Elien Bervoets is a stunning, 34 year old, wheelchair dancer from Belgium.
Elien was born with spina bifida. This is a congenital condition which caused her to be paralyzed from the waist down and left her without any feeling in both her legs.
Elien and her sister, Greet, who is able bodied, started Ballroom and Latin dancing in 1997, when they were just 9 years old. After six months, they made their debut in the Belgian National Wheelchair Dancing Championships and they immediately won the first prize in the junior division! This tasted like more! There was an immense amount of spectators in the large dance hall and they had loads of fun!
Until now, Elien and Greet won an amazing amount of 30 National Championship titles and 12 Benelux Titles. In 2015 and 2016, they won the first prize at the World Championships in respectively Tokyo and The Netherlands.
Besides their own professional dancing career, Elien and Greet followed programs in both The Netherlands and Belgium to become certified wheelchair dancing instructors. They are now the head trainers of an enthusiastic team of wheelchair dancers in their home country.
Elien now laughs when she thinks back to the time when people often reacted with disbelief when she told them about her dancing ambitions. "You can't do that because you're in a wheelchair", they said. I don't think there ia any way to show the world that if you're in a wheelchair, nothing is impossible!
