Authors: Kristi Lynn Davis
Dolly Dinkle’s School of Dance
“People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.”
- Martha Graham,
Blood Memory
My mother would say my obsession with dance started in my infancy. She tells the story of how, as a baby, I bounced in my car seat to the beat of “Hey There, Georgie Girl” playing on the radio. I believe I first felt the rhythm long before that. Surely, I swam to the beat of my mother’s heart as a mere zygote in her womb.
You see, I am convinced that I was born to be on stage. My genetic makeup dictated a life bound to the theatre. My first step on stage was an answer to a divine calling to entertain the masses: “Lo, an angel in an Armani original appeared in the heavens before me and said, ‘Go forth and kick thy long legs to thine eyes and tap thy large feet loudly upon the earth, for thou shalt be adorned in sequins and glitter and all that sparkles like a star.’” Be it a call from the Hollywood heavens or a chromosomal defect, my fate was to be an entertainer. It was as useless for me to fight the urge to perform as it would be a bird to squelch the urge to fly. I only wish I had realized this from the beginning.
What I did discover early on was that I was different from most people. Never quite fitting in with the crowd, I felt special, extraordinary. Although extremely shy and insecure in many ways, I had a spark inside waiting to be kindled. Bursting to be seen, to be heard, to be noticed, I was a dreamer, and I fantasized about the fascinating people, places, and experiences that were in store for me. While I marvel that I made it as far as I did in show business, even as a small child, I knew that my life was meant for something big.
I really owe a round of applause to my mother for she had a dream, too: she envisioned her beloved preschooler on stage tip-toeing about in a frilly tutu. When I was four, she took me to the local civic center for my first ballet lesson. The classroom was located in the bowels of the dark, dingy basement, and I grasped onto her leg as we marched down the empty stairwell. All Mom’s visions of twirling tulle were shattered when I was spooked by the tubby teacher in tights towering over me in the creepy underground classroom. To make matters worse, all the budding ballerinas were given star-sticker attendance books, and that creature-teacher-from-the-dark had the nerve to give me a used book left by the last defector. That horrible experience not only left my spark unkindled, but also completely snuffed out my interest in dance class for years to come.
While I had no desire to return to the “dungeon of dance,” I still loved showing off for an audience. Despite having only thirty minutes of ballet instruction under my belt, I started creating and performing my own routines on the front porch of my grandmother’s Iowa farmhouse. Although my mother had given up taking me to ballet class, she bought my younger sister and me black leotards, pink tights, pink ballet shoes, and pink tutus. My sister would tie her tutu on over her pants and pound on her toy drum, while I, dressed perfectly in all the appropriate dance attire, would prance around to her erratic rhythms. The hardest thing about being a dancer back then was getting my costume off in time to make it to the bathroom.
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I continued this impromptu method of dance for five years, when, at the age of nine, I finally decided I was brave enough to try taking classes again. To be safe, I was going to take my sister and some neighborhood friends for backup. If our new teacher was as scary as the last one, at least we’d outnumber her.
This time my mother enrolled us in the illustrious Josie Grey’s School, nee, “Basement,” of Dance. Josie was an entrepreneurial mom who figured out how to make a few bucks underground without leaving home. A small section of her basement, with a couple of ballet barres hung on the walls, served as the studio. Josie undercut the real dance schools around town; at two dollars per half-hour class, the price was right. Plus, she lived so close that Mom didn’t have to drive us. We used to walk the six blocks to her house wearing our ballet shoes and squishing fallen berries underfoot along the way.
Josie filled that “Bargain-Basement-Discount-School-of-Dance” niche for all the not-so-serious and not-so-rich kids who just wanted to dance for fun. She could have cared less if we wore our street clothes to class or even if we wore the proper dance shoes, and she accepted children of all shapes and sizes. You’d easily see a 5-foot-6-inch, 200-pound heavyweight dancing next to a featherweight nymph of a girl. Josie let us talk and laugh and giggle all through class. She offered such an affordable and relaxed atmosphere that we wanted to take everything, and we did: tap, jazz, ballet, and even baton, which we begged her to teach us.
