- This is the first time
Timea has been able to take a dance class.
- Stretch one more time and exhale.
- And she loves it.
- Here we go.
- She has Dravet syndrome, which is very,
complicated disease with,
very serious epileptic seizures.
She loves music.
She loves dance.
But, because of her disease,
she was not able to attend dance
classes like her younger brother.
- The class Timea takes is a special one offered by the Pacific Northwest Ballet.
It's called dance for all.
- The idea behind it is simply that we want to provide
broader access to kids, to be able to participate in dance.
Look at Ned. Go slow.
Good job, Ned.
- Lead instructor
Deborah Kenner got the idea for the class while working on her PhD.
It started with a tiny project I was doing, and we had to figure out
how to help a population that wasn't represented somewhere.
And I thought, not a better group to help out in the dance community.
Ready?
Whoop! Good.
The curriculum is actually very similar to what we do in our typical classes.
So we didn't change it.
We just added more help into the room.
And that help includes peer dancers like 11 year old Jenny Ivie.
I wanted to do it because I love working with kids,
and I think it's really cool that I would be able to get to help them
so that they could dance too, because everybody deserves a chance to dance.