Performing Dance Arts, January 21, 2016 – Performing Dance Arts, (www.PerformingDanceArts.ca), Toronto’s leading dance studio providing professional dance lessons for kids of all ages, is weighing in on a champion dance duo who returned after one of them suffered a neck injury.
Nearly a year ago, dancer Daria Novoselova suffered a horrific neck injury while practising with her dance partner Roberto Quaresma. The two were attempting an acrobatic flip without a spotter when Quaresma fell on the back of Novoselova’s neck, which he heard crack on the ground.
(Source: Yuen, J., “Dance partners back in winning form after neck injury,” Toronto Sun web site, January 10, 2016; http://www.torontosun.com/2016/01/10/dance-partners-back-in-fine-form-after-neck-injury.)
“You never really think of getting hurt when you are dancing,” says Ashley Daychak, creative director at Performing Dance Arts. “At the level we teach our dance students, we have minor injuries, but nothing like what this duo went through.”
A surgery was performed to repair a fractured vertebrae and a ligament that was stretched between two disks in Novoselova’s neck. She was told by doctors at a Hamilton hospital that she would never dance again. She was only 27. But, incredibly, the couple beat the odds only 10 months later by winning first place at the World Latin Dance Cup in Miami, Florida.
“Think about what a turnaround that is,” continues Daychak. “To go from a hospital bed being told you’d never be able to dance again, to winning a world dance competition in the same year—that takes a level of determination and love for dancing.”
By September, just a few months after her surgery, the duo was practising again at the urging of Daria. By the time the competition came around in December, the couple was ready. They beat 17 other couples to take first prize.
Daychak says she salutes the efforts and the will of Novoselova. “It would have been easy for her to quit, but she let her passion for dance drive her to keep going,” she concludes.
Performing Dance Arts offers both professional and casual dance classes to kids of all ages and levels. They operate out of a dance studio in the Woodbridge area and serve all of the York Region and the Greater Toronto Area.
