Texas Tech University Sponsors Dr. Merry Lynn Morris Research in Dance / Disability Studies

Texas Tech University School of Theatre and Dance sponsors two lectures by Dr. Merry Lynn Morris on Research in Dance /Disability Studies on October 30, 2017 at the Creative Movement Studio Room 108: 12:30-1:45PM & 5:30-6:30PM.  Lectures are free & open to the public.  Texas Tech Article: Ballerinas in Wheelchairs by Amanda Castro-Crist   Texas Tech University

Texas Tech University School of Theatre & Dance sponsors two lectures by Dr. Merry Lynn Morris on Research in Dance /Disability Studies on 10/30/2017 at Creative Movement Studio Room 108: 12:30-1:45PM & 5:30-6:30PM.

Here is the Texas Tech article :

BALLERINAS IN WHEELCHAIRS: TCVPA WELCOMES MERRY LYNN MORRIS

October 26, 2017

By: Amanda Castro-Crist

Morris, the assistant director of dance at the University of South Florida, will deliver two public lectures on her groundbreaking research in dance and disability studies.

Merry Lynn Morris

Texas Tech University’s School of Theatre & Dance, housed within the J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual and Performing Arts (TCVPA), has partnered with Student Disability Services to host innovator Merry Lynn Morris, assistant director of the dance program at the University of South Florida.

Morris, whose research focuses on dance and disability studies, will lead several guest lectures and workshops on Monday and Tuesday (Oct. 30 and 31). All events are free and will be held in the Creative Movement Studio located at the corner of Glenna Goodacre Boulevard and Akron Avenue.

Teaching for the International Visitors Leadership Program

Two lectures on Monday are open to the entire Texas Tech and Lubbock communities: 12:30-1:45 p.m. and 5:30-6:30 p.m. in Room 108. Movement for the Performer students may attend a closed lecture from 8-8:50 a.m. Monday, while dance and theater students and faculty are invited to a lecture from 9:30-10:50 a.m., both in Room 108.

Morris also will lead a movement and lecture workshop for Choreography I students from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Room 101. Dance and theater students and faculty are invited to attend the workshop.

Teaching the REVolutions Dance students

“Dr. Morris’s research uniquely and innovatively contributes to the intersections of dance and disability studies,” said Ali Duffy, associate professor of dance at Texas Tech. “She will discuss her creation of a wheelchair for dancers, a project that has garnered international acclaim. She also will discuss her teaching at the University of South Florida and performance with REVolutions Dance, a mixed ability company in Tampa, Florida.”

Morris is a full-time faculty member at the University of South Florida with 20 years’ teaching and research experience, including ballet, Laban movement analysis, research in dance, integrated/inclusive dance and dance kinesiology. Her interest in disability needs was the result of caring for her father over a 21-year period, and she began exploring integrated and inclusive dance in 2002.

She serves on the board for VSA of Florida, the statewide arts and disability organization. Morris has earned five U.S. patents for her innovative work in re-conceptualizing the design of assistive mobility devices, the Rolling Dance Chair Project.

Morris with Rolling Dance Chair Prototype

Courtesy: Jim Lennon

The intersections between dance, disability and assistive technology design are a prominent focus of her creative and scholarly work, which asks how assistive technologies can work with the human body to enable artistic expression and healthful mobility. Morris has been featured and interviewed on NPR’s Science Friday, MSNBC, the Katie Couric show, PBS, CNN, Reader’s Digest and Inventors Digest.

Her invention has been featured at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and in October 2014, her research in assistive mobility devices, as well as ballet pedagogy, was presented at the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science Conference in Basel, Switzerland. Morris has been published in the Journal of Dance Education, the Journal of Research in Dance Education, the Journal of Humanities in Rehabilitation, and Medical Problems of Performing Artists.

Morris is a member and presenter within multiple organizations including the National Academy of Inventors, the National Dance Education Organization, the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science and CORPS de Ballet International.

