The Rockettes collaborate with dance team for people with disabilities: ‘Dance isn’t just for people that have the use of their legs’
For decades, people have watched in awe as the perfectly synchronized Rockettes performed at New York City’s Radio City Musical Hall. But to be able to actually dance alongside the Rockettes? That would be a dream come true for many.
For one special day, that dream became a reality for both the Rollettes, a dance group for people with disabilities, and for kids with disabilities from the Garden of Dreams Foundation, an organization that helps children facing obstacles.
All three groups teamed up to do a dance class together, sharing their signature dance moves and lots of smiles.
“The Rollettes is a wheelchair dance team based in Los Angeles, and our mission is to empower women with disabilities to live boundlessly and shift perspective through dance,” Rollettes dancer Chelsie Hill tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “I was a competitive dancer before I became injured, and this was all I knew. And so going into a new world, I kind of wanted to bring a little piece of me with it.”
The wheelchair dance team was thrilled to dance with the Rockettes. “When the Rollettes first found out that we were going to New York to meet the Rockettes, we never thought this would ever happen,” says Hill. “To be able to dance alongside the Rockettes, it’s a dream come true for all of us. Dance isn’t just for people that have the use of their legs, but for everyone and anyone.”
Hill says that a lot of dance organizations haven’t “dabbled into disability and dance.” But she says that’s now starting to change. “I feel like recently a lot of organizations are really getting behind dancing with disabilities. You’re connecting the two worlds and bringing them together.”
One Rockettes dancer, Maile Makaafi, shares with Yahoo Lifestyle that, at first, she wasn’t sure how the collaboration between the Rockettes and the Rollettes wheelchair dancers would work, but says that “Everything came together at the end of the day, and it was so much fun doing their choreography and seeing them do ours.”
Mindy Moeller, another dancer with the Rockettes, adds, “Having the Rollettes coming all the way from Los Angeles, teaching them [and] them teaching us choreography that they have, and also having the Garden of Dreams kids be a part of it as well, it’s just by far one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had the opportunity to do.”
As Hill points out, “Dance is dance, whether you’re walking or you’re rolling. Everyone can dance. And to be able to give someone that platform, despite whatever ‘limitations’ people think they have, you give someone a smile and that will last forever.”
If watching the Rockettes in action makes you wish you could see them onstage, there’s some good news: Due to high demand, Madison Square Garden announced that it will be extending the 2018 Christmas Spectacular starring the Radio City Rockettes, and presented by Chase, through Jan. 6, 2019. So you’re in luck if you were hoping to see the show, but couldn’t make it to New York City until after the holidays.
Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:
5 homes and neighborhoods that go all out on Christmas decorations
She was given a 2 percent chance to survive. Now, as a double amputee, Amy Purdy thrives
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