Dancing on wheels

It isn’t easy to dedicate your life to something and divert your energy to achieve it. But Syed Sallauddin Pasha, founder and artistic director, Ability Unlimited Foundation, has committed his time and talent to teaching and training 500 differently-abled people in various dance forms.

This, he believes, has therapeutic effect on this community which stands neglected.  

Syed Sallauddin Pasha has spent the last 30 years working with people with different disabilities and today, his troupe of differently-abled dancers, who perform on a wheel chair, have performed across the globe.

“Unless, you become one with them or become like them, it is impossible to achieve what you want. I spend eight to ten hours a day on the wheelchair with the differently abled trying to train them in the art form. It is tough for me but when I see the joy in them, all the pain seems to vanish,” Syed Sallauddin Pasha tells ‘Metrolife’.

Pasha confesses that he sees disability as a symbol of ability and interprets the same, through dance.

 “My idea of teaching the differently-abled is an indirect way of healing the society. I consider it a moral responsibility to make the differently-abled feel one with the mainstream society. Even today, the differently-abled cannot access a lot of public places due to lack offacilities for them,” he observes.

What Syed Sallauddin Pasha does is to help the differently-abled to harness their strength from within and help them understand that they are capable of doing unbelievable things.

“There are in the team hearing and speech-impaired, intellectually and visually challenged. But when they are all on stage, they act as one and what you see is indeed unbelievable,” he adds.

Pasha adds that patience is the key to his success. But he confesses that he encounters tough times at work.

“Sometimes during the training sessions, I get hit or slapped by the intellectually-challenged children with behavioural problems. They need to be handled with care because they don’t know what they are doing,” he shares. 

When his team of dancers are performing, one wouldn’t really think that they are all wheeler-chair borne.

“Such is the precision with which they execute their act. Most of them can’t see or hear anything but their movements are perfectly coordinated,” notes  Pasha, who is based in Delhi. His team recently performed in the City on the occasion of Mobility India’s 20th anniversary.