_______________________________________________________

Science Friday - Latest Coverage Rolling Dance Chair Project with Merry Lynn Morris

Science Friday covered the Rolling Dance Chair Project with Merry Lynn Morris in an article by Julie Leibach and a video:  "A Chair Fit for Dancing"   

{ Article with video .... "A Chair Fit for Dancing" by Julie Leibach }

Here is the video & video link:

 https://youtu.be/yM0VCdIvb4U

Here is a copy of the article:

http://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/a-chair-fit-for-dancing/

A Chair Fit For Dancing

by Julie Leibach

Frank Hull is a dancer. His body is prone to spasms, so he uses a power wheelchair to perform as well as to go about his daily routine. By manipulating the joystick, he can move forwards and backwards and pivot on an axis. The chair is sturdy—heavy-duty enough to plow through snow—and it rolls pretty fast when he lays on the controls.

Developing a dance technique using his utilitarian device has been Hull’s passion for more than 15 years. As he puts it, his craft involves developing “ways of relating to the chair with my body artistically—in essence, creating a movement vocabulary that can be turned into dance.”

So a few years ago, when Hull heard that a Florida-based choreographer named Merry Lynn Morris had invented a power chair with dancers in mind, he had to see it for himself.

“I never thought there would be a chair designed for dance,” says Hull, who’s based in Toronto, Canada. “’Course, I had to get to Florida. Didn’t matter how.”

When he finally met Morris at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa in May 2013, Hull found a chair tailored for artistic expression. The device was sleek and compact, its wheels hidden from sight. And it could move in all directions—including from side to side and diagonally, which commercial manual wheelchairs and most power chairs, including Hull’s, can’t do.

But the chair had another attractive feature: It was “smart.” To command the device, a user straps on a portable, wireless control—in this case, a cell phone—to a mobile part of her body, say the head or the upper back. When she leans in a desired direction, the phone detects the movement and instructs the chair to follow suit. (As far as Morris knows, there are no wireless power wheelchairs on the market; she has a U.S. patent on her chair’s technology.)

“[The chair is] absolutely unique; I’ve never seen anything like this at all,” says Mary Ellen Buning, a seating and mobility specialist for the University of Louisville Physicians in Kentucky. Someone with good control of the muscles in her torso, she says, “could really make full use of this chair for expressive dance.” (Buning hasn’t seen the device in person but watched a video of it in action.)

When Hull gave the chair a spin, he was struck by the freedom of movement it afforded him. “I wasn’t tied to my joystick,” he says. “I could feel the dance more.”

Morris calls her invention the Rolling Dance Chair, and she’s been working on it for more than a decade, earning five patents in the process. To her, the chair is more than an accessibility device—it’s an opportunity to explore new dance techniques.

“The exciting part for me is actually when different people get in it with their different bodies and their different dance backgrounds,” says Morris, who’s the assistant director of the dance program at USF’s School of Theatre and Dance. “There’s a lot of different ways the chair could be used as a movement tool.”

Morris can hardly remember a time when she wasn’t leaping and twirling. She grew up in a household “surrounded by a lot of creativity”—her mother is a visual artist and her father was a teacher and writer—and she picked up dance at age 3. She traces the inspiration for her Rolling Dance Chair to that lifelong passion, and to two formative experiences.

When she was 12, Morris’s dad got into a major car accident that left him with brain damage and reliant on a wheelchair. “He had a lot of medical equipment and a lot of different types of wheelchairs,” she remembers. But none of his devices were particularly user-friendly. His standard manual wheelchair, for instance, “kind of boxed him in,” she says.

Helping her mother maneuver her father and observing the strain that his disability put on her parents’ relationship got Morris “thinking about these kinds of devices as interfaces between people, and how can they be more organic, more conducive to human interaction.”

Then in 2001, a few years after Morris was hired at USF, she began working with a group of dancers with disabilities. “Most of the individuals that I was working with were wheelchair users who had not a lot of control in their lower body but had a fair amount of control in their upper bodies,” she recalls, “so I started thinking a lot about how this device was supporting their performance or, in some cases, inhibiting it.”

In 2006, Morris received a grant from USF to develop an accessibility chair designed for dance. The first thing she did was order several Segways for research purposes. The Segway, she says, “seemed to be the closest idea at the time” to the device she had in mind: a chair that moved in response to subtle body cues. If a user’s arms and hands were free, they “would be more available to interact with other dancers or do other movements,” says Morris.

