[I guess this is part of why I read obituaries -- for the tiny huge things.]
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/18/arts/dance/18martin.html
The New York Times
February 18, 2006
Barry Martin, Dancer and Choreographer, Dies at 44
By JENNIFER DUNNING
Barry Martin, a modern dancer who turned to a career in choreography
after an accident made him a quadriplegic, died on Feb. 6 at his home
in Manhattan. He was 44.
The cause was apparently heart failure, said a friend, Valerie
Gladstone.
Born in New York City, Mr. Martin trained at the Alvin Ailey American
Dance Center and received a degree in dance and sociology from the
State University of New York at Purchase. While on tour in South
Africa in 1983 with the English dance company Hot Gossip, he was
seriously injured in an automobile crash. Mr. Martin, who was black,
was refused transportation in a whites-only ambulance and was denied
treatment in a hospital he was taken to by car. His spinal cord was
apparently severed during the transfer to another hospital.
Mr. Martin eventually returned to New York and began to choreograph in
1985, from a wheelchair, and earned a master's degree in arts
administration from New York University. He formed a company he called
Déjà Vu Dance Theater because, he said, dance was something he now saw
again in a new way. He choreographed for his own and other troupes.
Mr. Martin, who taught dance privately and tutored children in the New
York City public school system, had recently established a children's
dance workshop whose members were drawn from the Ailey school, Dance
Theater of Harlem and the School of American Ballet. At the time of
his death, he was studying for a second master's degree at New York
University, focusing on disabilities and the arts.
Mr. Martin is survived by his mother, Daisy, and a sister, Hilary,
both of New York, and a brother, Lionel, of Los Angeles.
* Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company