Marisa Hamamoto was in the middle of a college dance class when she experienced a spinal stroke that left her paralyzed from the neck down. Doctors told her what no dancer ever wants to hear: that she may never walk again. "In that moment, I thought my life was over," Hamamoto says. "Dancing was everything to me." Despite the odds, she was back on her feet a few months later. She returned to the studio with a renewed devotion to her craft and a vision for how to make the sport even better.