Wheelchair Dancers at Universal

Josh Brownlie and his cousin Stephanie Skumanich are preparing a Viennese waltz to the theme song from 'Anastasia' called 'Once Upon a December.' It is perfectly suited to the next performance which will be on March 2 at the 'Princess Ball,' the annual mother and daughter Girl Scout banquet. The event will be at Auletto's, a popular catering facility in Deptford NJ. The audience will include about three-hundred 7-16 yr olds and their moms. This Girl Scout event is a perfect oppotunity to show young people that dancing is for everyone, no matter their age or abilities. Other junior and adult dancers from Universal will also perform.

  

Josh and Stephanie will also do a tango and maybe a cha cha. The tango is purely American style and was part of a grouping of dances that I choreographed for another performance that included two other dances about conflict. Josh and Stephanie do a good job with this 'Roxanne' tango and they have performed it many times. It originally had two couples in it and the other male was my son Brian Fortuna. My son is a quality dancer and performer who will be on the tv show called Dancing With the Stars in season four. Even he finds the wc dancing challenging. I have to give credit to the dancers who are up to learning this type of dancing.

Dancing is the hot activity these days. At the recent Philadelphia performance of 'Dancing With The Stars Arena Tour,' 12,000 people came to see ballroom and Latin dancing. First place in the pre-show dance contest called  'The Slim Fast Challenge' was won by a pair of wheelchair dancers who were exclusively trained at Universal by Sandra Fortuna. They did the cha cha to get to the second round. Then they did rumba to get into the final. For the final Matt Clark and Aubree Marchione danced cha cha again. The cha cha was a dance that was already together. I spiffed them up a little and reorganized the order of the amalgamations to suit the requirements of this audience. We put the rumba together very quickly. It still took a lot of repetitions to work out the best timings and we really only started to develop the style from Matt's side. I gave them an American style tango that used lots of Argentine type styling. I tried to work out Argentine style kicks and ganchos before with other wc dancers, but it just never shaped up to have the right look, movement and rhythm. I was really pleased with Matt and Aubree's tango, though.  I believe it is way better than even the rumba or cha cha, but it needed more than a week of rehearsal to reach potential. It is also better than most of the other special routines. That's partly because of experience on my part and talent, attitude and advanced skills of Matt and Aubree.

Sandra, last evening (February 3) was a blast
...... I was trying to watch all 3 couples as they perfomed their DWTS routines,
but when it came to the Tango I could not take my eyes off Aubree and Matt. 
The routine and their execution of it were
beautiful, fascinating, and sensual;
in one dance I came a step closer to understanding wheelchair dancing as its own artform. 
Wishing them a similar performance tonight. Carol

When Josh and Stephanie had their lesson I gave them the exact same beginning as Edgar and Hannah's cha cha. When I started Matt and Aubree's tango, I gave them the same beginning as Edgar and Hannah's tango. It was sort of an experiment. It worked out to a certain point with both dances.

I can see that with Matt and Aubree I could actually get them ready to do well in European competition. Since we got two entire routines in a few days, it would be really quick work to finish all the Latin and ballroom dances, leaving lots of time for the material to gel. Louis Van Amstel (Dancing With the Stars) says our style is different and impressive. He says we would stand out in European competition and encourages us to go to Holland in the fall. Aubree is up for the challenge; she is such a competitor. I'm not sure about Matt.

Josh and Stephanie would do well too, but they don't have the lesson time flexibility that Matt and Aubree do.

Aubree and I are still practicing the basics and reviewing the details. We worked on some adjustments on wheel work details to really control the timing on the smooth dances.