Student engineering groups at USF helped Morris build what she calls a “rough draft” of her concept: a retrofitted power chair with sensors built into the seat that caused the device to move forward when a user tilted in that direction.

For the next iteration, Morris recruited a professional team consisting of a programmer and a designer and fabricator. Together, they built the first real prototype, which debuted in May 2013.

At first blush, the Rolling Dance Chair looks like a sleeker, futuristic version of a power chair. The seat, reminiscent of an Eames design and imported from Italy, is a rounded piece of translucent plastic that “catches the light well,” says Morris. “I think there’s kind of an elegance about it.”

The seat can move up and down and swivel independently from the chair’s black aluminum base, which contains indentations that can be used as handgrips or footholds, and that enable other dancers to interact with the person in the chair.

The base obscures the chair’s four wheels so that “there’s no interference with costume or dress,” says Mark Rumsey, Morris’s designer and fabricator, who’s based in Southern California. The precise configuration of those wheels, combined with rollers on each tread, allow for the chair’s omnidirectional movement, which the user operates through a Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

When a user straps the phone to her back, for example, and leans in one direction, the phone’s motion sensors—a gyroscope, an accelerometer, and a magnetometer—collect data on her position and movement. “We’re tapping into the natural motion sensor technology that already exists in a phone,” says Morris.

A filtering algorithm cleans up the positional data, which is then relayed to sensors in the chair’s base, “where all the magic happens,” says Neil Edmonston, who did all the programming. After some quick, complex computing, the chair deciphers the sitter’s movement and mirrors it.

“For [the chair] to move, you have to move first,” says Edmonston, who runs a consulting service in Pensacola, Florida. But “it happens in such a short period of time that it looks seamless.”

The degree to which a user leans governs how quickly the chair rolls. “For instance, if I move a little bit, I’ll move slowly. If I lean more, I’ll move faster,” explains Edmonston. “So, it allows you to have a very intuitive and fully controllable type of movement.”

The Rolling Dance Chair also has an alternative mode: A bystander—say, a dancing partner—can operate it, either by tilting the phone or by tracing her hand across the phone’s screen, using it as a “touch-joystick kind of control,” says Morris.

Dancer Luca “Lazylegz” Patuelli tested that mode a couple weeks ago, when he was visiting USF for an integrative dance festival called A New Definition of Dance (which Morris founded). Lazylegz is a b-boy (what popular media often calls a breakdancer), and he incorporates crutches into his routines—he was born with arthrogryposis, which is characterized by limited range of motion in multiple joints.

While a partner operated the Rolling Dance Chair’s control, “I was doing some different designs and different angles using my crutches while I was moving,” he says.

Putting the control (quite literally) in a partner’s hands “adds a completely different element for a spectator, but also for the dancer themselves,” says Lazylegz. Not only do you have to trust your partner, “but you also have to trust the technology.”

Morris and her team are now working on a second prototype of the Rolling Dance Chair in the hopes that they’ll be able to license it commercially. “I’ve been in communication with several different wheelchair companies, and so we’re making progress that way from a business perspective,” she says.

Updates entail motorized height change and seat rotation (these features are manually operated in the current prototype), as well as a new set of wheels in an improved configuration that will ensure smoother, quieter rolling across uneven surfaces.

Dwayne Scheuneman, founder of REVolutions Dance, Inc., an inclusive dance company based in Tampa, has helped Morris test her chair since the beginning. Scheuneman, who has a spinal cord injury, prefers his manual wheelchair because it enables him to perform certain modern dance moves, such as tipping over to the floor and pushing back up again.

But for some dancers, he says, the Rolling Dance Chair could be the device they’ve been waiting for. “Any manual chair is not right for everybody. Any current power chair isn’t right for everybody. So, Merry Lynn’s Rolling Dance Chair, it isn’t going be right for everybody,” says Scheuneman. But “there are people who are going to love it, and it’s going to be so useful”—for dance, but potentially for everyday life, too, he says.

