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Shall we dance? Veterans choreograph dance for national competition

Roanoke Times - 4/8/2018

A woman in a wheelchair watches, face cast in a miserable pout, as a couple dines.

Unnoticed, she rolls past them and parks her wheelchair. Certain she will spend the soiree alone, her frown deepens, and even when a stranger approaches, his slow gait aided by use of a cane, her expression doesn't brighten. Not at first.

However, the stranger takes a shine to her, and tries to cheer her up.

Thus begins a charming dance routine, and a hopeful entry in a national arts competition for military veterans.

The skit, which unfolds to the patient beat of Berlin's smash 1986 single "Take My Breath Away," is the brainchild of Army veteran John Koelsch - who's also the male lead in the dance number. Koelsch saw combat in the Vietnam War as a first lieutenant. He has two Purple Hearts, both of which resulted from friendly fire, he said.

His dance partner, Suzie Glass, 60, served with the Air Force as an intelligence operations specialist in the mid-'70s. Stationed at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico, she helped review satellite images taken of Soviet Union sites and participated in drills that involved sending airmen on mock bombing runs and debriefing them afterward.

She has no formal training in dance or theater, but she was willing to help Koelsch with his concept for a pas de deux. She was skeptical, at first, as to whether she was right for the role, she said. "This is the woman who almost tore an arm off her chair because I hit a door."

A Salem writer, Koelsch vigorously recruits fellow vets to participate in the National Veterans Creative Arts Competition, working with Lisbeth Woodward, creative arts therapist at the Salem Veterans Affairs Medical Center, who acts as local administrator for the contest.

Winners in the regional competition, judged in the spring, get submitted to the national competition. Some, but not all, of the national first-place winners will be invited to perform in the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival, which showcases prize-winning paintings, plays, songs, poetry, stories, dance routines and more submitted by U.S. Armed Services vets from all over the country. This year, the national festival takes place the first weekend of November in Des Moines, Iowa.

Koelsch first entered the competition 10 years ago. He has been invited to take part in the national festival several times and found the entire experience therapeutic.

He believes wholeheartedly that other veterans who join in will also find catharsis through art, both by keeping their minds productively occupied, and through giving them a chance to bond with others who understand what they've been through. "The point is demonstrating how art works in helping veterans with their issues."

Strategies for victory

Not only does Koelsch recruit, he also strategizes. For the sake of maximizing the number of Roanoke Valley veterans who will get a chance to compete nationally, he intuits which categories will likely have the fewest entrants, and brainstorms entries for them. After a record-breaking 2017, with 23 veterans winning medals in 22 categories nationally, the Roanoke Valley contingent has followed up with 28 more entries in drama, creative writing, art and dance.

The category Koelsch and Glass have entered as a duo is new: "Wheelchair Dance, Group, Novelty." The rules define this as a "wheelchair routine consisting of original, imaginative, or innovative dance movements that incorporate a theme concept or characterization throughout the entire performance."

"This is the first, last and only dance I'll ever do," Koelsch said, although the septuagenarian smiled as he said it. His usual entries have been in writing or drama categories, but he has a mission to fulfill. "My initial drive to do this is that I want to be able to tell any veteran, I can't dance and I've entered dance. If I can do it with basically almost no talent, then certainly you can."

He reached out to Dave O'Hara, a veteran who organizes activities for the Virginia Veterans Care Center in Roanoke. O'Hara has worked with the regional competition organizers before. Koelsch asked him if there were any women using powered wheelchairs at the VVCC who would be willing to give a dance performance a try. O'Hara put him in touch with Glass.

"It's something I had never considered," Glass said. "I thought my dancing days were over." She had never heard of the competition before.

As for the plot of the dance skit, "I had the idea based on the music," Koelsch said, noting wryly that the Berlin instrumental was the only piece he found that ended within the time limit prescribed by the contest.

The skit might be a lark, and the local competition scarce - there were no other Roanoke Valley entrants in the category - but Koelsch really wanted to get it right. "I aim to give us the optimum chance to be successful," he said.

He brought in Roanoke Valley ballroom dance instructors Dave and Donna Spangler to help figure out the particulars of the routine.

"We're the dancing duo," said Dave Spangler. He wasn't simply stating the obvious. The Dancing Duo is the name of their company. The pair met in 2000 and soon became ballroom dance partners, and generated a bit of news thanks to Dave's habit of celebrating life landmarks by putting up billboard sized-messages on U.S. 460, first to wish Donna happy birthday, then to celebrate their wedding a few months later.

The four assembled in the auditorium at the Salem VA. This particular rehearsal, on Dec. 8, wasn't the first with the Spanglers, but the choreography was still a work in progress. Deciding on the right moves for the skit presented challenges from the start. "I'm really going to be good if I don't laugh through the whole thing," Glass said.

The dance began with Koelsch and Glass mirroring each other's moves while sitting. Toward the end, things got more complex, as Glass rotates her wheelchair to interact with Koelsch as he dances around her.

The routine involved strategic placement of a flirtatious butt-pat. "If we're facing the audience when I pat him on the butt, they will see that more," Glass told the Spanglers.

Even then, with many of the details still undecided, the dance was pretty adorable.

Fortune and fun

On Feb. 20, Koelsch and Glass returned to the Salem VA auditorium for a dress rehearsal.

Since their final session with the Spanglers, they had continued to iron out the routine on their own. Essentially, they practiced it a section at a time. A round of flu at the VVCC in early February prevented them from rehearsing together, Glass said.

Dress rehearsal constituted the first time they had connected all the pieces together. Time was of the essence. "Technically, this has to be done in three minutes," Koelsch said.

Roped in to help out, O'Hara sat at the table that Glass rolled past, pretending to be in conversation with his date - and inadvertently caused a delay. "I'm supposed to be sad!" Suzie protested. "He made me laugh!"

Other challenges had to be sorted. Glass wore a dress and scarf provided by the Salem chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. At one point, the dress got caught in her wheelchair. Yet persistence paid off, and after a few more tries, they made it all the way to the end. "I think we came up with something really cute," Koelsch said.

The recording for the competition took place just three days later. Volunteer Robert Bryant makes the videos that the Salem VA submits to the competition.

"Take My Breath Away" won an Oscar for best original song as part of the "Top Gun" soundtrack, so the tune has some nostalgic military associations that Koelsch said the team would address by adding a sound effect through the magic of video editing. "We had a sincere request to add a screaming jet at the end," he said.

However well they do, they will still have tricky odds to beat. Koelsch noted that last year's festival received about 3,800 entries, while a few more than 120 actually took part in the show.

"Fortune plays a part," Koelsch said.

Glass has one significant disagreement with Koelsch. While he keeps saying he will never do another dance, she would be happy to. "I think I want to do it again because I had a lot of fun."

A Navy brat, Glass enlisted in the Air Force while her family lived in Portsmouth. Her service in the Air Force ended about nine months after she had given birth to twins. She came to Roanoke and the VVCC to live near her mother and sisters. She's one of five women who live there, she said. "We have a lot of older brothers who take real good care of us," she said.

In March, one of her four grown sons died. The news that the dance video had been submitted to the national competition, and that a piece of jewelry she entered in a beadwork category had also been sent on to nationals, provided a bit of cheer, she said.

If their dance wins in its category and they get an invitation to the festival, there will be a number of additional details to sort out. For example, arrangements would have to be made so that a caretaker could travel with Glass.

For her part, Glass said she would love to go. "It would certainly give me something to be proud about."