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Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Coming up, we get behind the wheels of a Cleveland dancer rolling into her 45th season.

We introduce you to a failed gospel singer going all in on opera and share a powerful mash up of classical and Afro futurist funk.

Hello and welcome once again to applause.

I'm your host, Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Batya.

We begin with a story about a local woman who was born with spinal bifida.

Back then, doctors wanted to institutionalize her, but her grandmother had other plans, and so did she.

For more than four decades, Mary VERDY Fletcher has revolutionized what it means to be a dancer.

And she's done it on four wheels.

My grandmother had always said I was born with a tear in my eye and a smile on my face.

She knew I was put on this earth to do something special.

Well, I certainly inherited her tenacity.

The Dancing Wheels Company is a physically integrated dance company, so it's comprised of dancers with and without disabilities.

Using the philosophy.

It's for all people of all abilities.

We have a byline under our title as the World Center for Integrated Dance and Arts Access.

So we really want to make the arts accessible to all people.

The company's in her 44th season, will be moving into our 45th season in July.

There's a saying that access to the arts is a right, not a privilege.

So 40 plus years, things have changed considerably.

The idea of physically integrated dance is more known.

Accessibility is still an issue not as prevalent as it was years ago.

I was born in 1955 and I had spinal bifida.

So babies that were born back in that time was fine a bit, but were often times left to die or be institutionalized.

You know, my mother wasn't sure what to do when I was born.

And so my grandmother said, You take her home because the doctors wanted to institutionalize me.

And she said, You take her home and you do the best you can.

And if she survives, you've done the best you can.

And if she doesn't, you've done the best you can.

So she took me home.

I was this little person, but I was pretty active, I guess, because I would break my braces all the time.

And then the doctors gave me really strong braces and I broke my leg instead of the braces three times.

So they put me in a wheelchair.

My mom was a dancer in the vaudeville days with her sister.

She would make up little dances for my brother and I in our living room, and she had my brother look me in the ear.

She just created little opportunities, I think, for me to enjoy music and dance.

I always loved music and watching dance and I would move in my chair and I moved to the point where I broke the axle off the wheel.

But it wasn't until the mid-seventies that the disco era came about.

So there was a lot of social dancing that went on, and I would watch it, watch it on TV.

Some of my friends were just doing the hustle, you know, and I would sit back and watch it.

And then finally one of them said, Well, let's just try and we did some dancing and twirled around the wheelchair.

And I saw that it could move in a lot of different ways and that actually it had this sort of link between skating and dance to dance.

Back then was the greatest excelled acceleration in my body.

I always equate it to like flying because to dance on a stage where there's no barriers and you can take on a different persona, it really is a way of freedom that is indescribable.

Particularly for our young people growing up.

If I can do it, they can do it too.

They see ability on stage or in the class that we teach.

It's like an unspoken knowledge that they gain by just seeing.

So seeing is believing.

You don't have to say a word because when we set foot or wheel on stage and we work together, people are seeing ability everywhere from the disabled and non-disabled dancers.

I was injured in a car accident.

Through physical therapy, I found out about dancing wheels and that it was possible to still move and still dance.

Came to audition.

That's where I met Mary.

I wasn't born with my disability, but Mary was, and Mary inspired me because to see someone spend so much time with a disability that they were born with showing the world and showcasing that you could still do something and still create and still be seen.

It's been amazing, like to have a place where you feel like you belong, a place where you feel like you can show who you truly are, even through adversity or even through having a disability, or even just being different.

So I'm going to be 70 this year.

I look to be able to continue to dance at least until the 50th anniversary of Dancing Wheels.

With any luck, we'll continue to do that.

I pride myself in being able to dance still, and I think part of that is when you continue to do something long term, it stays with you and your body.

I'm dancing with 24 year old people.

Just the stamina to keep up with that is somewhat of a challenge.

But I often times forget my age.

I think if you think young, you will be young.

You know, dancing wheels presents Rodale reimagined at Cleveland Public Hall on June 14th, accompanied by the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra.

dancers got to dance and singers got to sing.

But when Diane Bennett got the boot from her church choir, she thought the song is over.

However, today and pick away County just south of Columbus, she is Dr. Bennett at Ohio Christian University, where you guessed it.

She teaches singing.

I did not sing in the choir in school.

I sang in church choir.

And at one point I even directed the church choir.

I was so bad.

They gave me one church choir solo girl.

They never gave me another one because I was horrible.

Oh, horrible.

But I was just not a gospel singer.

I was a classical singer.

And so my last year, my teacher took me to Omega when I got to do solo ensemble for the first time, and it was my first classical song and my first Italian song.

