Michelle Ryan was a professional dancer of global acclaim; fit, healthy, with the world at her feet - then MS struck
FROM centre stage to wheelchair and back again, Michelle Ryan is taking life’s challenges and opportunities one step at a time.
WHEN Michelle Ryan wakes up in the morning she immediately asks herself three questions. “Can I see? Can I feel my legs?” and “Can I stand up?” “If I can do all those three things I go ‘tick’ and move on with my day,” she says. Ryan knows full well how it feels when the answer is “no”. She was 30 when multiple sclerosis entered her life.
“I never knew anyone with it, there’s no family history, I only knew of MS because of the MS Readathons (fundraising events). It was completely out of the blue.”
At the time she was a professional dancer of global acclaim; fit, healthy, with the world at her feet. One moment she was dancing, the next she was in a wheelchair.
“All of a sudden I lost my complete identity. ‘Who am I and what am I here for?’ You question the future ... at that stage I was told I probably wouldn’t work again.”
They were wrong. Adelaide-based Ryan is now Artistic Director of Restless Dance Theatre, a youth dance company for dancers with a disability. This month, she is preparing to hit the stage at Adelaide Festival Centre for her first performance on local turf since 1998. Her show, Intimacy, explores her awkward, humorous and moving daily life experiences coping with MS.
“I always wanted to dance,” she smiles. “I grew up in Townsville with three older brothers in a really sporty family.”
While her siblings cheered on their favourite teams, Ryan would dance in front of the television. “I was quite a prissy little girl but at the same time I had three older brothers who kept me in line. I was always a bit of a show pony,” she admits. “So mum took me to dance class.”
Ballet, tap, jazz, folk, character dancing … her nimble feet conquered them all. At 17 she left Townsville to study dance at the Queensland University of Technology.
A global career followed. Ryan, now 44, worked for Queensland Arts Council before joining Meryl Tankard as a performer with Australian Dance Theatre for seven-and-a-half years across stages worldwide including America and London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre.
It was hard, physical work but she relished every second. “While you’re not paid heaps of money, that life experience is really valuable.”
When Meryl Tankard’s ADT disbanded at the end of 1999, Ryan assisted Tankard on an Andrew Lloyd Webêber musical. For three months she lived in an apartment, smack bang in the middle of London’s Covent Garden and pinched herself every day. She was in Belgium with her former partner, also a dancer, when she noticed something wasn’t right. “I remember thinking things just weren’t quite connected,” she says. “I thought it was because I hadn’t done ballet for a while — I couldn’t feel my calf muscles and also had this tingling feeling when I put my head down … I thought it was weird so I went and saw a doctor.”
When she couldn’t get the assistance she needed in Belgium, Ryan flew to be with friends in Berlin and saw a neurologist while she was there. “I got called in the next day to go and see the neurologist and they said ‘bring your partner in’.” She pauses. “They said it was very probable MS.”
Multiple sclerosis is a condition of the central nervous system which interferes with nerve impulses within the brain, spinal cord, optic nerves and causes scars to develop within the central nervous system. The symptoms are varied.
More than two million people worldwide are diagnosed with MS, 23,000 in Australia. There is currently no known cure. “I was healthy looking, I always had a good diet, I was fit, I never smoked and I always ate well,” Ryan says.
In shock, she wrapped things up in Europe and flew straight back to Australia. The self-confessed perfectionist stopped dancing and went into survival mode, researching her condition and following a strict diet. “I worked really hard, went to a naturopathy college for six months and got really great marks but my health plummeted in a really short amount of time,” she says.
Since diagnosis, Ryan has faced it all; a relationship breakdown, physical deterioration, emotional challenges and questions... so many questions. “People say ‘what happened, why did you get it?’ I spent so much time trying to find those answers.” She shakes her head. “One great ‘neuro’ said ‘the greatest minds in the world cannot work this out so you’re not going to. Just go live your life’.”
WITHIN the course of six months she went from needing a walking stick to a wheelchair. “It was really fast and really scary,” she says.
Ironically, the experience helps in the new job that brought her to Adelaide three years ago. “I think I’m a good match for Restless because I see beauty in places a lot of people wouldn’t even look. Our dancers are amazing, beautiful and unique. There’s no-one else like them in Australia.”
As she pours herbal tea from a yellow teapot in her Gilles St office, her hand shakes with the weight.
“My little theory is that everyone has something that they’re going to have to deal with in their life and I just got mine a bit earlier than I would have liked. If things hadn’t progressed the way they did, I may not have ended up at Restless.
“I find this incredibly fulfilling work … it’s really important to see diversity on stage and seeing how that arts experience really does change people’s lives. I’m passionate about that.”
There’s fierce determination in Ryan’s eyes. She glances at her wheelchair. “I suspect I should have got it much earlier but pride got in the way,” Ryan admits. “The wheelchair has given me more independence.”
Ryan can’t pirouette like she used to but she can still dance.
The realisation happened unexpectedly. After a 10-year hiatus from dancing, she was invited by renowned Belgian choreographer Alain Platel to perform as the guest artist in the 2011 Brisbane Festival season of Out of Context for Pina by Les Ballets C de la B.
“It was one of those defining moments. I was really nervous. I had to sit in the audience, stand up and walk with my stick, pick up a chair and go into the middle of the stage and do this three-minute solo. I almost forgot about the audience for a second.” A smile fills her petite face. “It really made me think that maybe I do still have something to offer.”
Intimacy is her response.
The piece, a collaboration with Torque Show (Vincent Crowley, Ross Ganf and Ingrid Weisfelt), is set to a live score by Lavender Vs Rose (Emma Bathgate and Simon Eszeky).
When they performed the show in London and Melbourne, the response was overwhelming.
“I’ve realised that sometimes being vulnerable on stage really can be a strength. I know that’s contradictory but very rarely in dance do you see people who are vulnerable,” Ryan says.
Intimacy is not a sad story.
“It’s entertaining,” she insists. “We use a lot of humour. Having MS makes you really reassess what’s important to you. I don’t think about the future too much. No-one can say ‘you’ll be OK’ because I may not be but it’s definitely not a story of ‘poor Michelle’.” ●