Teaching disabled dancers to kick up their wheels

Like many married couples looking for fun, Melinda and Stuart Kremer took ballroom dance lessons. Eventually their teenage daughter, Jenna, got the dancing bug.

Never mind that she used a wheelchair.

"It was one of the really exciting things she did in her life," said Melinda Kremer, who is as tiny as a young gymnast and lives in Bala Cynwyd. "It was a passion."

Today, Melinda Kremer is just as fervent about teaching others in wheelchairs to samba, cha-cha and hustle. Four years ago, she cofounded American DanceWheels Foundation with Ray Leight, a former dancing-is-for-sissies kind of guy who became paraplegic after a motorcycle accident in 1991.

It was Jenna who brought them together about nine years ago. Leight had gone to the Schuylkill to row and saw Jenna with her dad, struggling to use a hand-cranked bicycle. Never shy about saying hello, he offered to help.

He became friends with the family. One day, Stuart Kremer invited him to a dance class. The instructor asked why Leight wasn't dancing.

"I thought she was visually disabled and couldn't see I was in a wheelchair," said Leight, who is funny and ambitious and believes he can do anything that an able-bodied person can do.

After she taught him a few moves, he and Melinda Kremer figured ballroom dancing was easily adaptable to wheelchairs. What they didn't know then was that it was already popular in Europe and Asia - 4,000 wheelchair users competed in the first international championship in Sweden in 1997 - and is now a Paralympic sport.

They came up with their own syllabus and spent hours working out the routines. Ballroom dance is about passion and personality. The duo had enough of both to win the first and only national wheelchair competition in the United States in 2002.

There are others teaching wheelchair ballroom around the country, but none with a written format or who have reached as many people as DanceWheels, according to Kremer. The group gives lessons at Crystal DanceSport in New Castle, Del., the Atrium Dance Studio in Pennsauken, and soon in Manayunk. They also teach at Widener Memorial School for disabled children in Philadelphia and at the University of Delaware, and have trained dance teachers throughout the country.

But their biggest coup came last week when - hold your breath -

Dancing With the Stars

called to inquire about a wheelchair competition. No one knows what, if anything, will come of it, but Kremer and Leight are keeping their fingers crossed.

No wonder Leight, who hopes to compete in the world championship next year in Poland, says learning to dance was "a turning point in my life."

It was for Jenna, too, who died last year at age 22 of a degenerative genetic disorder. Dancing helped her maintain social ties after her wheelchair "became a liability" and kids stopped inviting her places, said her mother.

"She was really into it," said Kremer, who grew up in the area and trained as a singer. "She felt it was her thing."

She believes wheelchair dancing is one of the few activities that able-bodied people and those with disabilities can do together.

"Our goal is for you to go to a wedding and see people with disabilities dancing and not sitting at their table," said Kremer, who also has a grown son.

At a recent class at Crystal DanceSport, Kremer taught six couples the rumba, cha-cha and waltz. The man always leads, whether seated or dancing, which is the American style as opposed to the stricter international style, which requires the able-bodied partner to lead.

Moving a chair to the exact step of a partner requires precision and coordination. If the standing dancer takes a two-foot stride, the person in the chair has to give a two-foot push.

It's hard to imagine how they pull it off without causing a two-wheeled pile up. But when the couples are in sync, it is as joyful and romantic as ballroom was meant to be and no harder than learning to dance with two feet.

"You can have able-bodied people who are idiots and can't dance and you can have disabled people who are idiots and can't dance," said Leight, 37, who lives in Carneys Point, and is building an accessible house, which he is documenting in a how-to video that he hopes to market.

Instead of stepping on toes, wheelchair dancers roll over them.

That wasn't a worry for Kenn Perry, who led Kremer in a heart-melting waltz. Fingers entwined in hers, he glided across the floor with astonishing fluidity and grace.

Perry, who had polio as a child, can do a lot of things - scuba diving, skiing, jujitsu - but he never envisioned ballroom dancing.

"There's this whole thing that folks in chairs aren't supposed to be able to dance," said the 53-year-old grants manager. "I do like having folks without disabilities questioning their belief systems."

He admits he stunk until he learned to meld the apparatus to his body.

"It's the same challenge able-bodied people have with two feet," he said.

Perry goes to clubs about once a week. Women at first react with "Huh?" when he asks them to dance. Once they see him on the floor, they're eager to give it a whirl.

After the waltz, Kremer moved onto the rumba, which she said was important to learn because it was easy and always required in competition.

"And it's hot," Perry shouted out.

Kremer and Leight then burned up the floor with their own rendition, doing lifts and popping wheelies for extra drama.

Dancers without partners are paired with volunteers. But many couples can't wait to hear the swell of the music and sweep their partners across the floor.

Dan and Risa Marchetti of Glassboro were sorry to give up dancing after Risa started using a power chair because of her multiple sclerosis.

At weddings, the couple, who loves disco, felt grounded. "We never knew what to do," said Risa, a 59 year-old rock musician who has studied with Kremer for two years.

Dancing has made her less self-conscious about her chair and improved her posture and appearance. Her husband likes it so much that he goes to class even if she can't make it.

Best of all, after 36 years of marriage it has brought the couple closer together.

"We look into each other's eyes," said Dan, 67.

And when they go to weddings, they're the first ones on the floor.

To see a video of wheelchair ballroom, go to

http://go.philly.com/dance