It was 1984. Paul DiMeo was in the rafters of some New York college, working one of his first jobs as a professional.

For the carpenter from Philly, lighting shows for the renowned Dance Theatre of Harlem was a beginning-of-the-career coup.

The troupe was performing a ballet classic, "The Firebird." Later the show would travel to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and eventually be broadcast on PBS.

That night in New York, one of DiMeo's jobs was to train a spotlight on the Princess of Unreal Beauty. He didn't know her real name.

The princess had fallen in love with a prince. But a villain, one Prince of Darkness, tried to thwart their romance with an army of monsters. And the magical and powerful Firebird had to save the day.

DiMeo, the carpenter, still has the playbill from that show. And the princess is still vivid in his mind as one of the best performances he saw in his long theater career.

"Oh, my word," the carpenter thought. "This woman is going to go places."

That night was special also for the princess. Few talented dancers ever perform professionally.

And of those few, fewer still are chosen to dance a role like the Princess of Unreal Beauty, a part made of scarves and flowing fabric and the grace of solo ballet.

Dancing that main character was one of the first times Carol Crawford Smith stepped into the spotlight of a principal role.

She did go places, performing on prominent stages across the world and on television.

The carpenter and the princess didn't meet that long-ago night in New York. And he didn't know what happened to her afterward.

After many triumphs, she took off her pointe shoes and started a family. She went to college and earned two degrees.

Twenty-two years passed before the carpenter, now a star himself, came to Blacksburg in December with ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" to build a new house for the princess.

At first he didn't recognize her.

But finally the carpenter remembered the princess, now a single mother of two sons who teaches dance in a downtown studio but is unable to dance herself because of multiple sclerosis.

The disease, like the Prince of Darkness and his monsters, had made her home, with its many steps and tiny rooms, nearly uninhabitable. It made her little upstairs studio even more forbidding.

But she battled on.

"I'm a person who believes all obstacles can be worked through. I worked with what I had," the princess said recently.

Until one day, the carpenter came to play the role of the magical and powerful Firebird and help save the day for the princess.

"We can't cure the disease," DiMeo said. "All we know how to do is build a house."

But it gave her more than a new and better house. It reawakened a passion for performing. She felt it the moment the carpenter knocked on her door.

"The cameras and cast, lights, microphone ... there was just this kind of energy," the princess said. "A part of me was thinking, 'Well, is this my good side?' "

"If we gave her that, I'm really glad," the carpenter said.

But there's been a cost to this gift, too. This spotlight has been different from all the others.

"This is more personal. It takes me off the stage and puts my life as a performance. On the stage, I was always a character. They weren't really seeing me," the princess said.

Sometimes its been hard to have others tell her stories or speak for her in ways that she doesn't agree with.

Now strangers don't buy a ticket to see her dance. They knock on her door or peek in the windows of her new house.

But that's not important, she said.

She's accepted these sometimes uncomfortable gifts. And she calls herself blessed.

Now the princess sees even more possibilities for her life, maybe in stage plays or on television. But not as a dancer this time.

"My strength now is in words. ... The words you choose can make or break a person, make or break a dancer or an artist," the princess said.

She doesn't quite know what will happen next. But she knows her life will never be the same.