STRATHMEYER
buy the diagnosis. She shopped around until she found Dr. Brian White at Presbyterian/St. LukesMedical Center, whose cutting-edge techniques and unerring confidence gave her the courage to move forward with the surgery.
“He looked at me in this way that said, ‘I don’t have any doubt in my mind that you’ll be back and better than ever.’”
It wasn’t easy. The surgery required the replacement of Strathmeyer’s left hip, which had been creating increasingly debilitating pain from a genetic condition that caused bone impingements to tear into her muscles— similar to Yankees’ slugger Alex Rodriguez’s surgery earlier this year, only this time with a complete hip replacement.
“(Dr. White) said it looked like a wolverine had gotten in there because it was ripped to shreds,” Strathmeyer said. “So it turns out I wasn’t just being a baby.”
A yearlong journey
Watching Strathmeyer at a recent rehearsal for “A Gothic Folktale” makes it hard to believe she’s ever had any physical problems.
Wonderbound artistic director Garrett Ammon’s choreography requires fluidity and grace for “Folktale,” which centers on themes of magic and myth with theatrical, circus-burlesque costumes and a recurring role for Denver illusionist Professor Phelyx.
In one tableau, female dancers balance cantaloupe-sized white foam orbs in their hands while sliding smoothly across the floor, as if scooping planets from the heavens. Strathmeyer’s poise in it belies her grueling, year-long journey from the operating table to the stage.
“It’s probably best that I wasn’t fully aware of how intense the recovery process would be,” said Strathmeyer, who has also taught Pilates for the last eight years. “Just getting out of bed or taking a shower was a crazy process. It suddenly felt disingenuous to even call myself a dancer because I couldn’t walk or tie my own shoes.”
She eventually shed her crutches four months after the surgery and began methodically re-learning rudimentary dance positions while continuing daily physical therapy in and out of pools and medical centers.
“My poor husband may apply for sainthood after this,” Strathmeyer said. “He was literally with me every step of the way through rehab and saying ‘You’ve got this!’ It was never even a question for him.”
Strathmeyer filled in as communications director forWonderbound until she was able to warm up with the company at smaller performances in art galleries and flash mobs over the summer. At 29, she’s one of the older members ofWonderbound— and its tallest female dancer at 5’9”— and feels that she’s regained her physical and psychological balance enough to do justice to a company whose artistic director this month won the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts & Culture.
“I want to be very grounded and make it look eerily smooth, almost like a bit of CGI is involved,” she said. “I’m coming into this season feeling like this is going to be the year that marks a huge turn for me as an artist. It’s on the edge of extraordinary that this new season and my new career with my new hip are beginning with this show.”