I really like to post inspirational stories when I can. I think I found another one. Whenever your feeling down, or need to see someone who is overcoming odds come back to read this one.
I want to wish these kids much luck in what they are doing and hope that they are finding this helpful to cope with their lives.
A Miracle helped a local dance team qualify for a national competition Sunday.
He is Tim Miracle, a choreographer and owner of Miracle Dance Theatre in Delhi Township. His team of 15 young women and one young man, called the Miracle Dance Theatre All-Stars, will compete against troupes from around the country and Russia at the Mason High School Auditorium.
Here's another miracle: Only half of the Delhi dancers are able to use their legs.
Eight of the girls and young women, ages 6 to 21, suffer from spina bifida or spinal cord injuries. They use wheelchairs to perform. The rest of the team are able-bodied dancers, or "shadows," who push the wheelchair dancers around stage.
They qualified for the nationals in March by scoring high in a regional competition in Mason, evoking thunderous applause and wells of tears from the audience and fellow dancers.
The MDT All-Stars were the only dancers in wheelchairs in the spring contest; they will be the only ones rolling on stage Sunday.
"Just because we're in a wheelchair doesn't mean we can't dance," says Taylor Hlebak, 14, of College Hill, who has been training at the Delhi studio since she was 5. "It's still art. It's still performing. We're all equal."
She and others might never have experienced the expression of dance if Miracle had said "no" when he opened his studio in 1993. That's when Mary Jo Schmiade of Independence called to ask if Miracle would teach her daughter, Jill, who was then 5. Jill was born with spina bifida. Now 19, she'll dance Sunday.
"Other little girls were taking ballet lessons then," Mary Jo Schmiade says. "How could we tell her there's no dance class for you?"
Several other dance studios told Schmiade they couldn't accommodate disabled students, but Miracle agreed to do a separate class for Jill and other wheelchair dancers. He made it clear to the parents, though, that he had no experience teaching dance to disabled children.
"I had seen wheelchair dancers perform with the Cleveland Ballet," says Miracle, 42, of Delhi Township who studied musical theater at Wright State University. "I said I had no idea how to do it, but I'd give it a shot."
He learned by trial and error, sometimes sitting in a wheelchair or standing in as a shadow dancer to choreograph stage moves. Miracle's philosophy evolved to making the wheelchair dancers and shadows perform as a unit.
While pushing the chairs around stage, the shadows also perform steps. The wheelchair dancers express themselves with their arms, hands, eyes and faces.
"We don't try to tug at anyone's heart strings," says Miracle. "I want them to look just the same as any dancers."
Vanessa Clayton, 17, of Delhi Township, who has been performing as a shadow for five years, just doesn't see the disabled dancers as being in wheelchairs.
"The hardest part is not letting them roll over our toes," she jokes.
"Or run into each other," adds Emily Minges, 17, of Westwood, another shadow.
The shadow dancers, who commit to extra practice to be members of the team, are more impressed with the dedication and effort of their disabled counterparts.
"To move around like that, even to lift their arms like that is hard for them," says Hannah Witte, 16, of Westwood.
Sometimes backstage, the dancers take intravenous medications. One performed with her broken leg in a splint.
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