A remarkable Latino arts program helps children with disabilities discover their talents.

"I just wanted to dance," says Camille Erice with a shy smile. "And it grew and grew."  She’s talking about Danzante, an amazing Latino arts program that is literally accomplishing miracles. Children, teenagers and adults all across Pennsylvania love the traveling program for its offerings of visual arts, theatre, music, modern dance and drums. More than simply taking classes, the students find their lives transformed by the power of the arts. Perhaps the most astonishing success stories are recorded by the children with disabilities who after learning their craft, perform on stage before large audiences. The impact of creating beauty to thunderous applause stays with them for years. "We’re still hearing from them in college," Camille says, her face alight with joy like a child’s. "They’ve never forgotten the experience." 

Not a disability program
It’s easy to see why. Danzante isn’t a disability program. It offers its training to everyone. A babble of languages, ages and abilities mix together in the classes, students helping each other and learning much more than art. One Latina child with Down’s syndrome, who is also deaf, dreamed of being a Flamenco dancer. "Little girls all want to be princesses," her mother said. "Unless they’re Spanish. Then they want to be princesses and Flamenco dancers."  Danzante made the dream a reality for the child, and she shared her special gifts with her fellow students. During her first class, she shaped the others’ hands into the sign for ‘I love you’ and then whenever anyone would let the sign drop, she’d sign ‘Stay’ at their hand. By the end of the first class, she had learned the basic arm positions for Flamenco and her classmates all knew at least two signs. She’s been with the program for ten years now, and has impressed everyone. "It’s hard to reach (the elegant position of palmera, arms extended upward) for a child with Downe’s syndrome," Camille said. Children with Downe’s syndrome often have low muscle tone, making such movements a challenge. "But she does it. She reaches because she wants to."

One Latina teenager with a very great gift for dance went on to enroll in the theatre program. Her disability, speech impairment, wasn’t apparent when she danced. Theatre required her to learn to control and project for voice, and articulate well enough to be understood by the public. The risk she took, in stepping outside of the safe and familiar, to act in two languages, as she performed before a live audience of hundreds, showed considerable courage and the confidence earned through her years in the dance program.

Unexpected moments of ‘duende’
"One of the most amazing children," says Camille, "was a child with neurological deficits" that affected her posture and ability to move. No one thought she could make it in the dance program."  She did it to everyone’s astonishment, including her teachers and family. She danced at a festival in her community, with grace and brilliance, and so lit up the stage that the audience was transfixed. "She wanted to shine," says Camille, "and she sure did."   These dazzling and unexpected moments of ‘duende’, when a dancer becomes the dance and transcends self, taking the audience along in the emotion of the moment, have created a loyal core of Danzante fans. Not only followed eagerly by Flamenco lovers, Danzante’s performances attract a wide audience, who come for the electrifying  students’ creations  blending traditional Latino arts with mainstream American culture.

Program draws from Latino and Anglo cultures
What makes this program so effective?  The remarkable story behind Danzante is that it didn’t start out to be a program at all. "I didn’t have a background in disability," Camille says. "I just wanted to dance."  Camille Erice, born in New York City of Cuban parents, studied Flamenco in Spain, England and the United States. When she moved to Pennsylvania, in 1978, the first thing she looked for was a wooden floor so she could keep on dancing. Soon she started to get requests to teach Flamenco. Adults were her first students, but children flocked in, too. "I didn’t care who came. We never turned anybody away."  Among those asking for dance classes were children with disabilities. "We just let them come and dance along with everybody else."  It wasn’t about disability. The dance was all that mattered. "Even in wheelchairs, kids can dance," Camille nods with satisfaction. "You wouldn’t believe it until you see it. The gift is there. Grace and beauty."

Success attracts new partners
The results brought more students than Camille could individually teach, but it brought eager volunteers, too. School teachers, disability advocates and others who saw the transformation the arts program made in the kids wanted in on the fun. In 1982 Camille began to formally offer programs and later incorporated the dance troupe and training programs as Danzante. Her enthusiastic volunteers and supporters of Danzante began to expand the repertoire to offer painting, mask making, drum, theatre and anything anyone wanted to learn. Now there were opportunities for even more children. Her success brought in partners, as Messiah College, Penn State and Pennsylvania’s Department of Education, and other agencies asked her to work with her, offering outreach to children in rural areas. She began taking her arts program on the road to migrant communities, rural areas as well as offering it to inner city youth. By 1996, Danzante’s success in transforming lives led to more public partnerships and commercial sponsorships, making possible the construction of a Center for the Arts in downtown Harrisburg, the state capitol. Danzante’s new home has three dance studios, a theatre, art room, library, resource room and art gallery.

Recipe for success?
So what’s Danzante’s recipe for success?  It could be that it’s as simple as letting people experience the arts first hand. Children with disabilities experience the same exhilaration everyone does when allowed to create and perform. The joy and confidence arts education provides extends to all areas of life. "If people with brain injury can make noticeable improvement when they move in sync with music," one volunteer says, "think what the arts can do for all of us."  Perhaps Danzante’s secret actually lies in Camille’s apologetic disclaimer that she lacks formal training in disability education. Where the arts are concerned, no disability exists. Or it may be more true to say that without the arts, we are all disabled.

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