Dancer overcomes shattering setback

Kelley Martin has made a new life for herself since her accident and wants to inspire others to do the same. Photo / Dean Purcell

Kelley Martin was 19 and had just been selected by a leading performing arts school to tour the country doing what she loved to do - dance.

But her dreams were shattered when she and a friend were hit by a car being driven by a man who was fiddling with his radio. The vehicle's headlights were also not working.

Now, 11 years later, after multiple surgeries and being told she would never dance again, the 31-year-old has followed her dream of opening her own dance studio. She also teaches aerobics, Pilates, yoga and Zumba at a leisure centre in Stanmore Bay, just north of Auckland.

Mrs Martin is sharing her story in the hope of inspiring others who have been involved in accidents, such as Lynette Kilmartin, who may never walk again after she was run down by a speeding driver last year.

Mrs Martin's accident happened one night in late 1999 after she and a friend were walking towards a movie theatre in central Auckland.

She had just completed a year-long course at the Excel School of Performing Arts and had been accepted to travel with a group of students around New Zealand dancing at different venues for a year. Afterwards, she hoped to dance professionally on cruise ships.

But as the teenager stepped out to cross the road, she was hit by a sedan and flew head first through the windscreen, her body draped across the bonnet.

"The first thing I thought was, 'I'm really uncomfortable'. So I turned to the driver and said, 'Can you sit me up?' But he looked like he'd seen a ghost."

Her friend ended up under the vehicle with a broken nose.

Mrs Martin broke her lower leg in at least four places and had a metal rod inserted down her shin. She also had a plate inserted in her broken shoulder and plates and pins down her arm to hold it in place. She had six broken ribs which were eventually replaced with metal ones.

Over the years, Mrs Martin has undergone about seven surgeries, the latest only a month ago on her hip.

"There have been so many complications ... metal taken in, metal taken out."

Mrs Martin wasn't able to walk properly for about 18 months or lift her right arm.

"The surgeons actually said to me, 'You'll never be active again, you'll never be able to dance or do aerobics, so get it into your head that it is quite severe and we're not quite sure how your leg's going to heal.'

"Quite often I'd be sitting in bed and all my friends would be graduating dance school and going on to have these amazing careers and I'd be going, 'Well, I have to go back to square one, what am I going to do with my life now?"'

But she said she was "quite a stubborn little thing" and pushed herself, starting with Pilates and yoga before beginning a sports science course at Unitec and being given a job as a personal trainer at Les Mills, where she started doing aerobics.

Mrs Martin, who got married last year, is in her second year of a dance teaching course with Apollo Theatre School, "keeping up with the best 18-year-old dancers in New Zealand".

In March she opened a studio, Dare to Dance, where she teaches American jazz, hip-hop and fairy ballet.

And she got her driver's licence in December, thanks to encouragement from her "wonderful husband Zane", which she said was "such a big achievement for me as I had a fear of driving since my accident".

Mrs Martin holds no animosity towards the driver, who she said was charged with reckless driving.

"I know going through something like that is quite a psychological thing for the driver as well as for the patient, so I definitely didn't want to charge him ... It was just a pure accident."