From The St. Petersburg Times in Florida Dec. 6:The girl in the white flowing dress stands in the middle of the stage, waiting for her wings. Naomi Houston (pictured) is 16, one of the main ballerinas in this year's Black Nativity playing at the Palladium Theater tonight and Sunday.
As the white wings are handed out, a fellow dancer comes up to her and points to a hot pink hearing aid nestled in her ear.
"Where's the purple one?" the friend asks.
Naomi is almost completely deaf. She wears hearing aids in both ears, but the purple one died two weeks ago.
It doesn't matter. Sometimes she prefers not to hear the music at all.
Hundreds of deaf dancers take to stages across the country. Oscar-winning actress Marlee Matlin, who is deaf, surprised everyone with her prowess on the dance floor in Dancing with the Stars earlier this year. Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a school for the hearing-impaired, has its own dance troupe.
But how does one dance to music when you can't really hear it?
Matlin watched her dance partner for rhythm and cues. Naomi, a junior at Gibbs High School, says she feels the music in the floor and counts her steps. "Basically I rely on the vibration of the music," she says. "I might be one count or two counts behind so I'm always watching someone for the count."
Often she relies on her sister, Natalie, 14, for help. And sometimes, she can hear the music, but it arrives a little late.
"Basically when I hear something, it takes my mind a while to process what I heard," she says.Her instructor, Paulette Walker Johnson, owner of Soulful Arts Dance Academy, said Naomi has a keen ability to pick up precise movements and put her own emotion into it. Johnson was surprised to learn that Naomi dances by listening for the beat in the floor.
"You know what? I never asked the question," says Johnson, who is putting on Black Nativity this weekend. "I never wanted her to feel like she was different from everyone else."
Naomi was 2 when her parents noticed she wasn't speaking as fast as her sisters. So they took her to a doctor, who asked them to talk to her without making any motions. When they did, she just sat there.
Naomi is severely deaf in both ears. A birth defect cost her 85 percent of her hearing, said her father, Rickey Houston, pastor of Bethel Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church in St. Petersburg.
But as Naomi grew older, her parents noticed she seemed to have an aptitude for following music — if it was loud enough and she could hear it with her hearing aids.
She could play a song on the piano without reading music. She danced with grace and elegance, like she could hear the music, even though most of the time she couldn't.
"I kept thinking, 'God this is your child,' " says her mother, Helen Houston, '"what in the world are you going to do with her?' "
Naomi's mother walks in the door from work. A pamphlet from a prestigious dance school has arrived in the mail. She hides it playfully from Naomi, who tries to get it
from her.
"Mom, can I please see it," Naomi pleads.
"In a minute," Mrs. Houston replies.
Naomi has auditioned for several summer programs at a handful of dance schools and was accepted. But her parents can't afford to send her.
"We're looking for scholarships," says Mrs. Houston. "It's several thousand dollars."
Naomi, a slender girl with doe-like eyes, wants to be a ballet dancer, but she wonders if one with a hearing aid can make it.
Still, she says she doesn't mind being deaf. In fact, she embraces it because it makes her different. And sometimes she can shut out everyone just by taking out her hearing aids.
"But it's hard to find my place in this world," she says. "I'm not part of the hearing world, and I'm not part of the deaf world. Sometimes, I don't know what side to go to."
Next year, she will blend both. For her senior dance project at Gibbs, she plans to put together a group of hearing dancers and make them dance without any music at all.