As Morris and other dancers explore the Rolling Dance Chair’s possibilities, they’ll add to a growing repertoire that people with disabilities have been experimenting with for a while.

“I do think that improvements can be made in the wheelchair and in other mobility devices for dance for peak performance, and especially if we want to get to higher levels of artistry,” says Morris, “but people are dancing in the things that they have, in the bodies that they have, and I’m very much a supportive advocate of people dancing however and in whatever creative modes they can.”

Article written by:  Julie Leibach

THANK YOU JULIE LEIBACH !

with love,  Merry Lynn Morris

Latest Dance Chair Experimentation with Merry Lynn Morris

The Rolling Dance Chair continues to improve in design and development. I just experimented this weekend with it again, after having some programming upgrades performed with the engineer I work with in Pensacola, FL. ... Neil Edmonston.  The more movement and creative experimentation with different bodies, the better! I will look forward to working with power chair dancer, Frank Hull in June for more movement exploration in the studio! Frank has done some initial exploration with me in the past, as have dancers, Dwayne Scheuneman and Marcie Ryan with this prototype. Hope to have multiple chairs to work with one day, and more people using them! REVolutions Dance students Jessica and Bree Bree both worked with me and the chair yesterday - exploring new possibilities! The chair is wirelessly controlled, in which the control can be worn on the body or used remotely and the chair is omnidirectional and possesses height change. Many thanks to all who have supported this project and who are or have been involved in it! I first began the project in 2005 - a long, challenging trajectory to get to this point.  As a dance/arts practitioner, I have enjoyed the opportunity to challenge traditional design practices/outcomes and push into new territory of mobility design...so appreciative of all!

https://youtu.be/eowmJMzOluI

https://youtu.be/DdfUJHQpqec

Ripple Effects - Dance Concert

Live .... we are live~!

https://youtu.be/rrJH0LpePFc



Ripple Dance Effects..  Dance Concert... With Jansen Dance and REVolutions Dance Students  Choreography by Merry Lynn Morris, with Cara Hazel and Calandre Kielich and Videography by Ariel Arts - His Sonshine...

Here is the background Ripple dance visual...
https://s.real.com/FGCHm0

Here is the Full video during the live performance with video by Dean & Kari Buxton with Jansen Dance Company.... thank you so much Buxtons & Jansens..!
https://youtu.be/0XZYuWMM51A

Super wonderful to our dancers ... thank you to all and especially parents and caregivers and dancers!

Much Love!

Merry Lynn Morris  & Sonshine

Belarus (Minsk) Dancers Hanna Harchakova (Anna) and Ihar Kisialiou (Igor) Visit Tampa Florida with Merry Lynn Morris

Belarus  (Minsk) Dancers Anna & Igor Visit Tampa Florida with
Merry Lynn Morris & REVolutions Dance at USF

Visiting Dancers from Belarus, (Minsk) contacted me as they toured the U.S and we collaborated in a beautiful class at USF with REVolutions Dance Company in Tampa, Florida.    (See video below.)

Belarus, (Minsk) Dancers with Merry Lynn Morris at USF
Tampa, Florida

A Belarus Project, brought to you by World Partnerships & the U.S. Department of State's International Visitor Leadership Program.

  ( https://youtu.be/cK1dt02MVwM ). 

It was a great pleasure recently meeting visitors from Belarus who are leaders of various disability organizations. We discussed arts and disability programming and opportunities for collaboration. A particular highlight was having Hanna Harchakova, a wheelchair ballroom dance champion, teach a class to the REVolutions Dance students and also participate in the class I taught. A special thanks to the assistants who joined us in the class, Sharon, Laura, Takema and Cara as well as the individuals from Pyramid, Inc. and the parents who were there! This delegation is hosted by World Partnerships, Inc. (www.WorldPartnerships.org), since 2000 the official St. Petersburg and Tampa Bay regional partner of the US Department of State “International Visitor Leadership Program” (IVLP).

The sponsorship of the US Department of State "International Visitor Leadership Program" (IVLP)... is such an impressive act to consider worldwide disabilities and disability in general. As I mentioned at the end of the video segment, "Disability is the one minority that you (everyone) will join if you live long enough."... may we always join the leadership to create the avenues which enable us all!

