It was August 3rd of 1991.
It was a night that horrifically changed my life.
I do remember, um, asking the policeman to kill me.
I had a motorcycle laying on me, smelling my skin burning.
I knew I was pretty traumatically messed up. I could see parts of
my back sticking out.
I remember passing out and bits and pieces.
Um,
I remember seeing the lights in the hallway flicking as
they were rushing the gurney into the emergency room and
the doctors, um, basically refusing to touch me and
telling them to get a medevac and put me in a helicopter to
get me to a trauma center later on to come to find out.
I broke my back in three places. I broke my neck in one.
I punctured a lung. I collapsed lung, I ruptured an artery.
I had blood in my heart. I ripped off my right kneecap.
I ripped off extensive skin on my arms and shoulders.
I was pretty bad off. I would say I,
I needed more than a band aid that night. So, um,
I have some,
you're 20 years old and you're told that you're
never gonna pee again, normal, you're never gonna poop again. Normal.
You're not gonna have sex.
You think you have your whole life ahead of you. And
the next thing you know, you've got tubes sticking out of your body and
you've got doctors coming in telling you that they know
how you feel and you know how I feel.
Let me take a baseball bat and
beat the crap out of you and break your back and let you really know how I feel.
I take them to car shows. They win awards
mcgee Rehabilitation said we have to discharge him. Where does he go?
And my father said, I don't care where he goes.
I got a cab and I went to a Red Roof Inn.
I don't think I've ever cried like I cried that night or felt more alone.
I spent six months there and it was
times that I felt like maybe life wasn't worth being a part of.
But you know what?
I woke up one day and I realized that there's a lot of able-bodied people out there.
I wouldn't wanna be.
And
that led me to
getting my ass in gear and start uh being a part of society.
All right. So we're gonna learn a new move
crossover break to our right.
We're going to do a crossover break to our
left.
I was not a dancer
for many years after being in a wheelchair, I was out with Stewart.
And uh he said,
I have to go to a ballroom dance lesson. Would you like to go?
And I said, I would love to bang as I shoot myself in the head.
But I went because friends do things for friends.
We went to the lesson
and the dance teacher looked at me and she said, why aren't you dancing?
And I looked at her and said,
are you visually challenged and mentally challenged lady?
I am in a wheelchair
and she said, no reason.
And we did a viennese waltz for six months.
And from that, we have written curriculum
and it is exactly like able-bodied dance curriculum
and it is adapted
to work. So that if you've had dance training anywhere in the world,
you can dance with me.
It's the only thing a man will ever lead in his life. So ladies, let us lead.
All
right.
So
when I first learned about wheelchair dancing,
I was then as an independent teacher here in Delaware
one day, I'm in the studio
and the gentleman that I was working for comes over to me and says, oh,
I want you to meet somebody.
This is Ray
and
you're going to dance with him.
And I turned to him and went
excuse me,
trial and error. A couple of broken toes later, and Ray and I were dancing,
everything that I knew about dancing was with a standing partner.
And as a competing professional,
you're trained to do things very up upright very big.
And with an individual in a wheelchair,
your center has dropped way down to your waist level.
So everything that I knew about dancing was essentially thrown out the window.
Then it forced me to take all of my training for 19 years and go wow,
all this is, is body movement.
I can move forward, I can move back.
But what can I do to take my knowledge and make somebody in a wheelchair do this,
try and behave
for
like 10 seconds.
A li
and I started dancing and uh I actually had to
force the studio to do it. They didn't want to take wheelchair
dancing. Um
I showed up and said, you're gonna do it. That's all there is to it and
sat on his front doorstep until we made him and
I taught her some of the moves that I knew.
And then we started creating stuff and the juices flew
quick,
slow,
quick,
quick, slow.
I learned how to dance when I was an undergraduate at Allentown College
to be able to go out socially with a lot of the girls there.
I needed to be able to keep up with them.
When you're in a club setting.
You don't have that much space to really dance and
a wheelchair needs a lot of space to dance in.
So being able to just move a little bit here and there,
I really can't show off my dance and really do
that in a social setting versus a ballroom setting.
So I learned how to dance close if I needed to, with a partner,
how to dance further away.
If I had a lot of space and use that space if I can.
