A professional Lambertville dance company that weathered the pandemic is now picking up the pieces following Ida's devastation two weeks ago.
Their studio may have been destroyed by flooding, but the performers with
Roxey Ballet say they keep dancing.
"I just kept saying everything is gone, it's all destroyed," says dancer Pinja Sinisalo.
Ida's flooding gushed into Roxey Ballet's headquarters on North Union Street, a neighborhood that experienced catastrophic damage.
"When I broke away the glass and looked into the studio, my heart fell," dancer and choreographer Mark Roxey says.
Roxey founded the ballet more than 25 years ago. To see its longtime home and all of its equipment ruined is crushing.
The three-ballet studios and a black box performance space is now all gutted.
Roxey says struggling to survive the pandemic the past 18 months in which the company pivoted to online performances, it makes this destruction just as they were re-emerging even harder to take.
For now, dancers are rehearsing in space within this firehouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania determined that by Christmas they will be dancing "The Nutcracker" for audiences on tour once again.
The dance studio was also home to The Mill Ballet School.