Chelsea's Bells

An invigorating rock duet set to music by Melissa Etheridge and Robert Ruggieri, Chelsea’s Bells explores contemporary courtship rituals and a woman’s power over a man.

Barry Martin was an Ailey-trained former dancer who was left paralyzed from a 1983 car accident while on tour in South Africa with the English dance company Hot Gossip. He was refused transportation in a whites-only ambulance and was denied treatment in a hospital for being Black. His spinal cord was severed during the transfer to another hospital. Returning to New York, he began to choreograph from a wheelchair in 1985 and earned a master's degree in arts administration from New York University. Martin formed a company he called Déjà Vu Dance Theater because, as he said, dance was something he saw now in a new way.