Dancing from the heart: for teachers at Maryland Youth Ballet, helping students with cerebral palsy experience the joy of moving was a personal mission.

When Jennifer Cox wanted to give her granddaughter, who suffers from cerebral palsy, the opportunity to dance, she took matters into her own hands. Cox, a teacher at Maryland Youth Ballet and mother of famed American Ballet Theatre principal Julie Kent, went to work with pediatric physical therapist Rebecca Leonard to design the studio's Music & Motion program. MYB, in Silver Spring, MD, has been training dancers in the Washington, D.C. area for more than 30 years, and many of the abled students volunteered to help with the program.

Music & Motion lets physically disabled students from ages 4 to 10 move while harnessed in a partial weight-bearing overhead track system. In it, they can dance using their own feet. Live piano music lets them feel the rhythm in their bodies.

"At MYB, we want everyone to dance. This program gives these children who find walking and basic motor activity a struggle the ability to really soar," says MYB board chairman Charlie Barnett. The benefits are physical as well as mental. "The most recent research indicates that partial weight-bearing therapy is among the most promising in developing large motor skills," says Leonard.

Prior to the track system installation, the class, which was created in 2004, had MYB volunteers stabilizing the students while they balanced on physical therapy balls. The new system still uses the volunteers, but the disabled children now are able to move with less restraint. "The child gains a sense of freedom that she normally does not have," says Leonard.

The track system was made possible after a recent move to new space in Silver Spring's downtown Arts and Entertainment District. The five-studio facility currently accommodates 350 students. Administrators and parents rallied with donations when the school had to relocate, raising $200,000 for the new studio. A special grant from a local foundation of $25,000 funded the track system.

Cox's 7-year-old granddaughter Mary attends the Music & Motion class every week, and the studio plans to add more classes this summer to reach out to a larger group of students. "Each week is challenging in a new way, but along with those challenges come new rewards," says Cox. "I am overwhelmed by the outpouring of support for this program."

Rachel Leigh Dolan is a DM intern.