First Dancer With a Visible Disability Joins the New York City Rockettes
The Radio City Music Hall Rockettes are an indelible part of the festive activities every holiday season in New York. Now, for the first time since their 1932 opening at Radio City Music Hall, the famous troupe includes a dancer with a visible disability.
Sydney Mesher, who was born without a left hand, grew up admiring the Rockettes in Portland, Oregon, where she honed her dancing skills. Now working in New York, Mesher joined the famous dancer group for the first time this year. It’s also the first time in history the Rockettes included a dancer with a visible disability.
The Rockettes, famous for their high-kicking line dances, were founded in 1925 in Missouri before migrating to their permanent home in New York. Thousands over the years have migrated to the city for the dance company’s “Christmas Spectacular.”
“Through a lot of hard work and great support and amazing teachers, I am able to be in this position that I am, but there is still so much left to do,” Mesher told PIX11, adding:
But I’m very grateful and very, very humbled to be here. I’m able to do everything. I just maybe have to tweak it a little bit, but I’m comfortable doing that myself. But coming here, I was overwhelmed with the compassion and the aid that I received. Everyone was so eager and excited to help me alter things that could be altered.
Header image via Sydney Mesher’s website
Renée Fabian was the features editor at The Mighty. She has also written for The Washington Post, VICE, Healthline, Talkspace, The Fix, The Establishment, The Culture Trip, and GRAMMY.com, among others. Renée was named a 2019 AHCJ Comparative Effectiveness Research fellow, a 2020 USC Center for Health Journalism California fellow, and holds a master's degree in journalism from the University of Southern California and a master's degree in psychology from Antioch University Los Angeles. You can follow her on Twitter @ryfabian.
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