Dance studios help fight the battle against cancer

By Steve Sucato

When Ali Dietz came up with the idea for “Dancers Give Back” in 2008, she wasn’t thinking about how the event would help sustain a charitable foundation or how it would lead to the founding of a special research project. The 21-year-old student and dance instructor only knew that her friend Jacquie had cancer and she needed to do something to help.

“We fund-raise to go to competitions all the time,” Dietz told her mother, Mary Alice Dietz, owner of Mary Alice’s Dance Studio in Orchard Park, New York. “Why can’t we fund-raise for Jacquie?”

Dancers from Mary Alice Dance Studio in Orchard Park, New York, perform These Are the Days, a tribute dance to Jacquie Hirsch. (Photo by Jereme Tatar)

So in October 2008, after months of preparations that included mass mailings to area businesses soliciting donations, organizing publicity, and sending out invitations to Western New York’s dance community, the inaugural “Dancers Give Back” event took place. Fifteen dance studios participated in the one-day event, which raised $17,000.

Unfortunately, Jacqueline Elisabeth Hirsch never got to witness this outpouring of support. The 23-year-old blond beauty with a luminous smile passed away just weeks before the benefit, on September 6, 2008, after complications from a second bone marrow transplant in her battle with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL).

“Jacquie danced from the time she could walk,” said her father, Torey Hirsch, who owns Greater Buffalo Gymnastics and Fitness Center in Getsville, New York (a Buffalo suburb). As a child Jacquie trained in dance at Spezio’s Dance Dynamics, a business that shares a building with her father’s fitness center.

After high school Jacquie attended the State University of New York at Geneseo, where she pursued a degree in early childhood education. There she met Ali Dietz, who belonged to the same sorority (Sigma Delta Tau); both were on the swimming and diving team. At Geneseo the pair formed the bond that is at the heart of “Dancers Give Back.”

Now an annual event, last year’s “Dancers Give Back” was held October 10 at Orchard Park’s Ellicott Elementary School. Thirty area dance studios came out to remember Jacquie and to raise money for The Jacquie Hirsch for A.L.L. Foundation, a charity run by the Hirsch family that helps other families touched by the disease, and for a research project to study it at Buffalo’s Roswell Park Cancer Institute, started by one of Jacquie’s doctors, Eunice Wang.

Upwards of 800 people attended the 2009 event, which included a six-hour dance-a-thon at which many of the participating dance studios performed. Other attractions included a baked goods and pizza sale; a cake walk to win any of 50 specialty cakes, including doll-themed and guitar-shaped ones; and a raffle of 240 gift baskets packed with donated items from area merchants. A silent auction featured items such as an autographed football and jersey from Buffalo Bills receiver Terrell Owens.

“I am touched and moved by this event. It is for Jacquie and others like her that I do what I do. When I meet a patient like her, I work harder and harder to find a cure.” —Eunice Wang, MD

Along with the Dietzes, more than 50 volunteers helped put together the event, which raised $19,340. Most of the profits came from the event’s $10 admission fee and the raffles. To get donated raffle items, says Mary Alice Dietz, “it is people putting their heads together and figuring out, ‘Hey, I know this person and I can get this or that.’ You would be surprised how generous people can be in support of a good cause.”

The event’s many dance performances featured dancers of all ages and skill levels in a mix of competition-style routines ranging from contemporary and hip-hop to tap and lyrical. A highlight was a “We Are the World”–type group dance number choreographed by Mary Alice Dietz and performed by all the participating dancers several times throughout the afternoon. Spezio’s Dance Dynamics and Mary Alice’s Dance Studio choreographed and performed several dance works in Jacquie’s honor, set to some of her favorite songs.

The dancers also participated in a costume relay in which teams put on silly costumes and raced each other to win prizes. In addition, they were treated to a hip-hop master class taught by So You Think You Can Dance top-20 contestant Tony Bellissimo.

“It such a great thing to know that so many dancers in our community can get together to have an impact on helping to further cancer research,” says 19-year-old Alexia Buono, a dancer and teacher at Celebrity Dance Emporium in Amherst, New York.

Jill Jaros, owner of Rock Steady Dance Center in Cheektowaga, New York, echoes Buono’s sentiments: “I think it is important for my students to be a part of ‘Dancers Give Back’ and to support the community and the cause. It is something they can feel really good about.”

At an event where virtually everyone who attended had a relative, friend, or acquaintance with cancer, a sense of goodwill and pride in everyone was palpable.

Perhaps no one outside those closest to Jacquie understood the event’s emotional impact more than Holly Humphreys, owner and director of Eugenia’s Dance Studio (Studio E) in West Seneca, New York, and her students. They lost their longtime studio director and mentor, Eugenia Smith (Humphreys’ mother) to pancreatic cancer in July 2009 at age 67 (see “FYI,” Dance Studio Life, December 2009). “I think a lot of my students took this event quite personally because of the death of my mother,” says Humphreys. “We were happy to be part of such a great event where so many studios came together for such a great cause.”

Mary Alice Dietz credits the closeness of the Western New York dance community with making “Dancers Give Back” a success and she hopes to involve even more studios this year. “I think this event has brought our dance community even closer together,” says Dietz. “It has not only made the dancers here more aware of ALL, it has also shown them that their dancing can be put to use for a larger purpose.”

Asked if she saw “Dancers Give Back” branching out to help other causes, Mary Alice Dietz says, “It would be really cool if people around the country started doing something like [it] for whatever their charity is. I don’t see why someone couldn’t do like Ali did for another good cause.”

Of the many tributes to Jacquie and reminders of the purpose behind “Dancers Give Back,” perhaps none was more touching and sobering than Dr. Wang’s, who said a few words to those in attendance: “I am touched and moved by this event. It is for Jacquie and others like her that I do what I do. When I meet a patient like her, I work harder and harder to find a cure. Unfortunately, cancer is all too common.”

Hopefully, through the efforts of people like the Dietzs, Jacquie’s journey will be a road less traveled by others in the future.

For more information on “Dancers Give Back,” visit dancersgiveback.com. To find about more about Jacquie Hirsch and The Jacquie Hirsch for A.L.L. Foundation, visit jacquieforall.com.

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