An hour after practice, 6-foot-9 Illinois freshman Giorgi Bezhanishvili was back on the State Farm Center court, where the Southern Illinois women’s team was about to practice for that night’s game against the Illini.

Suddenly, Bezhanishvili was on bended knee before Salukis coach Cindy Stein, whom he had never met, begging her to dance with him to the salsa music playing over the loudspeakers. Stein laughed and protested as he pleaded: “You’ll be fantastic. You’ll love it. Let’s dance.”

Her objections eventually allowed her to escape. But in an instant, Bezhanishvili’s size-16½ Nikes rapidly wound around each other, and he was guiding Illinois graduate assistant Jenn Dynis — wearing a winter coat — as she attempted to keep up.

He had planned to show a reporter some of his dance moves, but like most days in Champaign, everyone became Giorgi’s audience. And nobody is a stranger in Giorgi’s world.

Before leaving the arena, he stopped to chat with a security guard he knows by first name. He reminded a befuddled student manager about the importance of eye contact. His teammates laugh at the mere mention of his name.

After only a few months at Illinois and just 12 games into his college career, Bezhanishvili might be the most popular man on campus. He certainly seems like the happiest.

“It’s all about your emotions,” he said. “It’s all about expressing yourself. As long as you feel good, that’s all that matters.”

He was describing how to learn salsa dancing.

But these have also been the instructions for Bezhanishvili’s life, imparted by his mother, Lali, who lived in a different country than her children for nearly a decade to ensure their survival.

“My mom,” Bezhanishvili said, “is my hero.”

‘Family is everything’

Dance was as central as basketball to Bezhanishvili’s upbringing in Georgia, a former Soviet republic at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, bordered to the west by the Black Sea and famous for its fertile wine regions.

He excelled at both hobbies — he placed second in classical dance in a national competition at age 10 — and they became outlets for him, conduits to joy as life around him crumbled.

When Americans ask about his homeland, Bezhanishvili frequently replies, “Family is everything in Georgia.”

Even when it meant sacrifice.

Giorgi was 3 and his brother Davit 5 when they moved in with grandparents after Lali fled to Europe as a refugee, desperate to find work.

Rustavi, Georgia, was an industrial center during the Soviet era. But after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the nation saw economic collapse, high unemployment and shrinking population.

Photo courtesy of Giorgi Bezhanishvili Giorgi Bezhanishvili as a child in the former Soviet republic Georgia. Giorgi Bezhanishvili as a child in the former Soviet republic Georgia. (Photo courtesy of Giorgi Bezhanishvili)

Photo courtesy of Giorgi Bezhanishvili Giorgi Bezhanishvili as a child in the former Soviet republic Georgia. Giorgi Bezhanishvili as a child in the former Soviet republic Georgia. (Photo courtesy of Giorgi Bezhanishvili)

Lali had earned an economics degree and played basketball at a university. She worked for a large corporation.

“Then everything was upside down,” Lali said in a phone interview from Vienna. “My education was nothing. My diploma was nothing. People lost their jobs. Companies closed. The government was changing (every) two, three months. I saw my teachers selling their clothes at the market. All of my friends were educated, had jobs, but were all lost.”

Giorgi, now 20, remembers his childhood home without heat. The family boiled water in a kettle, mixed it with cold and poured it over themselves. “That was our shower,” he said.

Crime rose. Power outages were frequent and food sparse.

“It’s basically a ghetto town. It was a gray city,” he said. “There was nothing to do. You can’t imagine.”

Lali was at a breaking point. Stay with her children and struggle together? Or leave and inflict emotional pain but provide a future for her sons?

Her husband, also unemployed and from whom she later divorced, brought firewood inside to heat the home one winter day. Lali burned her finger. “That was it,” she said.

“I had to go. There were no jobs, no money. I was just worrying about the future of the kids. I was depressed at that time. I love my children, but I had to go somewhere. In Georgia, we have no chance.”

She met with a travel agent, scrimped together money and left for the Czech Republic in 2002 with temporary paperwork but no solid plan.

“I went to nowhere,” said Lali, who was 33 at the time. She knew nobody. She didn’t understand the language.

She placed trust in strangers, connecting with former refugees who had found their way and absorbing their advice.

“I can’t believe this happened to me,” she said, pausing her story to laugh and cry in disbelief. “It’s like a movie. I really paid a high price for everything.”

She stayed in the Prague refugee center for a month before being advised she could find employment easier in another country. She paid a smuggler to drive her and another refugee to the border.

Across the street, the driver said when he stopped the car, is Austria.

‘Always dancing’

With only $100 in her pocket, Lali made her way to an Austrian refugee center that allowed residents 3½-month stays. On a tip from another woman there, she asked a shop owner in a nearby market for work.

“I’m ready to do anything,” she said she told the woman. “Please help me.” She secured a job as a housecleaner, initially earning only 2.5 euros per hour.

Lali lived in a tiny, unheated apartment and cleaned homes seven days a week, saving money to send to Giorgi, Davit and her parents, Lida and Amur. Despite lacking the proper paperwork, she said she couldn’t worry about the risk. Eventually she made 7 to 10 euros per hour.

She quickly learned German and English in addition to Russian and Georgian. (Her sons now know all four languages too). She was later hired as a receptionist at a hotel, where she still works.

“I only want to make money for family,” she said

Lali saved to mail puzzles and toys home. She said she’ll never forget the day she was able to send 250 euros.

We always knew she was doing all of this for us, to give us a better future. She is the strongest woman I know. — Giorgi Bezhanishvili

She didn’t have access to a computer, so she bought a camcorder with VHS tapes she mailed to her mother. Lida recorded the boys for hours at a time, swimming, dancing, playing basketball, goofing off.

The recorded images temporarily filled holes in Lali’s heart with glimpses of the lives she was missing. Giorgi instantly loved the camera, lighting up when he saw it was on.

“He’s just a happy kid and always dancing,” Lali said. “He likes entertaining.”

His grandparents kept him occupied so he would stay out of trouble. At 6, he enrolled in dance lessons and was hooked. He learned salsa, rumba, jive, cha-cha, waltz, tango and foxtrot, earning high marks in competitions.

“I loved it,” Bezhanishvili said, putting his arms in a frame and shimmying.

Around the same time, he began playing basketball. The professional team BC Rustavi is a draw for the community and a source of pride.