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What if the most powerful therapy session a kid has this week isn't a therapy session at all?
In this episode of Coral Currents, I sat down with Carly Bonanno, an occupational therapist and founder of Everybody Dance Now — an inclusive, recreational dance program in Salem, New Hampshire built for kids who haven't always had a place in traditional studios. Carly grew up dancing from age three, went on to study OT, and eventually stopped waiting for those two worlds to connect and built the connection herself.
The results speak for themselves. Kids who come in shy and barely participate on day one are requesting songs and leading freeze dances by week five. Parents are exhaling in hallways. And one 18-year-old student — inspired by Dance Moms — just took first place at her first competition, performing a solo she choreographed to music she picked herself.
As Carly puts it: "I just want them to feel comfortable and confident — participating in whatever capacity that means for them."
That philosophy carries into her outpatient OT practice too. Music sets the regulation tone before a session even starts. Obstacle courses become dance games. Bilateral coordination work looks nothing like jumping jacks. Kids buy in because they're not doing exercises — they're having fun — and the skills generalize because joy travels home with them.
This episode is for any provider who's ever felt the tension between goal-driven work and the kind of whole-child thriving that's harder to measure but impossible to miss.
🎧 Listen to Coral Currents Episode 15 now — and find out what a dance competition has to do with self-advocacy
