American hip-hop dancer Bill Shannon aka Crutchmaster is bringing his unique breakdance style - and his crutches - to Dublin. He tells Michael Seaver what moves him

'I'm going to busk in Temple Bar Square. I'm going down there the first day I get to Dublin and do my thing and begin to build a relationship with the people. I know a kid who works in one of the stores there because I met him at a street dance competition in San Francisco so I'm going to e-mail him and get to meet some of the local dancers, see where the parties are at night and hit some of the clubs . . . and then hopefully make the technical rehearsal the next day." American hip-hop dancer Bill Shannon is hitting the streets of Dublin and he will be easy to spot amongst the Temple Bar buskers and club dancers - he's the one with the crutches and skateboard.

He was diagnosed with Legg-Calv Perthes disease - a degenerative condition affecting the hips - at the age of five, but although the condition lessened as he entered his teenage years, he was forced to use crutches again when he was 23. He is blunt about his disability and almost relishes the interrogation his performances produce.

"In order to dance and to express myself fully I need to use the crutches. Whether I like it or not the crutches are present in the dancing and so along with this presence or this necessity comes a lot of narrative baggage that you can exploit or deny. No matter how you handle it, it will still be there."

Passers-by in Temple Bar this weekend will notice that Shannon chooses to exploit the crutches, keeping his dance within the urban streetscape where he is at his most immediate. Here is where Bill Shannon becomes Crutchmaster.

"I use both 'Bill Shannon' and 'Crutchmaster' and the reason I do this is I feel like my feet are firmly planted in two totally different arenas. One is the club, the dancing circles, the ciphers, the battles and the competition of street dance and that's how Crutchmaster was born, out of the battle. Guys would come up and say 'Hey, you're a master, you're Crutchmaster' and so I became known as Crutchmaster. It was an inescapable handle, but it's a street handle. It is not meant for the galleries and the performance art venues. In fact I don't even think the people who go there even understand the vernacular, history or context of breakdance competition or what a 'master' actually is."

Street dance might be the essence of Shannon's artistry but applications for funding were continually refused from state organisations and foundations in the United States. Eventually a group called Creative Time approached him to develop and record performances in the street. "These performances assimilate the ethos of skateboarders, who have a radical relationship with urban architecture, and are criss-crossed with my own aesthetic for acrobatics on crutches. This interaction with architecture might, in the mind's eye of the public, seem like failure and tragedy and there is a comedy to that. The onlooker knows that I'm a dancer who can walk but can't walk really far, (and my disability does hugely affect many aspects of my life), but it doesn't stop me expressing myself with great dexterity and power."

Reactions to these performances are widely different: some people turn away while others look directly at him. "There is a lot to do with the history of a country. How do people react to someone on crutches? How much is about pity or pathos? Essentially, what is the underlying gut of a culture? It's about class, race, gender, and all forms of identity and politics. Although it's not overtly political, it is a big question that I try to push with the icons. Actually I consider what I do almost iconography, insofar as within the sculptural presence - the icon - there are different meanings."

His theatre-dance work, Spatial Theory, is a continually-changing and evolving work in which he enters into dialogue with the performing space. "It's not a piece that needs to be in a black box space. Each space is different so each performance is different. If there are poles in the middle of the floor I tell them to light the poles, because I'm going to use them." Working with DJ Ritchie Tempo allows Shannon to "freestyle" his way through the piece. As opposed to improvisation, there are set goalposts for changes in lighting and sound cues, but between these he can choose to expand or contract material knowing that the live music mixing will ride out the moment with him.

Moving his body from the street into the theatrical frame brings up its own issues. "You get up there on stage there are the questions like 'Why does the character have crutches?' It's no longer that I need crutches to walk; it's a theatre statement. And although it is not necessarily true, you also can't deny that it's there. There is a portion of the piece which is really just about taking off my jacket and being disabled. If you are standing on crutches and try to take off your jacket your armpits are stuck on the crutches. So what do you do with the crutch? Well you can't hold it in your hand because when you try to take the sleeve off, the hand is in the way. So I developed my own way to take off my jacket, which was to use my head to hold the crutch so that I could take the jacket off one arm. I then put the other crutch under my head and take the other sleeve off. And so I took that little awkward manoeuvre, slowed it down and made it very sculptural and very much about accentuating and stylising the beauty of the awkwardness."

• Bill Shannon will perform Spatial Theory on Sunday Aug 10th and Wednesday 13th at 9.30 p.m. in Meeting House Square and will talk about his work at 1.15 p.m. on Monday Aug 11th in Project. Crutchmaster can be seen dancing in the streets on Tuesday 12th and Thursday 14th in Temple Bar and late at night in clubs around town.

• Another event in Diversions' Dancing in the Streets, running from Sunday until Friday Aug 15th, is Squared, a set of four solo works by Jodi Melnick, Liz Roche, Christine Gaigg and the new artistic director of Daghdha Michael Klien. Co-ordinated by Rex Levitates Dance Company the works will be first performed singly in Project, SS Michael and John's and Meeting House Square on Tuesday and Wednesday and then together in SS Michael and John's on Thursday at 8 p.m. www.templebar.ie or tel 01 6772255