HEART is hosting Charleston’s first Disability Pride celebration!

Join us for Charleston’s inaugural Disability Pride Month celebration! We’ll be commemorating the countless reasons that people with disabilities have to be proud of exactly who they are. From the thousands of Disabled citizens of the Lowcountry to the billions of people with disabilities around the world, everyone is valued, loved, welcomed, and celebrated. We’ll be partying at Edmund’s Oast Brewing Co. this Saturday, July 10th from 1 pm - 5 pm, and we’ll have lots of friends with us.

This event is FREE and open to the public of all ages.

Come be a part of our mini parade!

We’ll be marching proudly around the event grounds, and we want you there to march along with us. Line up is at 12:45 pm and the parade steps off at 1:00 pm to kick off the party! You don’t need to register, just wear your proudest outfits and bring whatever celebratory posters or banners you want. This is a fun, bright, and proud way for us to show support for ourselves and the rest of the disabilities community!

HEART Inclusive Arts Community

HEART provides visual arts, music, and performing arts mentorships and community engagement for adults with disabilities who want to grow and develop as artists. At HEART, we have created a center where artists of all abilities work together to create something that enriches and transforms the community.

The Plantation Singers

The Plantation Singers of Charleston, SC are a professional a cappella singing group renowned locally, nationally and internationally for their singing of the music of the Lowcountry. This group of very talented singers is special in that each has a lifetime of musical experience that began with the music of the southern church. The Plantation Singers were first created in June 1996 under the direction of Ms. Lynnette White.

Marka Danielle

Marka Danielle has been performing Classical and Modern Ballet, along with Dance for Musical Theatre since she was nine years old. Marka was raised and trained in Baltimore, MD at the Harriet Sauber Eisner Studio and The Baltimore Ballet. She also regularly performed with The Baltimore Actors Theater, Spotlighters Theater, The Vagabond Players and other local professional theater companies.

After high school at the The Bryn Mawr School, Marka studied at the Boston Ballet School and was offered a full scholarship at The Boston Conservatory and then Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, where she was invited into the Ailey’s prestigious Ailey II Performance Company.

In 1981, having been offered a job to teach Modern Ballet in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Marka took her work there for nearly 8 years, training dancers and actors, as well as performing in and choreographing for Concert Dance, numerous International Musical Theater Productions, Television and Movies.

Upon returning to the United States, in order to have Health Insurance, Marka became a Firefighter and EMT, working for The James Island Fire Department and Charleston County EMS, in her mind, a new kind of performance art. Always the dancer and teacher, she also renewed her studies in anatomy, physiology, kinesiology and pedagogy, in order to train dancers and non-dancers alike to be HEALTHIER of body and mind. She became a Personal Trainer and is a Corrective Exercise Specialist with the National Academy of Sports Medicine.

After a cervical Spinal Cord Injury in 1994 that should have left Marka paralyzed from the shoulders down, she used her own Dance Fitness program, Ultimate Physicality, a ballet based exercise program which she created in Argentina, as her physical therapy. In 2001, she was invited to teach this technique at the Medical University of SC and at other dance and fitness studios.

After a second SCI in 2012, that left her an incomplete quadriplegic and full-time wheelchair user, Marka studied wheelchair dance in New York City with Kitty Lunn and Alice Sheppard at Infinity Dance Theater, where she was invited to perform, as well as in Atlanta with Full Radius Dance Company. She has performed in Integrative Dance performances in Charleston, with members of Annex Dance Company, Ballet Evolution and Laura Ball’s UNED!TED Concert Series. Marka is presently continuing her training in Yoga to be a certified Yoga Instructor, adapting it for all physical abilities as she has had to for herself.

Marka now takes her passion for dance to a whole new place of awareness. She is more determined than ever to help dancers of all ages and levels to stay fit and healthy and hopes to share with anyone who wants to watch and/or learn, her expression of the Art that she has always loved, along with the message that SCI and other physical challenges, doesn’t mean life as you knew it has ended, it just means the journey has changed directions.

(Biography from Dance Conservatory of Charleston

Adam Gorlitsky

Our story began on April 2, 2016 when our founder, Adam Gorlitsky, became the first paralyzed man to walk the Cooper River Bridge Run using a ReWalk robotic exoskeleton. The 6.2 mile race took him nearly 7 hours and exactly 17,932 steps to complete. It was on this day that I GOT LEGS was officially born; however though, Adam’s journey began nearly a decade earlier…

On the night of December 30, 2005, Adam was involved in a catastrophic car accident which left him paralyzed from the waist down with a spinal cord injury. His doctors believed he would never walk again. In August of 2015 though, after a decade of living with paralysis, Adam was given the opportunity to explore a breakthrough new technology – a ReWalk robotic exoskeleton — a groundbreaking device that would allow him to stand up and walk again. It was at this moment that lead him to start training for the 2016 Cooper River Bridge Run, and fundraise for his own personal exoskeleton.

I GOT LEGS started out as a slogan Adam put on t-shirts to help raise funds for his own personal exoskeleton; but shortly after he crossed the finish line of the 2016 Cooper River Bridge Run, it became an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to ReEnabling paralyzed athletes to walk again.

Adam is currently using his ReWalk robotic exoskeleton to walk one-million steps within road races throughout the country. Please follow our Facebook and Instagram pages to keep up to date on his one-million steps journey, and all things I GOT LEGS.

The V Tones

Charleston’s only ukulele hot club jug band vaudeville ragtime neo-retro-postpostmodern beachfront quasi-primitive anachronistic revolutionary anti-inflammatory mass catharsis jazz freakout and philharmonic group therapy session.

Visit with the Snow Queen and the Web-Slinger.png

Thanks to Curiouser Entertainment, we’ll have two very heroic guests swinging by to take photos and hang out at Disability Pride!

Stop by the photo booth at 2 pm to meet these magical friends!

Tons of folks from the community will be there!

What is Disability Pride?

Launched in Boston in 1990, the same year the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed, Disability Pride has been a part of the disabilities community each July, celebrating the over 1 billion people around the world with disabilities, honoring the Disabled Identity, reinforcing the fact that disability is not abnormality, rather it’s a part of the beautiful diversity that is being human, and fighting against a history of stigmatization, shame, and isolation with unabashed self-determination and PRIDE!  Parades and festivities happen every year in major cities like Chicago (the first parade, starting in 2004) and New York (since 2015). Disability Pride is officially recognized by at least two cities nationwide, including New York (in 2015) and San Francisco (in 2020), though very few cities and no states have official proclamations commemorating the month.  It also has yet to receive any official National designation in the U.S. Code.  More than just a means of self advocacy and a push for acceptance, Disability Pride is above all a celebration of inclusion and the individuals with disabilities who are proud to be themselves![Image description: Top left photo shows two young boys, one using a white cane, standing in front of a banner at a parade. From the 2015 New York City Disability Pride parade (the first parade in NYC). Top right, a black and white photo of Disability activists Marca Bristo, Paul Miller, Judy Heumann, Justin and Yoshiko Dart in front of a parade of people and a painted banner reading “‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’ - Martin Luther King, Jr.”. Photo date unknown, but possibly from the first celebration in 1990. Bottom left, a black pickup truck parading down a city street followed by people waving and holding red, white, and blue banners, with one that reads “Pride”, from the “Disability Independence Day March” in 1993. Bottom right, a photo of two women and a man using wheelchairs followed by a crowd of people in “Disability Pride NYC” t-shirts, from the 2019 Disability Pride parade in New York City. Text in the middle of the image reads “Disability Pride” on a blue background with a yellow burst graphic.] — Launched in Boston in 1990, the same year the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed, Disability Pride has been a part of the disabilities community each July, celebrating the over 1 billion people around the world with disabilities, honoring the Disabled Identity, reinforcing the fact that disability is not abnormality, rather it’s a part of the beautiful diversity that is being human, and fighting against a history of stigmatization, shame, and isolation with unabashed self-determination and PRIDE!
Parades and festivities happen every year in major cities like Chicago (the first parade, starting in 2004) and New York (since 2015). Disability Pride is officially recognized by at least two cities nationwide, including New York (in 2015) and San Francisco (in 2020), though very few cities and no states have official proclamations commemorating the month. It also has yet to receive any official National designation in the U.S. Code. More than just a means of self advocacy and a push for acceptance, Disability Pride is above all a celebration of inclusion and the individuals with disabilities who are proud to be themselves!
[Image description: Top left photo shows two young boys, one using a white cane, standing in front of a banner at a parade. From the 2015 New York City Disability Pride parade (the first parade in NYC). Top right, a black and white photo of Disability activists Marca Bristo, Paul Miller, Judy Heumann, Justin and Yoshiko Dart in front of a parade of people and a painted banner reading “‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’ - Martin Luther King, Jr.”. Photo date unknown, but possibly from the first celebration in 1990. Bottom left, a black pickup truck parading down a city street followed by people waving and holding red, white, and blue banners, with one that reads “Pride”, from the “Disability Independence Day March” in 1993. Bottom right, a photo of two women and a man using wheelchairs followed by a crowd of people in “Disability Pride NYC” t-shirts, from the 2019 Disability Pride parade in New York City. Text in the middle of the image reads “Disability Pride” on a blue background with a yellow burst graphic.]

We could use your help!

HEART Inclusive Arts Community is thrilled to host Disability Pride for the first time in Charleston, keeping it free and open to the public. It takes a whole community of supporters to make a celebration like this possible and ACCESSIBLE.