Watching five-year-old Maggie Slessor dance is a wonderful sight. If she doesn’t charm you with her smile, then her grace in DanceCo’s ballet studio surely will. She has an older teenaged dance mentor to guide her, hold her and steady her as her little legs perform pliĂ©s and pirouettes as best as they can.
It doesn’t matter to her that she has cerebral palsy. The fact is that she has a dream and it’s because of it that the special program called Ballerina Dreams even exists. Slessor was selected to be a poster girl for Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month for bringing such light into the world for her and the dozens of other children with disabilities. The annual campaign each May is sponsored by the Cerebral Palsy Association of Alberta (CPAA) as a way of recognizing people in the community who have inspired others either through their attitudes, words, deeds or dreams.
Mother Doreen remembered what it was like when her daughter was three and all of her siblings were in other dance programs.
“She used to watch their classes and she’d always say, ‘I want to dance just like them.’ We could never figure out how. We didn’t want to say no and we didn’t want to say yes at the same time.”
That’s when she learned about this program going on in the United States and took the idea to the CPAA. “I said, ‘Can we start this? How can we do this?’ They said, ‘Let’s see what we can do but we don’t have an instructor, we don’t have a studio.’”
That was all it took for the ball to start rolling. She said that the people at DanceCo were very accommodating from the very beginning and the now established program has only grown since. There are now more than 30 dancers enrolled and each weekly class is filled with magical moments, some that are so touching that they could break your heart.
Other heroes of the campaign include Jessie Powers for his outstanding contributions in volunteering, University of Alberta professor Heidi Janz for her indomitable spirit and Calgary city councillor Greg McMeekin for advocating on behalf of those with disabilities. Apart from the posters, Slessor and the others are featured on other promotional materials including bookmarks that have been distributed to various local schools and the St. Albert Public Library. More information on the association and the campaign can be discovered at www.cpalberta.com.