Beautiful Collaborations ! And to explore the idea of an exchange degree at USF with one of your students !.... I am looking forward to so much more! *

With Love,

Merry Lynn Morris

* on October 14-17, 2015 an incredible collaborative concert at USF Tampa Florida is in the works wiith a grant from the NEA (National Endowments for the Arts) which  I applied for in collaboration with VSA Florida / The State Organization on Arts and Disability. - This concert and workshop will include INTERNATIONAL DANCE ARTISTS with worldwide recognition....(note - I will update here the poster link and bios of all participating ... which will include: Belarus Dancers Anna & Igor.)..... 

Association of University Technology Managers AUTM Video Award for Rolling Dance Chair Project by Merry Lynn Morris - "AUTM Put A Face On It" Award 2013

It was such an honor to have the Rolling Dance Chair Project chosen for the Association of University Technology Managers AUTM Video Award - "AUTM Put A Face On It" Award for 2013!

We worked with CeliCreative Tampa Design Studio to bring this video to fruition and they did a wonderful job! The goal of the AUTM video award is to support/showcase "unique videos that feature the people who benefit from university-developed innovations." The video award focuses upon the real-world, lived application of innovative technologies and the transformation of people's lives. Special thanks to those who appeared in the video including: Jessica and Eileen Hendricks, Dwayne Scheuneman - Director of REVolutions Dance, Dr. Paul Sanberg - USF Senior Vice President for Research & Innovation and Executive Director / Center of Excellence for Aging & Brain Repair, and Valerie McDevitt - U.S. Registered Patent Attorney and Associate Vice President at the University of South Florida for Technology Transfer, Division of Patents and Licensing as well as special thanks to the wonderful efforts of Lauren Golin and Dr. Terri Hunter from the USF Office of Patents and Licensing, who helped it all come together. 

Best to All and many Thanks!

MERRY LYNN MORRIS
Designer, Patent Inventor

http://youtu.be/dH5QDbLSaJE

Rolling Dance Chair on DAYTIME SHOW WFLA with Merry Lynn Morris

It was a real honor to have the Rolling Dance Chair showcased on the DAYTIME SHOW - WFLA Tampa, Florida.  Merry Lynn Morris was interviewed by hosts Cyndi Edwards and Jerry Penacoli, while Dwayne Scheuneman demonstrated the Dance Chair with Merry Lynn.  Here is the video interview: http://youtu.be/sHvLDbU2uR4

From The Daytime Show link which aired 12/19/2013: 

http://www.wfla.com/story/24241030/daytime-the-mobility-chair-project

"Merry Lynn Morris from the University of South Florida joins us to tell us more about the Rolling Dance/Mobility Chair project.  This project was started to allow disabled individuals to be able to express themselves through dance, but has morphed into the development of a chair that gives the disabled unprecedented mobility.  This is a great conversation on how working to solve a specific problem can unexpectedly solve larger, general problems."

Thank You Daytime Show and hosts and producer Deanna Moore! http://www.daytimeonline.tv/ 

We appreciate all your wonderful efforts to get the info out!

Merry Lynn Morris & Sonshine

Merry Lynn Morris on Craig Melvin "BIG IDEA"

As resources go... while Merry Lynn Morris was in Texas on two presentations and teaching Ballet Master Classes at two Universities - Texas A&M and TWU  - MSNBC Craig Melvin interviewed Merry Lynn in Dallas, Texas about the latest news on the Rolling Dance Chair Project!  Bravo to Craig Melvin and MSNBC for making all the spectacular arrangements to get this info out! Amazing timing also and to the driver in getting her there for the interview! .... Very grateful! Thank you Craig Melvin and Dominique Mann of MSNBC and NBC Universal!

with Love

Sonshine (and Merry Lynn) Morris

here follows the video as downloaded from MSNBC:  


on youtube at:  http://youtu.be/lxi1s8XBB_A

Or the video follows from MSNBC and on their link: http://www.msnbc.com/craig-melvin/watch/a-chair-that-helps-the-disabled-dance-57217603634

