The two 17-inch metal rods implanted along Susanna Roberts’ spine for her scoliosis made physical activity difficult, so she opted for weight loss surgery when she wanted cut back on her 300-pound frame.
“It was more of a, ‘You need to do this or you’re going to pretty much kill yourself,’ ” she said. “Because of my back problems I couldn’t exercise and all of that. It actually took my dad having a mini heart attack to shake me out of it and be like, ‘You need to get this fixed.’ ”
Four years later and 135 pounds lighter, Roberts is now the captain of the Duke City Wranglers, UNM’s country western dance team for non-professional dancers. With 500 others she participates in the end-of-semester UNM Ballroom Dance Recital, which showcases students from all non-professional dance classes and the four non-professional dance teams, said Brenda Dunagan, coordinator of the recital and a dance teacher.
Roberts said she has loved to dance her whole life, although the surgery she underwent in 9th grade kept her from practicing throughout high school. Now that she has lost the weight she put on while recovering from the implant surgery, she said she has less insulation from the cold weather, which aggravates her chronic back problems.
“If I dance continuously throughout the week, I’m fine,” she said.
“It keeps me stretched, keeps my muscles warm and loose. But after two or three hours of dancing, I have to sit down for a while.”
Roberts said she makes sure her older sisters are in the front row so she can include them in the line dancing at intermission, when audience members join in.
“I have two Down Syndrome sisters, and when they watch me and my team dance, they just love it,” she said. “They’re smiles, all the time. They’re right there sitting in the front, because I reserve them a spot so they can see. They’re all I watch.”
Both sisters are deaf, she said, so they feel the music instead of hearing it. She said she first realized anyone can dance, regardless of their handicap, at the prom for the school for the deaf her mother teaches at. She said the deaf feel the vibrations that come from music, especially songs with heavy bass, and use them to keep rhythm.
“Blind people can do it, deaf people can do it, wheelchair handicapped people can do it — everybody can do some sort of dance,” she said.
Christina Valverde, captain of Fedora, the UNM ballroom dance team, said she stuck with the program because of the people involved.
“Other than me using it as an excuse to exercise in a way … the thing that kind of kept me going was the people that I met. … We’re kind of like a family, as corny as it sounds,” she said. “Had I not made so many friends or a cool teacher that is very down-to-earth and cares about her students, I wouldn’t have kept going.”
Valverde said this semester is the first time Dunagan has given team captains the responsibility of running the non-professional teams and choreographing dances.
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“Now that we’re more independent, that’s kind of a big factor,” she said. “We have to come up with things that will keep people’s interest. You can’t just do, like, two moves. You have to do a good two-minute choreography. You have to throw in some kind of ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh.’ ”
UNM Ballroom Dance Recital
Wednesday
6-8 p.m.
Johnson Center
Free
