Extreme Makeover: Home Edition helps a professional dancer cope with Multiple Sclerosis

For much of her life, Carol Crawford Smith has lived a dancer's dream — she has studied, worked, and performed the works of such luminaries as George Balanchine, Alexandra Danilova, and Jerome Robbins. She has performed as a soloist with the internationally renowned Dance Theater of Harlem for 10 years, and even danced for world dignitaries including Princess Diana and President Ronald Reagan.

In 1994, Carol founded The Center of Dance in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she works as Artistic Director. Then about 5 years ago, she began developing symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis. MS is a disease that affects the central nervous system. Among the symptoms MS sufferers develop is a gradual but severe loss of coordination and balance. As her MS has progressed, simple acts like climbing the concrete steps up to her home and demonstrating dance steps to her students have become excruciating challenges for Carol. Still, Carol continues to teach at The Center of Dance, and to raise her two young sons, Hunter (12) and Garland (9).

When the Executive Producers of ABC's Emmy-nominated reality show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (EM:HE) heard about Carol Crawford Smith they immediately decided she was a perfect candidate for a home makeover. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is a fast-paced, hour-long program in which a team of superstar carpenters and designers rebuild the home of a deserving family in just 7 days. On Sunday December 4, 2005 the show sent Carol and her sons on an all-expenses-paid vacation to La Jolla, California and then set about redesigning her house to better accommodate Carol's condition.

Icy weather plagued the Crutchfield team and the rest of the EM:HE volunteers all week.

It wasn't until Thursday morning, December 8 that John Haydock, Crutchfield's Senior Vice President of Marketing and Creative, received a phone call from the EM:HE Executive Producers asking if Crutchfield would be willing to donate electronics and installation expertise to the project. By 6PM that evening, Haydock and Crutchfield's Home Installation Consultants Matt Kennedy and Keith Christiansen were on their way down to Blacksburg, Virginia, battling a sleet storm and sub-freezing temperatures.

Because all volunteers are sworn to absolute secrecy regarding the exact nature of an EM:HE project until the show airs (usually a couple of months after all construction has been completed), the Crutchfield team wasn't given many details on what exactly they would be asked to do.

"We were told about Carol's condition and asked if we could help set up a multi-room audio system as part of celebrity host Ty Pennington's 'Special Project'," explained Matt Kennedy. "So we grabbed the van, loaded it up with 2 of everything we thought we might possibly need, and hit the road."

Keith Christiansen and Matt Kennedy, Crutchfield's Home Installation Consultants, unload the Crutchfield van.

Ty's Special Project: The Center of Dance

For each episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Pennington leads a small crew of volunteers on a special side project. Only after "The Reveal," when the family gets to see their new home for the first time, does Pennington then unveil his special project. For Carol Crawford Smith, Pennington decided to renovate her studios at The Center of Dance. Pennington's goal was two-fold: retrofit the studios to accommodate Carol's painful disability — she has to instruct from the center of the studio with the help of an assistant — and give the studios a new look and sound. Crutchfield eagerly stepped in and promised to deliver a first-class A/V system for the studios.

The Center of Dance: before and after.

Once Keith, Matt, and John learned the details of the project, they decided to design an A/V system that would meet both of Ty's goals: it would provide superior sound for the dance classes, and be easy for Carol to operate from virtually any part of the studio. To accomplish this, the team chose top-of-the-line products from Denon, Sony, Sharp, Polk Audio, Monster Cable, and Niles, and created a system customized for Carol.

Audio/Video receivers, DVD and CD Players, and LCD TV

The Center of Dance has 2 studios: a large main studio and a smaller, secondary studio. Carol uses the larger, main studio at the center for most of her classes, so the Crutchfield team decided to start there and give it a truly exceptional A/V setup. They began with the Denon AVR-2106, a 7-channel home theater receiver, as the centerpiece of the system. The AVR-2106 was selected for its full feature package, which includes 100 watts of power for each of the 7 channels, exceptional digital-to-analog audio processing capability, component video switching, and on-screen display.

The AVR-2106's component video switching and on-screen display became especially important features for the team's system design. Because of Carol's increasingly limited mobility, Keith and Matt knew it was crucial that she be able to operate the music from the center of the studio without having to get up to change CDs or tracks. So they connected the receiver to a Sony 400-disc DVD/CD/SACD changer with a digital video output. With a library of 400 CDs at her command, chances are good that Carol will always have the music she needs on-demand.

The Sharp AQUOS 15" LCD displays the CD track and title.

But the guys didn't stop there. The Sony DVD/CD player's display is not designed to be read from more than a few feet away, so the team connected a 15" Sharp AQUOS LCD TV to the player's component video output. Now, using the included wireless remote control, Carol can sit in the middle of the room and see at a glance which of the 400 CDs are playing.

The team didn't skimp on the smaller studio, either. A Denon DRA-685 stereo receiver (100 watts x 2 channels) and a Denon DCM-280 5-disc CD changer provide more than enough sound to fill the space.