EXCELLENCE IN INNOVATION AWARD - Merry Lynn Morris 2013 National Academy of Inventors

It was such a privilege to accept the award on behalf of Merry Lynn Morris on 10/21/2013 for the EXCELLENCE IN INNOVATION AWARD for 2013 by the NATIONAL ACADEMY OF INVENTORS for her ROLLING DANCE CHAIR PROJECT AND INVENTION! Dr. Paul R. Sanberg and President of USF Judy Genshaft presented the award with a beautiful plaque!  A wonderful experience for me while Merry Lynn spends her time teaching and presenting in Texas:  Texas A & M  University (TAMU) - three days of intensive Ballet Master Classes with Modern and Improvisation ~ and also graduate studies/presentation at Texas Woman's University (TWU) near Dallas, Texas! Thank you to everyone in coordinating all the presentations and events!

with Love,

Sonshine (and Merry Lynn) Morris

Excellence in Innovation Award for Merry Lynn Morris 2013 National Academy of Inventors
Accepting the Award is Mrs. William R. Morris (Sonshine) - Mom
with President of University of South Florida Judy Genshaft and
President of National Academy of Inventors Dr. Paul R. Sanberg
Photographer is: ©Aimee Blodgett/USF/2013 
THANK YOU TO ALL!!! 

Dance Chair Mention on Katie Couric Show!

It was a wonderful honor to have the Rolling Dance Chair mentioned and viewed on the Katie Couric Show for 10/16/2013!  In a segment called Daniel's List, Katie talks about Merry Lynn Morris and her invention while she shows video and pictures of the new prototype 3. The video clip coverage for the Dance Chair begins 55 seconds in.....

Link to the video - "Daniel's List: 22 Acts of Kindness" : http://katiecouric.com/videos/daniels-list-22-acts-of-kindness/

Merry Lynn Morris on University Beat WUSF

Here is the latest interview coverage on the Rolling Dance Chair Project with Merry Lynn Morris, designer / patent inventor for the new prototype 3.  University Beat at USF link includes both video and an audio / radio interview:

http://www.wusf.usf.edu/radio/program/university_beat/episode/2013-10/rolling_dance_chair

From the interview:

It’s a high-tech device getting national attention—and it’s not the invention of an engineer, but of a dancer! University Beat on WUSF TV introduces you to USF Professor Merry Lynn Morris and her Rolling Dance Chair, which lets people with disabilities dance.

Here is the video http://youtu.be/LvstaT920Rs :

Here is more interview from WUSF on more aspects of the Dance Chair:  http://youtu.be/67UVgZoMWJc

Explaining Dance Chair Features

The new prototype Dance Chair was first tried by Dancers - Marcie Ryan and Frank Hull in May 2013.  It was a magical day for everyone!  Merry Lynn Morris explains the features while Marcie and Frank express their feelings and feedback!  Really - the looks on their faces say it all!!! One thing to mention is that the seat is completely and INSTANTLY changed out to accommodate anyone with their needs or innovation at the time... with 3D manufacturing - it will be perfect in a moment!  Thank you Marcie and Frank for making the long trip to Tampa, Florida for an amazing experience! We also are appreciative of all the efforts in working together so long.... with our private developers Visual Realm (Mark Rumsey) and Vertec (Rudy Bray & Neil Edmonston). .... And the journey continues!

With Love and Appreciation!

Sonshine and Merry Lynn Morris

(Here is the YouTube link:  http://youtu.be/TUIutrx-0sc )

From the Mind of a Dancer Comes a New Kind of Wheelchair ....

INVENTION HAS PEOPLE DANCING IN THEIR SEATS:  A beautiful article relates the newest Dancing Chair prototype which Stephanie Hayes of the Tampa Bay Times covered and we are so grateful for getting the latest info out! Thank You! Thank You! Hoping this creates the opportunities for all it is meant to do!  (Video link:  http://video.tampabay.com/Invention-has-people-dancing-in-their-seats-25186815 ) 



(From this Article Channel 8 and other stations around the U.S. picked up on the story with their own video coverage:  http://youtu.be/ecVWXkO68gA   on YouTube or here:)

Photos from Article:

Dance teacher Merry Lynn Morris and George Elliott, 5, use her electronic dance wheelchair during a mixed-ability dance class

Ella Branscombe, 7, of Clearwater sits in the Rolling Dance Chair invented by dance teacher Merry Lynn Morris.

