The music starts slowly, the dancers separated by the darkness. Emery Blackwell is in his wheelchair; across the stage, Alito Alessi is in a straight-back chair. Emery starts swinging his foot in time to the lilting Italian love song, and Alito joins in, tapping the rubber brake on the end of his old-fashioned roller skate.

Emery and Alito have been dancing together for 20 years. Alito was hanging fliers for a new mixed-ability dance class he was teaching when he saw Emery in the street on his bike. Alito introduced himself and asked Emery if he'd like to join the class. Emery said no. Never one to let his cerebral palsy get in his way, Emery had picked up bike riding a few years earlier, and between that and his social activism, he wasn't sure if he had room in his life for dance. Later, at the urging of several friends, he attended the class, forging an immediate connection with Alito. When the class was over, Emery and Alito decided to start meeting regularly to practice dancing together. Over time, Emery realized he could reach more people through his dance than he ever could by speaking in front of the legislature.

Emery pushes off smoothly with his feet. His body is all muscle and bone, not what you might expect from someone who has spent most of their 49 years in a wheelchair. He circles Alito, who extends a hand. They glide together like swans on a still lake. Their dance is push and pull, give and take, and it's not certain who is leading and who is following.

When Emery and Alito perform for schoolchildren, Alito first asks them if they know what cerebral palsy is. The children say it means you can't walk, you can't talk, you can't move. Alito tells everyone to tighten their muscles, then try to touch the person next to them. They can't move. Emery describes cerebral palsy as his muscles just going on and off by themselves.

Nevertheless, Emery can do many things. When he was two, he spent hours behind his house, pushing and pulling a rope through knotholes in the porch with the toes of his left foot, building dexterity. Later, his left foot, with a little help from the right, propelled him backward in his wheelchair, pushing him up the ramp he convinced his high school to build.

Emery’s feet are usually encased in socks in the winter, although he prefers to be barefoot. When he goes out, he wears gray high-top sneakers with Velcro fasteners, size 9 1/2. His feet are long and narrow, with muscles and tendons that stand out sharply against the bones. And while Emery is “feetidextrous,” as he says, it’s the left foot that works the rollerball to guide the mouse on the computer screen as he paints or writes emails and presses the button on the side of his wheelchair to call his mom on the phone. Together, his feet pedal his bike and play the keyboard.

Alito falls backward into Emery's lap, leans against him, twirls around him. He swoops and glides like a rollercoaster – now slow, now fast, swirling and turning, his compact body radiating energy. His movements are as showy as the powder-blue tuxedo jacket he wears. Emery is the calm counterpoint to Alito's grandiosity. He moves simply, precisely, but with grace that comes from countless practice hours.

Emery doesn't think of himself as disabled. Rather, he's Em-abled. Emery grew up in Eugene, Oregon, his father working at a plywood mill and his mother a special education teacher. Emery was a happy child, determined and outgoing even though he had trouble speaking. Emery's family treated him like a regular kid, letting him crawl over dirt and asphalt rather than be confined to a wheelchair. Like any toddler learning to move on his own, Emery used a walker as a small child. But his father was always working on ways to help Emery get around. He adapted the walker for Emery as he grew older, making it bigger, making a headrest.  As Emery started to finally grow out of the walker, his father reconfigured a tricycle for him. 

When Emery was 10, his mom would drop him off at the mall to wander alone in his wheelchair for an hour or so. He was one of the first disabled children in Oregon to be mainstreamed into regular schools, to mixed results. He constantly had to prove himself to teachers who didn't believe he was intelligent. In high school, however, Emery was such a math whiz that his teacher told him he didn't need to come to class anymore. So he played pool instead, using his fist for a pool cue.

At 18, Emery felt it was time to strike out on his own. It was difficult for his parents to see him leave home, but it was the right time. They had been teaching him independence for his whole life, so it was a natural next step. His mother waited until after they had left Emery’s new apartment to cry.

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