Marisa Hamamoto Is Shattering Stereotypes About Dancers: ‘We’re Changing the Narrative Around Disability’
One of PEOPLE’s Women Changing the World in 2021, Marisa Hamamoto founded inclusive dance company Infinite Flow in 2015
Six months after suffering a rare form of stroke in 2006 that left her paralyzed from the neck down, Marisa Hamamoto walked out of the hospital. But the psychological scars remained.
“I was still paralyzed on the inside,” the trained dancer — one of PEOPLE’s Women Changing the World in 2021 — says of the years of PTSD she suffered as a result of racism, body-shaming and three sexual assaults. As a Japanese American growing up both in Japan and the United States, Hamamoto constantly “felt like I didn’t belong or I wasn’t enough,” she recalls. “It was no after no, rejection after rejection.”
She left the dance world completely for nearly four years. “I was scared to dance,” she says, “and scared to be in the presence of people. I had these nightmares of the entire paralysis happening again.”
A holiday party featuring salsa dancers reignited her love for dance and led Hamamoto to take up ballroom dancing. That’s when, by chance, she discovered the world of wheelchair dance as well.
“I did some research and learned that one in four people have a disability, and the arena of dance and disability is very underdeveloped,” she says. “I didn’t think it was fair that people with disabilities didn’t have equal access.”
Through social media, she connected with Adelfo Cerame Jr., a wheelchair bodybuilder, and asked if he’d like to try dancing with her sometime. Hours into their session, “I realized dance doesn’t discriminate,” Hamamoto says. “My soul was telling me I had to share this with the world.”
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Months later, in 2015, Hamamoto formed Infinite Flow, a Los Angeles-based dance company that employs dancers with and without disabilities.
“We’re changing the narrative around disability and diversity,” she says. “We’re using dance as a way to dismantle stereotypes.”
Though she admits there was a learning curve in the mechanics of the choreography, she says she and her team approach it from an optimistic standpoint. “Instead of thinking something doesn’t work, we think, ‘How can this work?’ “ she shares. “There’s always a way.”
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Infinite Flow has performed for everyone from Fortune 500 CEOs to schoolchildren — whom Hamamoto finds the most impressionable.
“What you’re exposed to as a child stays with you your whole life,” she explains. “So when you’re exposed to inclusion at a younge age, it stays with you. I’ve seen the impact we have on children and it’s encouraged us to expand our youth program.”
The experience has helped Hamamoto find her voice, too, standing up to discrimination against her colleagues and herself as an Asian-American, especially amid the past year when attacks against the AAPI community are on the rise.
“I’m on a constant journey of exploration and better learning, better understanding of how I can be a better agent of change,” she says. “I know I’m standing up for the right things and doing the right things, but not everyone is always ready to receive that.”
Gaining visibility through work, Hamamoto hopes she’ll also inspire “women who look like me, who can learn it’s possible to align your passions with your purpose and create a career out of it.”
She continues, “As a dancer, I’d always been in this constant struggle of feeling I had to fit in a box. I never fit that box. So I built my own.”
Charles Barkley jokes about losing weight to dance the hora at daughter’s Jewish wedding
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NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley is looking forward to his daughter’s wedding to a Jewish entrepreneur. He’s just a little worried about the hora.
“I’ve been really working out hard because apparently they’ve got to pick me up in a chair,” Barkley told Jimmy Kimmel on his talk show Tuesday night about the most harrowing feature of the traditional celebratory Jewish dance.
The former power forward, listed at 6-foot-5 in programs, was once known as the “Mound Round of Rebound” for his prowess on the boards and chunky physique.
“Listen, I need all Jewish people on deck, brother. Cause I can only get so skinny by Saturday, man,” Barkley said. “It’s like I’m a soldier, all hands on deck.”
Cristiana Barkley, a Columbia Journalism School graduate and the basketball legend’s only daughter with wife Maureen Blumhardt, is marrying Ilya Hoffman, founder of the digital marketing company DemandByte, this weekend.
The wedding reportedly will take place in Phoenix, where the basketball star spent part of his career and the rules about gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic are relatively relaxed.
Hoffman is a graduate of the University at Albany who also studied at Baruch College in New York City and speaks Russian, according to his LinkedIn profile. (He shares a name with the brother of activist Abbie Hoffman, who featured in the Golden Globe-winning film “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”)
The wedding comes nine months after Barkley publicly condemned anti-Semitism expressed by some Black athletes and entertainment figures last summer.
“Y’all want racial equality. We all do. I don’t understand how insulting another group helps our cause,” he said at the time.
Kimmel asked if Barkley sees himself as comfortable enough with Hoffman’s family to “hang out” with.
“I love his family, they are amazing people, they’ve been living in Long Island for a long time,” he said. “It’s going to be a welcome addition to my family.”
