In classical ballet, there is a position called RESIDENCE. The dancer stands on one leg with the other raised – either forward or backward, slightly bent at the knee. It’s a dancer and pose educator that Gina Mayers maintains a remarkable poise—one that defies the challenges of balancing a dynamic dance career and living with multiple sclerosis (MS).
“Dance defines my spiritual being. It’s physical, it’s complicated, it brings great joy,” says Gina. “It allows me to be vulnerable in a way that is impossible in everyday life. I can be myself without fear of self-judgment.”
Gina began ballet classes at the age of six in her home country of Barbados. That joyous journey was tragically cut short by the sudden death of her father five years later.
“When my father died, we were unable to afford dance classes as we had only one income,” she recalls. This forced her mother Ingrid Mayers to make the agonizing decision for Gina and her sister to stop training.
It was a massive blow, as Gina was already struggling to cope with her father’s death. “While everyone cried during the grieving process, Gina was numb – unable to cry,” says Ingrid.
A year later, Gina — a “daddy’s girl” — still hadn’t shed a tear. She refused to talk about her father’s death. So Ingrid tried one more thing: she re-enrolled Gina in Dance Place under a scholarship offered by then-director Elizabeth Bayley.
Understandably, Gina struggled with the technique during her first year back, prompting them to postpone her exam at the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD). “When that happened, a fire was lit in me,” she says, her eyes shining. “I got a copy of the 4th grade sheet music and every night I had the whole class practice on the grass outside with the stereo. My burden was my patio ledge.”
It was a turning point for him. “While I was building my performance and artistic technique, I didn’t realize that dance was changing me,” she says.
One evening, when he came home after class, he finally started to cry. “Dance allowed me to tap into my deepest feelings of grief … it was a form of therapy that didn’t require talking.”
A year later, Gina sat the RAD Grade 4 exam, gaining distinctions in that and every exam through Grade 8. She made a lasting impression on Bayley and current Dance Place director Adonia Evelyn, as well as her colleagues alumna Simonne Cumberbatch and Dr. Tamica Lawrence. They describe Gina as “fearless, determined, dream-seeking and deeply caring.”
TheIt was no surprise that Gina pursued dance professionally. But no one expected her journey. In 2009, when she was completing her BFA in Creative Arts: Dance & Film at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, she experienced blurred vision and memory loss. She was 23 at the time.
She was hospitalized after visiting an eye specialist and a neurologist. Her eyesight had deteriorated rapidly, leading to blindness in one eye. The diagnosis? Optic neuritis. Steroids helped her regain most of her sight, but she never fully recovered.
MRI scans showed lesions around her brain and doctors told her she was at high risk for MS. She experienced crippling nerve pain, severe memory loss and constant exhaustion – but was given no medication.
“You are always hurting with body aches. Your nerves are firing a lot, so there’s electrical pain radiating down your arms,” says Gina. “Stiff neck, depression, lack of balance and hand-eye coordination are also symptoms.”
She saw two other neurologists, getting inconclusive results each time. So she took a leap of faith – enrolled in the Ailey School at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York.
“I realized if this keeps getting worse, I can do what I really want to do on a bigger scale,” she says.
OOver the years, Gina has been able to perform at numerous festivals and events, in music videos, film and television, and in a variety of styles – jazz, ballet, West African, modern and contemporary.
She danced and choreographed a solo for the first annual Summer Bricolage in New York (2017), produced by acclaimed Broadway star and actor Taye Diggs. Ten years ago, she performed at the Barbados Music Awards, sharing the stage with acts such as Rihanna. She also represents Barbados as an official US-based cultural ambassador in dance.
But it hasn’t always been an easy road. In 2014, she finally received an MS diagnosis – five years after her first symptoms. The trajectory of her promising dance career changed completely.
With her hand-eye coordination impaired, turns, pirouettes and even balancing on one leg sometimes became almost impossible. At one point, she experienced numbness in both feet and had to ask her friend if her toes were pointing. Short-term memory difficulties made maintaining the choreography a challenge; she now relies heavily on muscle memory.
“I missed shows and rehearsals because I was sick or blind, and I got cut because I was constantly sick,” she recalls.
Early treatments also caused a number of side effects, including depression, and steroid injections caused significant weight gain. “Dance is an aesthetic sport, [it] it made me not considered for roles because I no longer had the ideal body type,” she says.
But she is now on a new course of medication and much happier with the results.
“With dance, [there’s also] a way in which my aesthetic—being a dark-skinned black woman—would influence the roles I had the technical and artistic ability to take on,” she says. “Once I found where I fit in, I embraced it,” she says.
In 2019, Gina was selected as a choreographer and teacher at the prestigious Dwana Smallwood Center for the Performing Arts, whose founder Dwana Smallwood was declared “one of the greatest modern dancers” by Vogue. Gina was also a teaching assistant at the Ailey School and a dance specialist and choreographer with the South Asian Youth Action (SAYA) dance program, among others.
“My favorite part is performing in big venues and the reactions of the audience – especially the kids,” she says.
In 2017, Gina developed the movement component of Shadow Box Theatre’s One Foot in One Foot Out curriculum workshop at Children of Promise – an organization that nurtures children of incarcerated parents. She was also commissioned to write and develop a dance syllabus based on New York Timeshe congratulated Earth and Me musical.
Gina’s positive attitude – choosing to live life with passion and no regrets – rubs off on the children she teaches and is evident in all her interactions. “Almost in life, get all you can from it – the manna, the nectar. Live in the present!” she urges.
Every day, Gina is inspired by trailblazers like Aesha Ash, Lauren Anderson, Hope Boykin, Misty Copeland, and Trinidad-born Pearl Primus—all of whom overcame incredible odds, breaking barriers for black women in dance and contributing immeasurably to the art.
Their accomplishments inspire Gina to keep striving – to work every day to do what brings her joy and impact the lives of young dancers for the better. And always, with attitude
MS is one of the most common causes of disability in adults in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. It is two to three times more common in women than in men.