Josie taught in her street clothes and played the accordion in class. Tap was her forte. I was sure she had been a professional tap dancer in her younger years. Perhaps she had accompanied herself on a sparkly, royal-blue accordion, her name spelled out in white felt letters down the side. I could picture the crowd going wild as she vigorously played a polka, her feet rhythmically striking the ground in time to the music. Whether or not Josie was ever paid a dime for dancing, I couldn’t say, but she knew more than I did and was so unintimidating and casual that I loved going to class.
The atmosphere at Josie’s was anything but serious, due to the fact that her own four rambunctious children were home while she taught. “You guys better shut up and stop that fightin’,” she’d shout at them. “I ain’t comin’ upstairs again!” She often left class to attend to some domestic disaster generally preceded by earth-shattering crashing sounds and screams. It wasn’t uncommon to have one of her three young sons or her only daughter come bounding down the basement stairs unannounced to dance a few steps with our class and then return upstairs to watch afternoon cartoons when they’d had enough.
Jazz class was a riot. We learned to twinkle, Lindy, sugar, camel, sashay and Shorty George. Josie chose the upbeat Tina Turner song, “Proud Mary,” for our dance. We lined up behind the lead girl, and, one at a time, on our specific count, raised our arms up in a “V.” I anxiously awaited my turn thinking, “One, two, three, four, five, six, SEVEN, eight.” It was hard not to count out loud. On the part of the song where Tina sings “Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ down the river…,” the even-numbered girls would lean right and roll their arms while the odd-numbered girls would lean left and do the same. It was more fun than I’d ever had before.
Our tap class was learning the waltz clog to the song “Daisy.” The waltz clog is a simple, standard, old tap dance that has been massacred by millions of amateur tappers over the course of time. I caught on to the steps quickly. At least I thought I had gotten the steps right. It was nearly impossible to hear my own sounds in that class full of beginners, for the noise level was deafening. The walls reverberated with a hodge podge of scuffing and banging and sliding of taps across the cement floor like nails on a chalkboard.
Every kid seemed to be in her own time zone, performing some variation of the steps to the beat of her own drum. Not only that, but everyone was joyously beating the heck out of their shoes. If you stomped as hard as you could, those suckers produced some major decibels, especially in that tiny basement where the sound waves echoed off the walls. Let’s face it, giving a kid shoes with noise makers on the bottoms is just asking for trouble. Getting the class to keep their feet quiet long enough to explain the next step was a huge accomplishment for Josie. Time and time again, she found herself shouting over the noise. It’s a wonder that teaching tap didn’t send her straight to the loony bin.
When we finally finished the dance, Josie made a shocking announcement: “For the recital you’ll be doing the entire number while jumping rope, so bring one next week.” Luckily, I was one of the best rope jumpers in my Phys Ed class at school. I was fairly confident about the tapping and even more secure with jumping, but tapping and jumping rope at the same time was another story. Performing the waltz clog was hard enough without worrying about tripping myself with a string.
The other challenge was to make sure I stayed on my designated spot and didn’t hop-shuffle-step-step too close to my neighbor and clash ropes. I know, because absent-minded Lilly whacked mine regularly. She’d wander off her spot, tapping so close to me that her rope would hit mine. Then I’d have to get it spinning again and figure out where we were in the choreography. Lilly was a hazard on the dance floor. She was like a driver who can’t stay in her own lane.
Ballet was Josie’s weakest subject, but we learned to point our toes, do knee bends without sticking out our behinds, walk on tiptoe, and “sashay” across the floor. A lot of rules and numbers seemed to be involved: Ballerinas had to know first, second, third, fourth, and fifth position. For first position, we had to stand with the heels of our feet touching and our toes open to form a straight line. Our legs had to be perfectly straight and our bottoms tucked under. It was difficult to stand like that without falling over, and some of the girls tilted like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Josie knew nearly as little about baton as she did ballet, but we learned enough to keep us happy. She taught us how to do the majorette march, how to wrap the baton around our necks like a choke hold, and how to jump with our legs split apart while quickly passing the baton through them. Josie also showed us the one-handed figure-eight twirl, which was pretty easy, but the maneuver in which we attempted to twirl the baton using one hand and only the thumb of the other hand was so hard that we had to practice at home. Our most daring trick was lifting one leg and tossing the baton underneath it and up into the air. Fortunately, the baton wasn’t too difficult to catch as it could fly only so high before hitting the low basement ceiling.
