I was reminded today about an amazing performance artist I saw in Boston called The Crutchmaster. He’s a dancer who has to use crutches due to a rare form of arthritis, and can do some truly amazing things on these specialty crutches that he found. He says he’s a performance artist, but his pieces are very dance-like, a modern hip-hop dance ensemble that comments on the nature of disability and society’s attitude towards it. He has a website with some video — it gives an idea of what his performance is like, but doesn’t do justice to the live performance. If he comes to town, you should definitely see him.

He gave a talk at MIT while his show was going on at the Dance Umbrella — it’s amazing to me the opportunities for seeing interesting new art and hearing from artists that were facilitated by MIT. It’s those sneak peeks into the less-familiar territories of the arts that are often the most interesting. Berkeley has similar opportunities — I saw DJ Spooky give a talk on art, technology, and theory in his work just last year. But I wasn’t surprised at the opportunities at Berkeley, and I was at MIT.