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Reuters

Entertainment

Linda Sieg

Olympics or not, Japan wheelchair dancer has message: diversity is cool

Kenta Kambara, 34, poses for a photo while his daughter Shiori, 2, walks past him, next to an Olympic Rings symbol in front of the Japan Olympic Museum in Tokyo, Japan, February 22, 2020. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

Whirling, spinning, reaching, grasping - Japanese wheelchair dancer Kenta Kambara's emotive performances are wordless testimony to artistic passion and possibility.

Born with spina bifida, a disorder that paralysed his lower body, Kambara aims to perform at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics opening or closing ceremonies, seeking to send a message to disabled and able-bodied people alike: it's OK to be different.

Kenta Kambara, 34, performs onstage during 'Challenge & Move' a dance event in Tokyo, Japan, February 8, 2020. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

"If you can't walk with your legs, it's OK to walk with your hands. If there is something you want to do but cannot, it's OK to find another way," Kambara, 34, a computer systems engineer and father of a two-year-old daughter, told Reuters.

"These days, people use the keyword 'diversity' but not many people have experienced it themselves," he said. "I want people to understand by seeing me dance that it's precisely because my body is different that it is interesting. Then that will become a trigger to accept other people's differences."

"I also want them to think, 'Wow, that's cool!'"

School children touch Kenta Kambara's arm after listening to a lecture he had given at an elementary school in Tokyo, Japan, February 21, 2020. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

Kambara was in third grade at elementary school in Kobe, western Japan, when his mother told him he would never walk.

"It was a huge shock and I remember crying," he said. "But that was the trigger to think about how to confront my disability and find different ways to achieve my goals."

Kambara, whose upper body is well-developed from propelling himself with his arms since childhood, began dancing five years ago and less than a year later, performed at the Rio Paralympics closing ceremony.

Kenta Kambara poses for a photo on his bicycle in Chiba, Japan, February 7, 2015. Chie Kambara/Handout via REUTERS

The self-taught Kambara's repertoire includes handstands on his wheelchair, serpentine moves of his lean, muscular arms and slender fingers, and dizzying spins on a collapsed wheelchair, itself an integral part of his performances.

"I'd already come to terms with my disability before I began dancing so it's not as if dancing 'saved' me. But before I started dancing, I often felt my wheelchair was cumbersome in my daily life ... But when it comes to dancing, I feel my use of a wheelchair makes it unique," he said.

"Disabilities have a negative image, but when it comes to dance, this is something only I can do."

Kenta, his wife Chie and his daughter Shiori Kambara, 2, react as they watch TV at their home in Tokyo, Japan, February 9, 2020. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

Although he had long tended to hide his paralysed legs out of embarrassment, that feeling changes when he dances.

"What I had been hiding becomes something unique that moves people's hearts," he said.

Kambara also performs and lectures at schools, where youngsters are clearly impressed.

Chie Kambara hands their sleeping daughter Shiori, 2, to her husband Kenta at their home in Tokyo, Japan February 9, 2020. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

"I thought it was amazing that someone born with a disability could do such an intense, cool dance," said eight-year-old elementary school student Konatsu Matsuo.

"Before I thought being in a wheelchair was really tough," she said. "Now I think that life with a wheelchair can be fun."

Besides aiming for the Paralympics ceremonies, Kambara harbours a bigger dream - to dance at the Olympics closing ceremony as a way to boost interest in the Paralympic Games.

"There shouldn't be a division such that if you are disabled, you can only perform at the Paralympics," he said, but noted that in contrast to the Paralympics, there are no open auditions for the Olympics ceremonies. Results of the Paralympics auditions are expected by the end of March.

Speculation, denied by organizers, is swirling that the Games might be cancelled due to the global spread of the novel coronavirus, but Kambara said he was not discouraged.

"Even if the Games are cancelled, I will have another chance to stand on a world stage," he said.