Merry Lynn Morris works with students during her mixed-ability dance class in August at USF in Tampa.

“Whoa. This is fun,” says Jessica Hendricks, 7, who has spina bifida and is used to a small traditional wheelchair.

William Morris holds his ballerina daughter, Merry Lynn Morris, in this undated family photo

Here is the text of the article:

TAMPA — The kids released their wheelchairs and leg braces, the sticks that help them see and the iPads that help them speak, and piled them in a corner.

They went to Merry Lynn Morris, with her twisting blond hair and legs like a ballerina in a jewelry box. She helped them stretch and rubbed their bellies.

"Reach your arms all the way up," she said. "Look to the sky, and say thank you!"

Morris is a dance professor at the University of South Florida, and more recently, an inventor. She was introducing kids with spina bifida and cerebral palsy to a chair she dreamed up. On this weekend in their class, the chair would let them dance. Not pretend to dance, not be pulled by a dancer, but actually dance.

The kids peered at it, standing tall in the corner of the studio.

Anybody in any body should have the right to dance, Morris said. An accident or a disability needn't relegate the people you love to your back, pushing you, telling you where to go.

If her father had been able to use this chair, he might have danced again, too.

The Rolling Dance Chair was born from the brain of a dancer, not an engineer. It has taken seven years and $150,000 of grant money to get to this point, evolving from a stripped down Segway — those rolling devices that tour groups ride through cities — to a sleek, elegant design.

It's getting closer to what Morris imagined, getting more attention from the world each year. U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a double amputee, tried the chair on a visit to USF in 2010. In October, Morris will present her invention at the Smithsonian Institution during a conference for innovators, speaking alongside the press secretary from NASA and the deputy director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The chair is stately with a synthetic round seat that's clear, designed to almost disappear under the dancer. It is sturdy enough for a second dancer to stand on, spinning, leg extended in full arabesque.

The most important feature of the chair is the person sitting in it. He is in control. When he leans, the chair moves. The wheels can propel the chair in any direction using the slightest movement of a body.

It's an extension of dance, Morris said, not an obstacle. No one thinks twice about a tap shoe, or a ballet shoe with a wooden block on the end. Think of Broadway dances, the rolling desk chairs and elaborate sets. Think of the hoops and flames of Cirque du Soleil.

People have a harder time getting past a wheelchair.

"You create these devices and people are frightened of them," said Morris, 38. "Get out of the way, here comes the wheelchair user."

Reality doesn't have to be so black and white, and dance doesn't have to be so exact. It's something she has learned over the years.

"The manifestation of this project is sort of my whole way of being in the world," she said. "It has been shaped by the desire to bring multiple realities together."

• • •

Morris was a dancer from the start. She had strong ankles and uncanny leg extension. She also loved to take things apart, ride her bike with no hands and try every piece of equipment on the playground.

She enjoyed the rigid instruction of ballet, the structure it provided. But she also loved when her dad danced silly with her, tossed her in the air, threw his head back and let loose one of his wild belly laughs.

Bill Morris was a man of God, his family said, a Gideon who distributed free Bibles, a Navy veteran. He was starting a marketing business with his wife, whose name was Catherine but whom he nicknamed Sonshine when they first met at a prayer meeting. They said he rescued animals and people, bringing in those who needed a place to stay.

When Merry Lynn Morris was 12, she and her father painted her room in their Tampa home a sunny yellow. She remembers him leaving to go get more paint, but he didn't return. His car was hit head on, his family said. He was in a coma, and the doctors didn't think he would survive. The accident left him with a severe brain injury, a blind eye, a broken hip and a shattered knee. After seizures set in, he had intermittent paralysis and was mostly confined to a wheelchair.

They took him ballroom dancing for therapy and got him to try standing between ballet bars.

"The dancing stimulated him the most," said Sonshine Morris. "He was beaming. He would smile."

