This video of Dergin Tokmak dancing with his crutches is absolutely sensational. He’s an amazingly talented dancer and a shining example for anyone who is interested in dance, less able or otherwise.
Tokmak was diagnosed with Polio when he was just one year old and has been paralyzed from the waist down ever since. But he says he always messed about, moving around on his crutches and then when he was a teenager he started dancing. Inspired by a twenty second clip of someone dancing using crutches on a dance video, he started to focus more of his efforts on becoming a professional dancer. In 2003, incredibly, he saw that Cirque Du Soleil were looking for someone who could dance on crutches. After a five day audition he was offered a role and since then he has performed with the show over 2,000 times.
In 2011 he appeared on the German version of Britain’s Got Talent (not, as it happens, translated as “Germany’s Got Talent”). The judges loved him, telling him that they were “happy that we decided to let you into the finals. You used your handicap and made it into an advantage for yourself.” He’s also danced with a variety of other dance troupes and even released an autobiography in 2012.
This video shows how incredibly talented he is. It takes a little while to get going – beginning with him sitting on a chair and really just getting warmed up. Then he starts to spin the crutches around his head, getting pretty fancy, and you start thinking “OK, this is pretty good”. But when he stands up the whole thing just blows your mind. The way he glides around using his crutches and the strength he shows too to lift himself is just staggering. But don’t take our word for it, watch it yourself: