Natalie Calderon, Not Just an Average Dancer
She’s only 15 years old, but she has earned multiple scholarships for dancing and she now trains and performs with a senior company. She performs hip-hop, ballet and tap. Her audiences love her. Her instructors are impressed with her talent. But, that’s not all. She wears a prosthetic on her right leg because she was born without a tibia in her right leg causing the amputation of her lower right leg.
Calderon was sad as a child because she wanted a leg so that she could be like the other kids her age. One day she announced that she wanted to be a dancer like her cousin and she started dancing at the age of 13. She didn’t even mention her prosthetic leg to her instructors. Her most recent instructor didn’t know about her disability until eight months after he started working with her when she and her mother told him.
She says it’s not all great – she experiences pain when her knee dislocates and when she gets blisters from her prosthetic, but she works through it to continue to reach her dream.