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For Carol With Love
By Lea Marshall
How a community rallied behind a Virginia dance
teacher struck with MS
 Carol
Crawford Smith has long been generous with her artistry,
first as a soloist with Dance Theatre of Harlem and now at
her dance studio in Blacksburg, VA. Lately she's been on the
receiving end of her community's generosity, and the
experience has opened new doors in her thinking and her
life.
In 2006 Crawford Smith was featured on
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,
after community support resulted in her being selected by
the TV show's producers for a home and studio renovation.
From such an unexpected return on her investment in the
field of dance, Crawford Smith found that motivation comes
in many forms. She had engendered in her community not only
a love of dance, but love and faith in herself as its
representative.
As a student, Crawford Smith found motivation in music.
"When I heard a beat, I naturally wanted to move to it," she
says, "and the encouragement I received from my friends
motivated me to do more." She realized early on the effect
that her dancing had on others. "I noticed that I was an
inspiration to my peers when I was still in high school.
Back in my hometown [of Poughkeepsie, NY], the fact that I
was dancing ballet was foreign to many young ladies my age.
I remember doing a simple combination, like a glissade-jeté,
glissade-jeté in my living room, and my cousin, who did not
study ballet, started doing the steps. She was obviously
inspired by what I was doing and wanted to try it."
Performing as a soloist with Dance Theatre of Harlem for 10
years amplified Crawford Smith's experience of dance as a
potent creative force in people's lives. "Once I started
performing nationally and around the world, having young
members from the audience wait at the backstage door to get
autographs, and seeing their enthusiasm even if they didn't
speak the language, made it clear that they were inspired by
the performance." She recalls a 1988 performance in Tblisi,
Georgia, in the former Soviet Union, that more than sold
out. "People were sitting in the aisles--there was no room to
walk. That was something I had never experienced before in
all my years of dancing--that the house would sell out that
much."
Crawford Smith opened her own studio, The Center of Dance,
in 1994 and established a resident performing company,
UJIMA, in 1996. Even as some of her students pursued
preprofessional and professional careers with the likes of
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Joffrey Ballet,
Crawford Smith found and gave motivation in teaching dancers
of all levels. Those who liked dance but who were not
necessarily advanced in it sought to do better through her
encouragement and instruction. Others she taught returned to
dance after gaps of many years.
In 2000, however, Crawford Smith's dance story was
completely rewritten by a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.
At first she was saddened at the thought of no longer being
able to dance or teach and of the challenges that physical
debilitation would bring to the life she had built for
herself and her two sons, now 12 and 14.
By 2003 she was no longer able to demonstrate fully when
teaching, but Crawford Smith persevered. She retained enough
control in her upper body to demonstrate épaulement and port
de bras, and she discovered an understanding of how much
dance lives in her heart and mind as well as her body. "It
might sound very corny or cliché, but dance is my life, and
I absolutely love to be in a dance environment," she says.
"I thought I wouldn't like it once I wasn't physically doing
it, since I love the physicality of it. But I realize that I
have a gift and interest in still teaching it and
articulating it through my words."
Even as she found her way through a radically altered
physical landscape, Crawford Smith remained a strong force
in Blacksburg. "I have always been a public person in my
community," she says. "Even before the
Extreme Makeover
exposure, I had always been performing or giving lectures.
As I started to show physical debilitation, I continued to
teach and to be actively involved in dance as much as I
possibly could, and it continues now. People saw that
through my physical challenges, I continued to persevere."
It wasn't long before such perseverance generated an energy
all its own.
"I've always given freely of my time, my energy, my creative
resources. And I never expected anything back," says
Crawford Smith. But whether they remark on it or not, she
adds, "people see what's going on." Suddenly, she found,
those who appreciated her efforts wanted to give something
back to her.
It came in the form of renovations that made her
second-floor studio wheelchair accessible, and of a
completely new house (with wide doors and hallways, and no
stairs) built on the site of her old house, which was
demolished.
