Elaine Meinel Supkis
The NYT ran a lovely story about disabled girls wanting to learn ballet. It seems the dream of dancing encouraged them to work hard at making the arms and legs move despite the disabilities. This is the true nature of dance: transcendance.
But this studio holds one special class a week for dancers whose movements do not exactly exhibit the refined control of a prima ballerina. There are no lithe leaps, perfect pirouettes or pointed toes here. Most girls cannot walk or stand, much less make a shallow curtsy. Their crutches and walkers lie nearby and their customized ballet slippers are stretched over leg braces.The eight little ballet students, who have cerebral palsy and other debilitating physical conditions, are assisted in class by teenage volunteers with strong healthy bodies and infinite patience. The teacher is Joann Ferrara, a physical therapist who owns and runs Associated Therapies, where most of the girls go for treatment.
Even at a tender age — the girls range from 3 to 7 — they grasp that they will never romp in a playground or flip onto a gym mat, let alone play hopscotch, tag or hide-and-seek. But being little girls, they are not immune to the dream of being a glamorous ballerina swathed in frilly pink, gliding gloriously on a stage in front of everyone.
"Every little girl wants to be a ballerina, and my daughter wanted to know why she couldn't," said Maria Siaba, whose daughter Veronica, 7, is in the class. "I would bring her into a ballet school and they said, 'We can't accommodate her.' Outside, I'd have to explain to her that she couldn't do what all the other girls are doing."
Mindless exercises designed to stengthen the body are not very motivating for anyone much less very young children. Strong animals or people who effortlessly master various skills never learn the joy of transcendence. Working to meld the mind and the body into overcoming gravity, to enter that state of mind of dreaming while awake is a vital part of humanity. When our sheep had their baby lambies, within a week, the young ones would be gambolling all over the steep mountain fields, jumping with the sheer joy of being in the sun, on the soft grass, the wind ruffling their alert little ears.
When it snows our Alpine horse rejoices and he charges through the soft snow, spraying it all over, white mane flying. When young birds first learn to fly, they daredevil around the trees, trying out every possible trick on the wing. All living things love to rejoice in the verity of being alive. The living need to express this sense of happiness. Rejoicing in joy. From the very beginning of all living things, this happiness has existed.
The profound frustrations of the young, if disabled, can be alleviated by the mind but even so, the act of moving, of flying, of leaping and reaching to the heavens excites life, it is living. And all want to live.
I once had a premie baby lamb we called, "Itty Bitty." She was extremely tiny and it was below zero in an ice storm when she was born. I thought she was dead. But when I took her inside, she woke up in the warm blanket in front of the fire. She made a sweet bleat to me and sprang up and climbed up my chest, eyes glowing. We keep a baby bottle to feed any orphan baby lambies but she was too small, I used an eyedropper to feed her.
She died in my arms later that night. I cried.
Her life was short but even so, the love of life was there in her tiny beating heart! She did, if only for a moment, the eternal dance of the spring lambs.
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