed abilities community in their countries," says Wilmott. 

Wilmott and Bastos, longtime friends since attending high school together in Miami, displayed their artistic prowess earlier this summer in July in Fuzión's "Behind the Curtain" series. The duo displayed the work they had done for a future solo performance for Bastos, which is scheduled to debut from December 3 through 6 during the company's "Voices of Fuzión" series. In August, the two talked with the Mariana Chilutti, director of the conference, about bringing the two's vision and piece to the conference. 

"We had an immediate artistic connection," says Wilmott. "The conference's creative labs project offers the opportunity to investigate the movement and dancing processes in the context of cultural complexity and the experience of human diversity. What is important to me is that these labs will help to continue the development of the work that Stephanie and I began this summer."

This isn't the first time Wilmott and Fuzión have traveled and represented Sarasota on the world stage. Wilmott and colleague Dwayne Scheuneman, who is paralyzed from the chest down and wheelchair-bound and teaches physically integrative dance, traveled to the West Bank in Israel in the summer of 2014 to perform and develop a piece that featured Wilmott dancing with Scheuneman in his wheelchair. 

"We are so pleased to see the expansion of our international reach, which can only enhance Sarasota as the heart of culture and the arts in southwest Florida,” says Shane Chalke, president of Fuzión’s board of directors.  “We are also excited to see Leymis helping to lead the way in physically integrative dance, which means so much not only to those performers with mixed abilities, but also to our community.”