BalletNext’s ASL production connected company with a young performer who is deaf | Park Record
BalletNext, Park City’s resident dance company, is currently hosting its 2024 Summer Intensive sessions that run through Aug. 10 at the Eccles Center for the Performing Arts.
One of the dancers is 10-year-old Dahlia Sessions, who hails from Traverse City, Michigan. She has been dancing for the past four years and has performed in productions presented by a local studio, Dance Arts Academy.
Dahlia is also deaf.
“I’ve been deaf since I was born,” she said through her mother Cheri Sessions, who is also an American Sign Language interpreter. “I was born in China, and my mother adopted me. And I have been dancing ever since I was 6.”
Since Dahlia started competitive company a year ago, Cheri started to seek support to help her find programs for her daughter that included correct sign-language interpretations and language.
“I’m not a dancer, and I know nothing of dance, but since I interpret for Dahlia, something I call ‘mom-terpreting,’ I always try to find programs with appropriate signs for dance, and it’s hard.”
What Cheri has found is that most everyone who teaches ballet is confined in a regimented box.