And I sang Alma del Rey.

So I did my first semester of college and I didn't know what I wanted to do.

So I had this hodgepodge of classes, all these classes.

I don't even know if I took a music class during that time.

And but the choir started touring.

Church choir started touring.

I was going with them, but wasn't doing any homework.

So ended up on probation, had never been on a visit with grades before.

So I ended up on probation.

And so I needed an easy a class.

So the next semester I heard my director in my ear saying, If you ever have a chance to do voice lessons.

So I went down the catalog and I saw voice and I thought, That can't be too difficult, right?

So I took voice lessons.

16 weeks.

They taught me to breathe and one song, and it was Carol Mulvey.

And I'll never forget that because, you know, Beyoncé just did call me a bit.

But anyway, I sang Call Me or Ben.

I pretended like I was this little lady that went to my church car.

Romeo then created me a man since Sadie de Longley.

She'll call.

I'll go and let her go.

Hang out with me.

And I go.

I go home and I go.

When I was younger, I used to tell my brother, I am music, you know?

And he'd say, No, you're not.

You just do music.

I go on I a lot.

My son heal.

And I was born.

I believe all of this called me.

Like I said, I got here.

It seems by accident I never imagined this.

There's nobody in my family that I could look to.

That was a classical singer.

There were a couple of church people in my church organization that were classical singers for me.

It's the giving of yourself.

It's your mind, body, soul and spirit that that happens when I do music.

And it's whether I'm singing, whether I'm teaching or whether I'm coaching.

It doesn't really matter.

I'm giving all of me and there's no there's no other feeling like it.

It has it has made me the most happy, the most joyful.

But it's also made me the most sad.

I've cried.

It's been all of me.

Even my job here at Ohio.

Christian, it takes everything.

So I have my students.

I love them.

I love them to their potential.

You know, I'm.

I'm pushing them constantly.

And, you know, I also I work at for Columbus, and it's the same thing.

Being able to give to the community and figure out ways to make things, make opera accessible, to the community.

I think when people come to hear me or any artist sing, they come from so many different places and they've got so many different situations, so many different circumstance faces.

So I believe that people are coming so that their world, at least for that short amount of time, can come together.

The world is in line.

The world is beautiful and good.

And I look forward to touching people, touching their hearts, touching their souls and in some ways changing their lives, you know, so that they are never the same when they leave, they see what we didn't know.

You have Cuba is a beautiful place.

It's an incredibly beautiful place.

And even just the experience took my mind and soul and spirit of the teaching, though, my Lord, these young people were absolutely fantastic.

They were trained really well.

But this music, it was not just training as a skill.

This is in their bones, in their spirits, in their hearts, in every movement.

And these young people, all, they had huge hearts and some stuff.

I would say I thought they would think that was kind of weird and strange.

No, they were they were ready to try it because they were that hungry for for the music or for the training that it was to be a real service.

And they are helping and the people are incredibly kind.

And I loved making that connection.

Even when I sang it, it didn't matter if they knew what I was singing about.

We could connect.

Sometimes I just.

I saw people with tears in their eyes.

And then I had tears in my eyes because of that connection.

I've got my to do list here.

I have to mail something.

I need to buy some circus peanuts, but I've also got a to do list for getting out and about in Northeast Ohio's arts and culture scene.

It's our free weekly newsletter, cleverly titled The to Do List.

If you want in, you can join the fun at Arts dot ideastream dawg.

You know, my grandmother used to say young people should have the chance to make Hollywood style recording projects.

No, no, I'm just.

I'm kidding.

It was my great grandmother.

But it is happening for the members of Northeast Ohio's Kaboom Collective, led by Cleveland Arts Prize winner Liza Grossman.

Kaboom gives young talent a place to flourish.

So there's this thing called Kaboom.

Kaboom Collective is a place for curious artists ages 15 to 25 who want some career connected learning training in all aspects of the commercial arts.

It's like a studio orchestra, things like great opportunity.

They get to do all these things with these different type of people producing all this stuff.

The collective is a group of professional musicians and artists and teachers from around the country who specialize in a specific craft that was like, okay, that's pretty cool.

It's sort of a think tank about what kinds of productions might be cool for these students to experience, to help them accelerate in this field.

For example, let's say an animation in order for an animation to work.

There's all of these different fields of expertise that come together to make that happen.

Our scriptwriting team with students from around the country who worked with someone from Warner Brothers who does script writing.

Then it moved on to the voiceover team, and students from around the country online were studying with someone else from the industry who does voiceovers for a living.

From there it will go to an animation team and then to the composition team and then to the studio orchestra.

