From the intro to a story in
The Philadelphia Inquirer Sept. 28:
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. (They are pictured dancing.)
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.
From the intro to a story in The Philadelphia Inquirer Sept. 28: