Dancer needs no helping hand
By Jenn Director Knudsen
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Sydney Mesher steps to the front row to perform with seven other junior hip-hop dancers at a recent recital.
Wearing hot-pink lipstick and with her sandy-blond hair pulled into a tight ponytail, the 4-foot-11, 75-pound dancer wows the crowd at the Multnomah Athletic Club with controlled, energetic moves.
The girls are dressed alike in cropped pants, T-shirts and white midriff-baring sweat shirts, the long sleeves pushed to the elbow. The dance is fast and furious. Suddenly, Sydney's left sleeve slides down past her wrist and dangles, past where her left hand should be.
Sydney, 9, doesn't notice. Neither do most in the audience.
Sydney, an incoming fifth-grader at Bridlemile Elementary School, has the focus, drive and talent to dance in national-level competitions. Lack of a left hand, a rare birth defect, doesn't hold her back.
July is a big month for Sydney. First, she jets to New York for the New York City Dance Alliance's 2007 National Finale competition. Then, the week she turns 10, she heads to Las Vegas for the International Dance Challenge '07.
She'll perform in a group of hip-hop dancers, as well as on her own, busting a solo groove to the 'NSYNC song "Pop" that she choreographed herself and for which she won gold in two regional competitions last winter. Platinum is the highest award; gold- and platinum-level winnings qualify dancers for nationals.
"Sydney's missing hand is easily noticed," says Laura Haney, dance supervisor at the Multnomah Athletic Club, where Sydney has taken dance classes since age 4. "But," she continues, "it's never the first thing one would see in Sydney."
At school, Principal Debi Bradway says Sydney's dance performances amaze classmates. "Oh, my God," she says of Sydney's dancing. "She's usually whipping around. She gets standing ovations."
She is strong in academics, too. She already is on course to become a bat mitzvah in spring 2010 at Congregation Beth Israel, where her great-grandfather, Abe Vidgoff, and grandfather, Robert Mesher, both were presidents. Sydney attends Sunday morning and Wednesday evening bat mitzvah prep classes.
Sydney has never used her missing hand as an excuse, not even when it came to mandatory recorder lessons at school, Bradway says.
Treating Sydney as though she can do anything has been "the backbone of our parenting philosophy" from day one, says her dad, Page Mesher, 44, who owns Off The Wall Magnetics, a Portland refrigerator magnet manufacturer.
Sydney can't tie her shoes—"yet," she says emphatically at the family's Southwest Portland home. She struggles with buttons. Fellow dancers help tighten her ponytails.
But she can dance.
Lynn A. Mesher, 39, thumbs through a scrapbook and points to her photos. At 4 months, Sydney could somersault. Another photo shows a 2-year-old Sydney balancing expertly on ice skates. Another shows her at 3 on top of a chair, right hand and left wrist against the back, performing an arabesque with pointed toes.
"Dance has always been something that's been innate to her," Lynn, an interior designer, says.
Sydney says she channels all her emotions through dance, with hip-hop trumping ballet and jazz since age 6. "I look forward to dancing because you can do whatever you want and be kinda free," she says, punctuating her statements with dancelike movements.
Choreographing her own pieces adds to her sense of freedom. Sydney says she makes up moves or copies those she loves from TV and other sources. Favorite shows include, "Dancing With the Stars" and "So You Think You Can Dance."
"I just pick it up really quickly," she says. She hopes one day to attend a dance academy.
She also excels at other sports; she's in her second softball season, playing pitcher, first base and catcher.
"You don't really remember Sydney has one hand because she's so good at everything," says big sister Paige Claire, a Bridlemile sixth-grader this fall.
Still, Sydney's not immune to stares or taunts. After she was fitted with a prosthetic hand at Portland Shriners Hospital for Children, kids promptly dubbed her "the girl with the fake hand," Lynn says.
Sydney never wore it again.
But while her family recounts other incidents, Sydney can't recall most of them.
"I don't really care about my hand, really," she says. And then she betrays a bit of yearning, quietly admitting to praying for a left hand, if only to perform better at some things.
Kids have challenged her to do a cartwheel. "I stun them because I can, but I want to do it better," she says.
"I just can't tie my shoes," Sydney says with a shrug. "That's it."