She Can't Move Her Body. She Just Danced a Solo Anyway.

A ballerina living with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) has returned to the stage - this time, by thought alone. Breanna Olson, a former dancer and mother of three based in Tacoma, Washington, took to the stage at Amsterdam's OBA Theatre in a first-of-its-kind live performance in which her brainwaves controlled a mixed-reality avatar in real time.

Diagnosed with ALS - the most common form of motor neurone disease - two and a half years ago, Olson had trained in ballet, contemporary, and jazz since childhood before the progressive condition began to weaken her muscles.

"I never dreamed that I would be able to dance on stage again," Olson told BBC News. "It was just a beautiful and memorable moment I will remember for the rest of my life."

The performance is the latest chapter of Waves of Will, a project developed by Japanese creative technology firm Dentsu Lab in collaboration with data company NTT. Using a non-invasive EEG headset enhanced with machine learning, the team captured Olson's motor signals - the electrical activity her brain produced as she imagined specific dance movements - and translated them into choreography performed by a virtual version of herself, alongside live dancers on stage.

"This is a new way of expression," Olson told the BBC. "To be able to move in a new way and a different way is just freeing."

Waves of Will sits within Dentsu Lab's broader Project Humanity initiative, which explores how technology can help restore personal expression, identity, and participation for people living with motor-degenerative diseases. An earlier chapter, All Players Welcome, was created with DJ Masa, a music artist with ALS, who used eye-gaze tracking and later EMG devices to continue performing after losing the use of his hands.

As ALS progresses and those tools eventually lose their utility, brainwave-based interfaces represent one of the last avenues for self-expression available to those living with the disease.

"There are many brainwave technologies and research all over the world, but most of them are very expensive and not accessible to everyone," Dentsu Lab chief creative officer Naoki Tanaka told the BBC. "This is exactly why we started Waves of Will - to make a new brainwave interface."

Olson described the technology as challenging but transformative, requiring intense focus to isolate muscle activity and external noise. Her Amsterdam performance - met with a standing ovation - offered a vision of what inclusive performance can look like when creative technology is built around the artist rather than the limitations of their condition.

The team behind the project has discussed future possibilities including a joint performance in which Olson dances to music performed live by DJ Masa, and is in conversation with charities and governing bodies connected to MND to broaden the technology's reach beyond the stage - into education, communication, work, and gaming.

For Olson, the hope is that audiences come away seeing people with disabilities differently. As she told the BBC, she wants people to be viewed "less as sick people or that something is wrong with us, but more like we have value and talents and wisdom."

"We can do more than we think we can," she said.

Photos: Performance Photos and Phoos of Breanna and Family Courtesy of Dentsu Lab.