Barry has since faced an uphill battle to recover. Though he is bound to a wheelchair, Barry's spirit did eventually recover from the shock of his new reality. That recovery was both painful and deeply spiritual.

Before 1983, Barry was a promising dancer. After completing his regular schooling as well as his dance education under scholarship at the Alvin Ailey Dance School, he signed on with the British multiracial dance company, Hot Gossip. His future was promising and all was going well: He was embarking on his first world tour with the group, and garnering praise for his energetic, fluent, and technically flawless dancing. Their first stop was Sun City, South Africa. Eight weeks into their stopover in the Transvaal, Barry and a white dancer from the company were involved in a car accident. An ambulance came almost immediately but took only his White colleague. "I remember seeing an ambulance take Peter away. I didn't at the time realize that it had left me behind because it was an ambulance for whites." Although Black bystanders drove him to a "white" hospital that would ultimately refuse to treat him--they left him at the door as soon as they got him there. "I was sitting on a bench for hours," he explains after having walked in under his own power. "After hours of waiting, a political figure stepped into the situation and let them know who I was. They eventually transferred me to another hospital, 75 miles away." Despite what appeared to be a broken neck, Barry was given no neck brace and had no nurse travel with him to the second hospital. "At Paul Kruger Memorial in Pretoria, they sent me to the Black section of the hospital," he continues. "They were not equipped to treat me in the Black section, so they gave me honorary white status and allowed me to be admitted to the white section of that hospital."

"By the time I got to that hospital I was paralyzed. I'm convinced that all the things in between, combined with walking into the first hospital caused the end result," he says with no visible emotion. As Barry relates the story he speaks with a certain hint of disbelief, as if he's telling the story of someone else's life.

"In order to get me out as quickly as they could," he explains, "they recommended that I have a spinal fusion done which would get me up quicker--into a wheel chair." It was a full month after the accident before Barry had an operation.

"I experienced a living hell in those two and half months in the hospital in South Africa. Some nurses and attendants were not very happy with my honorary white status or my 'suntanned' skin," Barry says with a sarcastic chuckle. "One night, my arm involuntarily contracted and twisted itself into a painful position," he continues. "I yelled out for the nurse and an attendant came into the room. I asked her, 'Could you straighten my arm, please?' She looked down at me and said, 'I don't know who you think you are, but I'm not your bloody physiotherapist!' I yelled out, 'What?' She then took the sheet and threw it over my face. Being paralyzed, there was not much I could do except cry."

When asked if he had to pay for the medical services he received, a look of irony crosses his face. "No," he says quietly, taking a breath to continue, then thinking better of it. "No." When I remark on the obvious injustice of it all, Barry says, "It's in the past. I can't let bitterness keep me from living my life, I've realized that."

Barry was eventually transferred to a hospital in England where he spent another ten months in therapy and recuperating before heading back to the states. "They always said that rehabilitation begins at home. I was so frustrated being in the hospital for a year; going to sleep at home one night, then never returning to my bed and having a year stay in a hospital gave me a lot of time to think. When I was discharged, I went right from the hospital to New York City. I went back to my family home in Queens where I stayed for ten months. Over those ten months, I dealt with the frustrations of trying to get help from the system and trying to get my life together. I applied to New York University graduate program only because I needed to get out of my house.

"I saw my family change drastically, trying to cater to me, their attitude, as well-meaning as it was led to a lot my frustration," Barry shares with me. "My room at home had been in the attic. I could no longer get to that. Our dining room was transformed into a bedroom for me. I had no privacy. My family was over-concerned and pampering me. I was very independent and active in high school and college, I didn't live at home during my four years of college. To get back into that situation of living at home was really having a lot of negative impact on me and I couldn't take it. Accepting the fact that I had to deal with other people to take care of me, and wanting them to understand that I still needed to be in control was not easy," Barry explains. "I had to learn how to direct people to assist me to do the things that I could not do for myself." Barry had already begun handling basic tasks for himself as well as learning how to maneuver an electric wheel chair, which increased his mobility and independence.

"Keeping things in perspective, and trying to stay in control of my life, that was really the challenge of those first two or three years."

Barry was determined to live as independent and normal a life as possible, this included pursuing his desire to choreograph as he had done before his accident, but obstacles were constantly placed in his path. "In dealing with the agencies created to aid people in situations similar to mine, and trying to gather information as to how those agencies could help me, I ran into a lot of negativity, a lot of pessimism," says Barry. "When it came to me aspiring to be a choreographer, I was told that it was a far- fetched and unrealistic goal--I was even told this by the Office of Education and Rehabilitation."

So, despite the naysayers, Barry began to work towards his dream. Wayne Rhone, an old friend from Barry's Alvin Ailey days, asked him to choreograph a solo piece for him after an emotional visit. "Barry called the dance 'Penance,'" Rhone recalled in a 1987 Life magazine article. "It had a lot of anger in it, and it was so strenuous I could hardly do it. But I understood why."

'Penance', which was choreographed in 1985, was a tool Barry used to release much of his frustration as well as a great deal of pent-up anger. "'Penance' was the vehicle for my first piece of choreography following the accident. It also inspired me to form my dance company Déjà Vu." His nine member dance troupe, formed in 1986, featured principle dancer Aubrey Lynch, who Barry discovered while he was training with the Alvin Ailey company.

After his work with Rhone in 1985, Barry began to choreograph regularly. Something seemed to take hold of him, something which helped redirect his anger and restlessness. "But it was not until I formed a relationship with the late Alvin Ailey that I found my true purpose as a choreographer. He became my mentor," he says smiling fondly. "I am the last guest choreographer he used for his company, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, before his death. Since its inception, my company performed at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Carnegie Hall. And it came full circle for me when my company performed on Broadway at City Center, which happened in 1991," Barry says with pride. "That circle started from the beginning of my training at Alvin Ailey and ended when I saw my company sell out performances at that same sacred dance space, City Center. That has, in terms of Déjà Vu, been the climax of my career."

"Oh God!" Barry exclaims with a laugh and a hint of embarrassment when I ask him how he explains the moves to his dancers, since he cannot physically demonstrate them. The explosive quality of his work would make any viewer wonder how a choreographer could get those ideas across without doing it themselves. "I draw from my knowledge of dance terms to communicate to the dancers. My system is to use verbal and visual images. A lot of it has to do with me being able to talk the dancer through it and to attempt to be very clear about the feeling, or the shape, or the intentions that I'm looking for. Sometimes it's like trying to choreograph in a dark room where you can't see, and the dancer has to be able to hear and feel to come to their conclusion of what the step is supposed to be.

"It's not terribly unique," he says modestly. "But something that has to be developed over a period of time is the communication with your subject, so they will be able to understand and convey what you want them to, and that's just being a good director. That's what I strive for."

Besides having a successful company, his aspirations are to go beyond choreography, and to convey my messages through other mediums, like film. The power of Barry's work can be no better communicated than in a story he told me of a recent experience of his. Someone from Japan wanted to consider having him choreograph a piece for a performance. "I submitted my résumé and videos and all that stuff," he says. "When the man called me back he wanted me to schedule something the next week. As he was giving me the rehearsal schedule, I noticed the rehearsal studio was a location with lots of stairs, so I said, 'That particular place will be a problem for me because of my situation.' And he said, 'What do you mean?' So I said, 'Well, I'm in a wheelchair.' He says, 'No! Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.'

"I asked him, 'Didn't you read the material I sent you?' 'No,' he said, 'I just looked at the tapes and I love your work!'