Dancer in the light

When I was 10 years old, I was a dancer, a real dancer. The New Orleans Cerebral Palsy Center decided to experiment with dancing as a therapeutic tool, and I was selected to be the test subject. So every Saturday for about 2 months I went downtown to the Arthur Murray dance studio to learn how to dance the waltz, the cha – cha, and the tango (!) with my instructor. I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt like I was good at it, the way confident 10 year-olds feel good at everything they do. Then, one Saturday afternoon I got all dressed up, went to the studio, and we went through our now-routine moves, only this time we did so before a ballroom full of people – doctors, physical therapists, and a TV crew, which was there to broadcast on the Saturday evening news the promising potential of dance therapy as a fun alternative to rigorous (and exhausting) physical therapy for increasing flexibility (and decreasing spasticity).  I remember the camera lights; I remember the vastness of the ballroom dance floor fringed with dressed up adults; I remember just how easy it was and knowing that I was doing everything right, spinning around like a real dancer. On that afternoon, I was a Star.