And now students from around the country, under the guidance of people who specialize in this specific art, have created this product.

We are in our home room at Baltimore's Conservatory, and tonight we are in the final stages of completing an album with musician and producer Michael Bradford.

Well, when I was a young person, programs like this didn't exist, really.

But when I started out as a professional, I was 15 and I was playing with a lot of really heavy duty jazz cats at the time.

And one fellow said to me, You can't just be good for your age.

You got to be good enough for us.

And that became sort of my guiding principle for the rest of my life.

That's what I see happening here, taking this budget, this traditional compositional, classical trained style and understanding of music, but having the the sort of modern chops to work in a contempt, airy environment.

And it's very rare that you see someone who can really live well in both worlds on top.

I had been in education for a quarter century with my former youth orchestra, the contemporary youth Orchestra, and I was always trying to offer my students insight into different potential professions.

But we could only go so deep.

And my Kaboom co-founder and partner, Joey Graff, and I discussed this and realized that what was missing was practical experience in the studio.

Orchestra is a Hollywood style recording orchestra around 35 members that does all of the recording for every production that Kaboom puts out.

So tonight has been a pretty fun night so far.

We're working on these two tunes for Michael Bradford's new album.

We're going through Michael Bamford's pieces, and it's it's phenomenal.

They're having their regular rehearsal, but tonight we've brought some recording equipment in.

I've written some pieces of music that they intend to record and perform later this year.

When you're in a recording, things is kind of a little different to that is more of, you know, making sure you're even playing field musically with everybody.

You're going to have headphones and you're going to have a click track to make sure everyone's on be on time.

It's a really catchy song as a constant beat in there that's kind of stuck in my head right now.

Kind of like a crime filled chaos.

I really like it.

In Missouri and Company, we're working on a really tight groove in five and being able to lay accents out properly.

Bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, cedis, this.

And really, what kind of rhythm is that that you're getting and focusing in on that and how to play in that pocket while dusting the rest of the notes and focusing in on that groove.

But all of them have to fall into that groove at the same time.

I actually always kind of wanted to be a studio musician, so as soon as I heard that, I kind of jumped on it because, I mean, where else are you going to find something like this?

Kaboom has a way of making everything seem more simple when it comes to recording.

One of my passions is jazz, but I would also like to be a jazz session recorder as well.

So being a part of this is a really big help.

In every rehearsal I come here, I'm learning something new.

Well, my thing is, I've always wanted to tour everywhere.

That was like my main thing that I wanted to do.

This past year, we recorded an album with the indie rock female fronted band The Accidentals, and we also took it on tour knowing that they have already done something like a tour with like the accidentals.

And I was like, Whoa, okay, ladies, this is cool.

Now all of these students will have something in their professional portfolio before they hit the professional marketplace looking for work.

What I get out of this personally as a chance to see young people doing something really good.

So it's going to be bright enough that I've heard about it, that bad about it.

But right when I was young, I got the chance to play with some really advanced people and I had to hold my own in that environment.

And I want to see young people do the same thing and we'll run through some stuff and she'll ask everyone as an example, What do you think we should add?

What do you like?

What did you not like?

Any comments?

Good memory on that one.

I think that tends to be one of your favorites.

So yeah, this is the only group where you have the conductor asking the people in the sections what they think you know.

So I really think that's a really big thing and it really helps myself.

And I'm assuming for everyone else, it really helps them further.

The musical education.

The music is never really going to go away, but good music might.

I love what I do and my students are the center of it all.

I just get to hang out with them.

It's such a good groove.

You just nail that to the back door, you guys.

That was hot.

look out.

We're going to light a fire under the next round of applause as we share the traditional Mexican craft of cartoon area for a celebration of good over evil.

could be a political figure, it could be a devil.

It could be some sort of entity.

They're trying to rid themselves of.

Plus, we heat things up with the indie jazz gestures from Akron, Rent for Cheryl.

All that and more on the next round of applause.

You see, baby, you must sing in the speaker duties.

But it can't be which It's time to say so long farewell.

Thanks for watching this round of applause.

I'm ideastream public media's Kabir Batya Now let's end the show with a bang.

Here's more from the Kaboom Studio Orchestra backing up the red hot Cleveland group mourning a black star.

This is the song Hold Me.

homey clothes and keep me warm.

I've had enough of you right there watching me is what I do know is more and more and more satisfied with your go.

When you go, stop worrying about not to settle this you boy on the clothes and TV boy.

I'm ready to open your mouth.

But you on my satisfied hunger for my Mona said to go and this world Production of applause and ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.