Class with wheelchairs opening up new world, connections for all partners
Deep inside a cavernous building in La Mesa, a speaker blares a cha-cha tune. A ponytailed man dressed in black steps smoothly across the linoleum, moving to the beat and asking his students to do the same.
Half the dancers begin following his steps. They know it's bad form, but some look down – to make sure their partners don't roll over their feet.
The weekly class at Sharp Grossmont Rehabilitation Center helps build strength and self-confidence in people who use wheelchairs. It's also building bridges between their world and that of their dance partners.
James Taylor, 33, of University Heights said that before the class, the most contact he had with wheelchair-users was a “hi” here and there.
“This is the first time that I've really interacted with people in wheelchairs,” he said. “It's also the first time that . . . the differences with a wheelchair actually mattered to me.”
The class is taught by William Valencia, a Marine and Army sergeant turned dance instructor. He's one of almost 20 instructors nationwide who have a teaching certification from the Pennsylvania-based nonprofit American DanceWheels Foundation, and the only certified instructor on the West Coast. The foundation promotes and provides training in wheelchair ballroom dancing.
To understand what it's like to use a wheelchair, Valencia got into one for his cross-country return flight from training. He described the experience as “humbling.”
“People kind of ignore you,” Valencia said. “People look at you with sorrow. You could get to the front of the line, and people help you, but there's no eye contact.”
Melinda Kremer, executive director of American DanceWheels, said the dance classes are about more than fancy floor moves.
“For me, this is about society changing and the potential to create new alliances with a group of people who are misunderstood,” she said.
The greater visibility of people with disabilities has helped boost understanding and interest in wheelchair dancing, she said. There was Heather Mills' appearance on the TV show “Dancing with the Stars” a couple of years ago. The former model has a prosthetic leg. And a recent MTV series called “How's Your News?” followed people with disabilities as they traveled the country.
Kremer said her nonprofit receives about 40 inquiries a month from people interested in learning, teaching and watching wheelchair ballroom dance. That matches the number of calls that her group got in its entire first year in 2004.
Tierrasanta resident Beverly Weurding, 65, who has a form of muscular dystrophy, teamed up with Liz Clarno, a recreation therapist at Sharp Grossmont, nearly two years ago with the goal of bringing wheelchair dance to San Diego. Weurding struggled to find an instructor until she met Valencia, who has been teaching dance for 27 years in Mission Hills and before that, in Little Italy and upstate New York.
Clarno received an $800 grant from the Grossmont Hospital Foundation, a nonprofit, philanthropic arm of Sharp Grossmont Hospital, for the current class and for a second session planned for later this year. Weurding helped form an affiliate of DanceWheels Foundation to promote wheelchair dancing locally.
Alisa Shuman, 52, of Santee said the class has opened up a new world. She has learned to formally dance for the first time and enjoys showing that people in wheelchairs can do “what everybody else can do.”
“We're really not looking for special treatment,” said Shuman, who is paraplegic. “We want equal treatment. We want people to address us like they would everybody else.”
One recent weekday afternoon, Valencia led a group of 10 – five in wheelchairs, five not – in a little lesson in the cha-cha.
Valencia moved slowly, starting with the simplest steps and progressing from there. He stopped when it appeared a student was off track.
Hands clasped, the pairs faced each other and tried to move as one to the rhythm. Some seated dancers needed more help from their partners, while others rolled the wheelchairs on their own.
The moves that Valencia teaches are much the same as traditional ballroom dance but more physically demanding. For the able-bodied dancers, abdominal and back strength is important for moving their partners, who are positioned at a much lower angle than standing partners.
For wheelchair dancers, upper-body strength is important, said Rosalie Cardenas, 59, of Shelltown.
“It's not easy,” Cardenas said. “I'll tell you, it's work.”
Cardenas, who has for years called herself a “salsera” because of her passion for salsa and Latin music, danced all her life until becoming paralyzed from the waist down two years ago. Cardenas, a cancer survivor, said the class has changed her life.
“It really took me out of the sadness” after the paralysis, she said. “Ever since I started dancing and socializing with other people, that really motivated me, gave me confidence and the desire to share this with other people.”
David Juare, 60, of Encanto was paralyzed from the waist down in a car crash at age 13. He said he hadn't danced in a group setting in a wheelchair in 40 years. During a recent class, Juare listened closely as Valencia coached him to straighten and extend his arms.
“I'm finding rhythms I didn't know I had,” Juare said, smiling.
His partner, Judy Nichols, 72, joined the class with her husband, Jack, 77. The Alpine couple are traditional ballroom dancers. During his first class, Jack Nichols found himself overcorrecting and taking bigger steps.
“I had no idea what this would be like,” Jack Nichols said later. “The basic dance steps are there, but of course more cumbersome.”
Nichols said he and his wife appreciate the chance to connect with their wheelchair partners.
“We are helping other people have some of the same enjoyments we have,” he said.
Learning to dance alongside able-bodied partners has brought the wheelchair-users a sense of confidence and equality that they say is sometimes missing in their lives.
Weurding said that when her muscular dystrophy started progressing to the point that she needed a wheelchair, she felt an ache in her stomach because she “became the invisible person around people.” Her fear that nobody would talk to her kept her from social gatherings, and for a year, she mostly stayed in.
“It was wheelchair dancing that pulled me up and over this isolation from society,” she said.
Once she put her energies into creating the wheelchair dancing program, Weurding said, “Life made a dramatic change for me.”
Staff librarian Michelle Gilchrist contributed to this report.
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