It was the mother of one of Crawford Smith's
students who started the momentum. She videotaped one of the
dance teacher's classes and secretly asked other parents to
write letters in support of Crawford Smith being awarded an
"Oprah's Wildest Dream," a program of
The Oprah Winfrey Show
that fulfills the "wildest dreams" of people in need.
When that did not pan out, another friend joined with the
first and suggested that
Extreme Makeover
might better match Crawford Smith's needs. When they
approached her about applying, she resisted, leery of the
publicity. But the goodwill of her friends and the
community's energy in attempting to make the "Oprah's
Wildest Dream" happen convinced her to get over herself.
People in the community, she says, "knew what I had done for
their children, and they wanted to help me because they saw
that I was struggling. And they saw this as a way to give
back to me." By winning a spot on
Extreme Makeover,
she says, "I was receiving in an even bigger way than they
initially hoped."
When Crawford Smith opened her studio, she wanted to make a
living, but she knew she'd never get rich. "Dancers do not
get paid much. We do it for love and for passion.
Consciously or unconsciously, early on I made the decision
to do this because I love it, and I want other people to
experience that love. So the reward," she says, "the
accumulation of the credit, came back in this makeover, in
this house. This [renovation] is something I could not have
done on my own. But the people who galvanized together to
make it happen felt, from my story and whether they knew me
or not, that I deserved it."
Reinvigorated by the outflow of support, the school owner
has found that the best way she can give back is to keep
doing the work she loves. Since the renovation she has
continued to teach, collaborate with regional organizations,
and offer her studio as a community resource. In 2006, for
example, she hosted a master class taught by members of the
Philadelphia-based company Philadanco, in partnership with
the Jefferson Center in Roanoke, which presented a
performance by the company and with whom she has an ongoing
collaborative relationship.
"I'm invigorated to continue providing and supporting venues
through which people can enjoy the art form," she says.
"When I first opened the studio I taught 19 classes a week,
and right now I'm teaching 4 classes a week. Just knowing
the studio is operating, and that I have my hands in that
operation, is very satisfactory to me. Because I know people
are studying and learning and honing their passion for the
art form."
Though the physical challenges of MS have limited her
teaching, Crawford Smith's approach to it has evolved in new
ways. Usually, when a teacher demonstrates, her movement
provides a model for students to emulate. But when she
speaks, she can conjure images and ideas in her students' minds that endure and help them shape their dancing over
time. Because her movement is limited, Crawford Smith has
discovered how well she can now articulate dance through her
words and expressions, motivating her students verbally as
well as by her example of perseverance.
She has also found a new creative outlet for her unique
perspective on two fields--dance and medicine. "I'm writing
about dance," she says. "I'm currently writing a chapter for
an MS journal about how I'm able to continue doing dance
cognitively." In analyzing this new understanding and her
enjoyment of writing, she says, "I'm finding a whole other
creative side of me that is coming out."
Though she serves, she says, as "a voice of inspiration" for
the MS community, Crawford Smith has no desire to become an
official spokesperson. "I'm happy to be invited to speak at
an event. I will give them my background as a professional
dancer and tell them the experiences I've had, and they see
that I use a wheelchair, that I'm a dancer who's not
physically dancing at this time. And I think in and of
itself that is an inspiration. Even if you go through
something physically that prevents you from doing what you
love, you can still keep going," she says. "If not in that
capacity, in some other capacity. You can still keep
pursuing your passion."
Editor's note: At press time,
Mental Sharpening Stones: Manage the Cognitive Challenges of
Multiple
Sclerosis,
by Jeffrey Gingold, was scheduled for release in late spring
2008. In "Dance of Life: Transformations to Maintaining
Strength, Balance, and Focus," Crawford Smith writes about
performing, teaching, and how her studio renovation has
helped her continue to have a life in dance.
Above photo caption: Carol Crawford Smith teaching in her
studio. Photo by Christina O'Connor
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