Long before television’s Dancing with the Stars, ballroom dancers Billy Bray and Frances Woods ascended to stardom, captivating Americans with their classy elegance and grace while the masses gyrated the Lindy Hop, the dance craze of the halcyon Jazz Age. Audiences marveled at their effortless twirls and lifts unaware that Frances, born without eardrums, was deaf and mute and could not hear the orchestra.
The couple met by chance in 1924 while 17-year-old Frances, born Esther Richina Thomas in Girard, Ohio, enjoyed her summer break from the Ohio School for the Deaf in Columbus. Athletic and lithe, Esther asked Anthony “Tony” Caliguire, a 20-year-old steelworker from Pennsylvania who taught dancing on the side, to give her some lessons. In exchange, Esther taught Tony sign language. Esther learned the steps by feeling musical rhythms vibrating in the floor through her sensitive feet, and following cues from Caliguire.
The two clicked; and lessons grew into love. After her graduation in 1926, the couple married, adopted the stage names of Frances Woods and Billy Bray and then began a dancing career that would span nearly 60 years. Woods and Bray dazzled audiences with their acrobatic lifts, spins, and dramatics, adding elements from popular free forms of dancing, such as swing, to their routines and thus redefining traditional ballroom performance. Frances also designed and made her flowing and sequined costumes, assuring that fabric and fit matched the function of her dances.
‘Wonder Dancers’ performed for kings
They performed in elite nightclubs, hotel ballrooms and theaters throughout the 1930-40s, sometimes for heads of states and European royalty. Frances’ deafness remained a secret, so that audiences would concentrate on her graceful steps and leaps, and not on her disability. A Ripley “Believe It or Not” cartoon in 1936, however, revealed her secret, ennobling the pair as the ‘Wonder Dancers’ and inadvertently boosting their celebrity. Thereafter, they would be announced by RKO Studios as the ‘Wonder Dancers.’
The ‘Wonder Dancers’ owned the spotlight until hoofers Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire leapt to stardom via Hollywood films. Still, the bands played on, and so did Bray and Woods, well into the 1950s. After three decades on the road, though, the travel-weary couple settled in Youngstown, near Frances’ hometown, and opened a dance studio in 1958. They performed into their eighties at hotels, resorts and nursing homes for fans of their generation.
In 1978, the Wonder Dancers received the Ohio Governor’s Award for “achievement benefiting mankind and improving the quality of life for all Ohioans.” Bray died in March 2000, age 95; followed by Woods, 93, three months later.
Sources:
“Esther Woods.” Deaf People.com
“Deaf ‘Wonder Dancer’ delighted presidents, kings in 1930s,” thisAbility, Spring 2009, published by Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission.
Stephen Ostrander - Stephen Ostrander