He didn't understand basic things — that you need an umbrella in the rain, for example. But he could answer obscure questions on Jeopardy! or say something deeply philosophical.

They tried every chair they could find, from power chairs with joysticks to simple soft shell models. The chairs all had drawbacks, elements that felt cage-like and separate.

Merry Lynn Morris danced in a professional ballet company and studied at USF and Florida State. She rarely meshed her dance world and home life. The crisp rules of dance, the exacting finger positions and postures, were a respite from the complicated reality.

"They didn't really feel like they connected," she said. "Later, I kind of realized that people recognize that life is bigger, and there are important things, and you can share those things."

As for Sonshine, she dreamed her husband and daughter might dance together one more time, that he might fly across the stage with her little girl.

• • •

Morris has long been drawn to "mixed ability" dance, kinesiology, ways to combine dance and science. For years, she has worked with REVolutions Dance, a company for dancers with and without disabilities, which offers weekly dance classes for kids.

In 2000, she saw a performance by wheelchair dancers and noticed how they had to pump the wheels, how the chair was more of a distraction than a seamless part of the movement.

She and her mother spent time in the back yard taking apart Bill's old wheelchairs, fashioning them into marionettes, wondering if clamps and sticks and pulls might make the wheels move — might make the chair dance.

In 2005, Morris approached the USF College of Engineering with the idea for a wheelchair that moved with the user's body. The first grant was for $20,000. The college bought two Segways. Students mounted a seat to one.

Another group worked with an existing power chair, reorienting the connection of the joystick. Pressure changes on the seat caused movement similar to a Segway. It was good at first, but like a new pair of shoes giving slow blisters. It was jerky, had trouble stopping.

"The experimentation process in this project is incredibly important," Morris said. "You can theorize in your head all of these kinds of ideas and concepts and things, but then the actuality of being in the chair, is a totally different piece of it."

The chair went to California to a company called Visual Realm, then to Pensacola and a company called Vertec, where developer Neil Edmonston started work. It needed smoother, more intricate controls. Maybe an object that could be strapped to the head or chest of the person in it, programmed to read subtle movements. But also something a caretaker could use in place of pushing. A remote control, in a way.

A smartphone, Edmonston realized, with its ability to respond when a person tilts it. It was the perfect option for this supercharged century, when we're all really just bodies interacting with devices.

"When you have that kind of flexibility, you open yourself to a great deal of opportunities," Edmonston said. "This is a research project that could potentially be very exciting."

Edmonston envisions the chair eventually working like a robotic vacuum cleaner, programmed to know the boundaries of your house, to know that when you unload the dishwasher, you need to move back and to the right to get to the counter.

It could be used for even more than dance. It's what Morris wanted from the start.

"What my mom and I discovered when we were caregivers were the challenges of what disability means," Morris said. "Just navigation through a space that was designed for a 20-year-old able-bodied person, it has really opened my eyes in how we design things, how we make those choices, and why. Who are we thinking about?"

Bill Morris died decades after his accident. But he did get to watch as his daughter's invention took shape. A series of dance performances at USF featured an early incarnation of the Rolling Dance Chair.

He went to three of the shows, watching from the dark wings, mesmerized.

• • •

Merry Lynn Morris helped Jessica Hendricks climb into the Rolling Dance Chair.

The 7-year-old girl with spina bifida had a pink bow in her hair and a tiny, traditional wheelchair in the corner. Morris set controls on a Samsung Galaxy Smartphone and slipped it into a brace against the little girl's chest.

Jessica moved forward. The chair moved forward.

"Whoa," Jessica said. "This is fun. It can turn?"

Jessica moved 45 degrees and the chair spun. Morris hung on, spinning with her, bending deep and extending her leg, and together they flew across the floor.

Stephanie Hayes can be reached at shayes@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3394.


Here is the article link w/video:  http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/from-the-mind-of-a-dancer-a-new-kind-of-wheelchair/2143164 ( Video and pictures by Eve Edelheit)

Thank you, again Stephanie Hayes and all who cared to see this info become reality in those who look for it!

With Love,\

Merry Lynn Morris (and Sonshine)