When I first started dancing,
I knew the chair was there. I felt the chair was there.
I was a little intimidated by it,
but I was afraid I was gonna crash into it.
Then as I started getting more experience,
the chair started blending in
with my dancing. And now it's like
I don't even, I'm not even afraid that I'm going to crash into the chair anymore.
I just go,
I was ignorant to folks that were less able folks
that were visually impaired folks that were hearing impaired,
maybe just pick the pace up to open a door or something.
But other than that, I don't know you, you scare me, leave me alone.
Then one day I woke up looking at ceiling tiles in Jefferson Hospital with
doctors telling me I'd never move my arms or have my legs again.
So
I kind of was thrown into the world
and
I can't say that it's the worst thing that's
ever happened to me because I help people.
Now,
my name is Carrie Barber. I'm from Delaware.
I started dancing
about five years ago.
I like the way my body could move in ways that I never thought it could move
quick.
Center,
beautiful,
awesome
guys that looks great being disabled.
You're always told, well, your body's probably not gonna be able to do.
This body's not gonna be able to do that.
Uh, I was, I,
I liked that I could actually do what people said that I probably couldn't,
you'll find that wheelchair dancing is therapeutic.
Individuals who may have a spinal cord injury don't
always have the ability to sit up straight.
They fight to keep their balance.
So this is going to strengthen their balance issues.
It's gonna strengthen their spinal cord,
their abs,
it also helps with the chair. Use,
they come into the studio and they're running into stuff.
But within 3 to 6 weeks, they use their chair better.
They, they figure out the way to navigate and use the chair more proficiently.
Which to me is exciting
because I see the progress of them being able to navigate through society easier,
ready. This
is not dancing.
No, OK. I'm not moving. I'm just stationary so I can go forward
backwards,
right or left. This is my step to the side,
which doesn't work, right? Doesn't work very well. What happens
as I move side,
the chair has to create some kind of movement. So there is a timing issue.
You have chair changes and he rotates so that we can do another movement.
Lisa as just about at the right height
where I can keep connection in her hand and she can still do an underarm turn
if Lisa was a little taller or had bigger heels on
I will or I was shorter. We would have to break connection
and then reconnect because
she's height is not allowing me to stay connected like we are now.
So there are certain things that have limitations.
But we have watched two able bodies perform the art of ballroom dancing
and have adapted as best as possible to allow the
move to stay in its true form and stay within
the world of ballroom dancing.
Going to raise school has definitely helped me become a better dancer
when it comes to understanding the interaction with a single dance partner,
being able to lead a partner in a dance routine
just by using my hands. Paul stop. It's because two things. Look,
when you take her here, switch her hand to here,
lift it
and she will go right under and watch with Barb and I,
in many of the dances I've done in the past, it was always very choreographed.
You had a certain step. Everybody knew what they're doing
versus here in a ballroom setting
only by my hands and my wheel work. Am I telling my female stand up dance partner?
This is where you're going next
just by my hand. She knows I'm about to do a spin with her.
She sees my hand coming up and she knows she's going this way
and then back over like this
and my hand just lead her around
into a spin.
Sometimes when we do competitions or shows we have choreographed routines.
Sometimes if he forgets it,
I don't let him lead and I back lead the routine
and there's plenty of times. I'm like, wait a minute. Where the heck are you going?
Oh, I was supposed to take you someplace else. I'm sorry. You're like, what?
Exactly.
That's what I end up with half the time
when you do able-bodied dancing competitions, you're doing it for yourself.
And I feel like now that I'm dancing and I'm a part of this group,
I'm sharing so much with my partner and with other people that see us dance.
That's
awesome.
That's the first dance we did,
we did a hustle together. That was our first dance.
Why do I care so much about wheelchair dancing?
I see the benefit of how it breaks down the social
barriers of how people portray those who are less able.
I think that it gives an in for the person who is less able to interact with an able body
world and it gives the able body world the courage
to go up to somebody who is less able.
I saw Ray across the room
just like some enchanted evening
and the music began and no one stood up to dance
and I stood up and I walked straight for Ray
and he kind of wasn't paying attention and then he saw me coming closer and closer.
I put my hand out and he smiled and I smiled
and we went out on the dance floor,
we danced and it was a wonderful experience.