Alana Wallace, who lives with post-polio syndrome and uses a manual wheelchair, has always been a professional artist. But in 1995, at age 45, she witnessed an artistic performance that changed her life. The Cleveland Ballet Dancing Wheels, now called the "Dancing Wheels," a professional physically integrated dance company, showed Alana that dance COULD be an option for people with disabilities to participate as full, equal, and legitimate participants without compromising the art.

After seeing the performance, Alana contacted the Cleveland Ballet Dancing Wheels and signed up to attend one of its summer camps. Though she left there discouraged because the particular movement techniques did not work well for her, she met people who encouraged her to return to Chicago and enlist professional dancers to experiment with her individual body movements. Alana did this, successfully, and Dance Detour was incorporated in 1996 with the company motto of "Everyone Can Dance."

Read the entire column at: http://www.ncpad.org/518/2435/Community~Voice~~Everyone~Can~Dance.