When a dancer’s movements involve a wheelchair
‘Transforming Spaces’ is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places.
When Chelsie Hill dances in her wheelchair, her face tells you everything. She is absorbed in the moment offstage, in the emotions she conveys, in her power to hold the audience. Her wheelchair is an intrinsic part of her silhouette, a silhouette that she manipulates with force.
Ms. Hill, 27, is the founder of the Rollsa dance team for women who use wheelchairs, founded in 2012. They perform across the country and organize an annual empowerment weekend in Los Angeles for women with disabilities, the Rollettes experience. In late July, the event drew 250 women and children from 14 countries to the Sheraton Gateway Los Angeles Hotel for dance classes, showcases and seminars.
More than a decade after she started with the Rollettes, Ms. Hill’s story has spread far beyond the group to include mentorship and education for anyone with a disability seeking community.
“She changed my life,” says Ali Stroker, the actress who made Broadway history in 2019 when she became the first performer to use a wheelchair and win a Tony Award. Ms. Stroker, one of Ms. Hill’s close friends, won the Best Actress Tony for her role as Ado Annie in the Broadway revival of the musical “Oklahoma!”
Ms. Stroker, who was paralyzed from the chest down after a car accident at age 2, said she never had friends growing up who also used chairs. Ms. Hill, she said, is changing lives by extending wheelchair users an invitation that goes beyond dance.
“Because of her, so many young girls who have recently been injured have had their lives changed,” Ms. Stroker said. “It’s more than dancing. You are part of this sisterhood, this family. How she can bring people together is out of this world.”
Nearly 14 years ago, Ms. Hill was a 17-year-old champion dancer. But one evening in February 2010, her life changed in ways she never imagined when a serious car accident left her with severe spinal injuries and the loss of movement in her lower body.
Ms. Hill has always felt compelled to share her story and view it as a warning. As a teenager who wanted to become a professional dancer, she was haunted by the decisions she made the night she got into a car with a drunk driver. A few weeks after the accident, she told her parents from a hospital bed that she wanted to organize an event to discuss it with her classmates.
“I loved helping teens understand that someone can go from walking to not walking after making a bad decision,” Ms. Hill said.
Growing up in Northern California’s Monterey County, Ms. Hill was characterized by a sense of security and belonging that she said made her feel invincible. She started competing in dance competitions when she was five.
“It’s hard to say how good a five-year-old is, but every year I would always win a trophy and make my family proud,” she said.
Being a hands-on, physical learner, she found it harder to focus on academics. Dance, she said, was her world and priority.
As a freshman, she had a ready-made group of friends on her popular high school dance team, The Breaker Girls. “There’s just something about dance when you’re on a team, you’re just so in tune with the people,” she said.
After Ms. Hill’s accident, it was with The Breaker Girls that she danced again for the first time. Her father, she said, collected wheelchairs from all over Northern California and brought them to a studio with her able-bodied dance team.
“They all sat in the chairs and I got to perform with them,” she said.
Carina Bernier, a close friend of Ms. Hill who was also part of the Breaker Girls, remembers that it was “really challenging to figure out, but so cool and so much fun.” Ms. Hill, she added, helped the group choreograph the routine that day.
But after the accident, Ms Hill remained in denial about her injury for a long time.
“I always thought I would be that miracle that gets up and walks again, like you see in the movies,” she said.
Still, she threw herself back into dance in the years after the accident and eventually came to accept the reality of her injuries. She began to understand that she had gone from someone who had no trouble adapting to someone who now had a visible difference.
“I felt like I was so alone in a way that I never had before,” she said.
Becoming a person with a disability and understanding herself as such radicalized Ms Hill, she said. Until her accident, as a white, healthy, middle-class young woman, she had not really understood or recognized the struggle for equality and the rights of the disabled.
“A lot of people don’t realize what’s happening in the world until it affects you,” she said, adding, “It’s made me a stronger person.” It has made me a critical thinker. It has made me an innovator. But it’s still hard, you know?
Reclaiming her story as a dancer and wheelchair user meant finding others like her. The first step was when she joined the cast of “Push Girls,” an unscripted reality TV show about a group of ambitious women who use wheelchairs in 2011, a year after her accident. The show aired for two seasons, from 2012 to 2013, on the Sundance channel.
“They became my role models,” she said of the women on the show. “They became the girls where I would be like, ‘How do I wear heels?’ How do I date? How do I get my seat into the car? How can I lead a normal life as a young girl with a disability?’ They all taught me how to do that.”
However, in some corners the show was criticized for its superficial treatment of people with disabilities. A critic from The New York Times wrote that the premiere episode fell into “You go, girl” mode and used “a tone that is subtly demeaning.”
But on a personal level, Ms. Hill learned from the show that she “had a thick skin at a very young age.” She enjoyed every moment, she said, “even the hard times.”
In 2014, four years after her accident, Ms. Hill moved to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming a professional dancer.
“It was very, very difficult to break into the industry here in Los Angeles as a person with a disability,” she said. “People looked at me like I didn’t belong. Choreographers didn’t give me the time.”
But she kept taking classes, she said, “because I thought, ‘My passion for dance is so much stronger than what your opinion of me is.'”
Like a executorMs. Hill makes extensive use of social media, recording her dancing, creating concept videos and vlogging. Many of the women who are now Rollettes initially contacted her after seeing her online, writing letters and recording videos of themselves dancing.
She accomplished what she set out to do: create an unrepentant girl sisterhood that supports others. Through the Rollettes, she has built a close circle of friends, performed across the country, and highlighted support spaces for women with disabilities while building her own spaces. In January, she and her husband, Jason Bloomfield, a financial advisor, became new parents and named their daughter Jaelyn Jean Bloomfield.
Ms. Hill is aware that people view companies like hers as charities and cannot recognize the Rollettes through the lens of success. “I have older men who I have to convince that my business is worth something,” she said.
But still she perseveres. She has ambitious plans for the future of the Rollettes and would like to continue sharing her personal story. She has even been asked to be a consultant for a new dance drama film is developed by Disney‘Grace’, which features a dancer who becomes paralyzed.
The film could bring more visibility to the estimated 3.3 million wheelchair users in the United States, a community that often feels invisible. It almost sounds like yet another retelling of Ms. Hill’s story.