“As parents, we have to be positive so that everyone else can be positive too,” she adds. “But it’s difficult sometimes. Everybody looks at her, everybody asks questions.”

The Stiernagles were seven months pregnant with their first daughter when they found out that she would be born without all of the bones in her legs. Holding her, Stiernagle says, was much different than holding a child with legs.

“There was nothing hanging off the side,” she says. “It was strange when our other kids came along.”

They have met only two other people with the same condition — a child in Texas, and a man in his 80s who told them that he had never known anyone else with it.

As far as Lilly is concerned, she’s just another dancer. She’ll perform in the summer dance program in August and then keep taking classes as long as she can. Besides horses, dance is her favorite thing.

“I asked her what she wanted to be when she grows up,” her mother says. “She said, “A ballerina who rides a horse.’”

Spotlight Dance experiences success

Lilly Stiernagle is one of more than 200 dancers between the ages of 3 and 18 taking classes from Spotlight Dance, which has its main studio in Wells but also works with students in Minnesota Lake, Good Thunder and Mapleton.

Some of those students, partner and teacher Brittany Bisel reports, have experienced remarkable success.

In June, Bisel took eight Spotlight Dance teams to the Midwest Stars National Competition in Wisconsin Dells. Five teams won platinum awards (the highest level available) and three took golds — a great showing for the small studio.

But one Spotlight team did even better.

Team Ramalama, which received a platinum award, was also honored with the specialty showmanship award and received the highest point total of any large group of seniors (ages 16-18) at the event — a wonderful surprise for Bisel and her dancers.

“We were the smallest studio there,” she says. “We were up against these huge studios from big cities, so it was pretty exciting for us, and for our little town.”

Next up is the Showstopper National Finals in Disneyland on July 17. Although Bisel, who choreographed the winning routine and who was honored by the judges, is understandably excited, she admits that her dreams have already come true.