Dance Offers Key To Mobility For Actor With Cerebral Palsy

By Michelle Diament
November 25, 2009
For three decades Gregg Mozgala struggled to walk with cerebral palsy forcing his body up on its toes and wavering from side to side. But at 31, that’s all changing thanks to a choreographer.

Mozgala, an actor, has been working with Tamar Rogoff for just eight months, but is slowly gaining use of muscles and tendons that had been off-limits all his life. In intensive sessions, the two work on one area of the body at a time focusing on tension-release. Unlike physical therapists he’d seen in the past, Mozgala says Rogoff has given him the key to access his own body.

The result is that Mozgala can now walk more smoothly and doesn’t fall like he used to. And it proves what scientists have come to believe about the brain — that it’s constantly changing and able to grow.

The pair’s success is also yielding a four-person hour-long dance premiering in December in New York City, much more than the 10-minute presentation the two envisioned at first, reports The New York Times.