As if shimmying about in our weekly classes wasn’t amusing enough, performing in the recital was about as thrilling as life could get. Our show was held one evening in June in the auditorium of a nearby middle school. On show night, the classroom that served as our dressing room hummed with restless chatter punctuated by cries of dismay from girls who discovered their mothers had forgotten some of their costume pieces.
Our cheap and cheerful costumes, ordered from a catalog, were sequined and beribboned and just to die for. Josie had instructed all of her students to buy sheer-to-the-waist nylons to wear underneath, but a couple of girls ended up with reinforced girdle nylons, which created the unsightly appearance of dark underwear hanging out below their leotards. Several dancers wore black ballet shoes while the rest of us were wearing pink, and everyone’s hair was styled differently. Some girls left their stringy tresses down and in their eyes. Others had them pulled back in a ponytail or two. The dress code was a free-for-all, but Josie didn’t seem to mind.
At seven to nine years of age, we were the most advanced kids Josie taught, and we felt like hot stuff on stage. Decked out in our red-and-blue halter tops and shorty shorts (which we also wore for tap and baton to minimize costume expenses), we did “Proud Mary” proud. Several of my classmates concentrated so hard they forgot to smile, and the audience could see their lips counting the beats, but I was beaming with a grin so wide I could have been a commercial for toothpaste.
Performing our jazz dance was pure joy, but our baton routine made me nervous because of the baton toss. I was worried about not catching it, and with good reason. In Josie’s basement we could throw the baton less than three feet before it would rebound off the ceiling, but on stage, we could hurl it miles up in the air before it would ever hit anything. Having that super energy that comes with stage fright, half the class used way too much force and over-tossed their batons during the show. There was no way they were going to catch those whirling dervishes. Batons were flying every which way, rolling around the stage, thumping to the ground, some even bouncing unpredictably on their rubber ends when they landed hard enough. The audience members should have been advised to wear helmets in case one came spiraling in their direction. Hardly a moment went by when there wasn’t a frantic girl weaving through the other twirlers trying to capture her runaway baton and return to her position. If your baton traveled all the way off stage, you could pretty much guarantee that the number would be over by the time you retrieved it. I just prayed I’d make it through the song without my baton going AWOL.
I was one of the few who survived the majorette march without incident, but I didn’t fare so well with the tap. There I was, front and center, confidently clogging and rope jumping, the audience in the palm of my hand, when La-La Land Lilly took off from the back row and headed my way. I had no idea what was about to hit me. All of a sudden, her rope whacked mine and sent it flying out of my hands and across the stage. I scrambled to recover it, carefully dodging the revolving ropes around me. The sparkle left my eyes and anger set in. I was mad. I was mortified. Lilly was lucky I didn’t use my rope to strangle her.
In addition to being humiliated on stage for the first time, I also had my first taste of personal stardom. Our ballet class, clad in green gypsy dresses trimmed in red sequins and white ribbon, performed the Tarantella. Being the most flexible, I got to stand center stage and hold my leg up over my head with one hand and shake my tambourine with my other hand, while jumping around in a circle. I was the hit of the recital. It was a very heady experience.
I wasn’t the only one who stole the show, however. My stiffest competition came from the three-year-olds. The baby ballet class sang “I Am a Coffee Pot,” which went something like this: “I am a coffee pot. I get oh so HOT! When you fill me up, have another CUP!” Their arms served as handles and spouts, and they pretended to percolate by jiggling their bodies, wobbling their heads, and smacking their lips. During the show Josie stood in the wings doing the choreography in case they forgot what they were supposed to do. Many did forget, and they were so mesmerized by the audience that it was hard to tell who was there to watch whom. The tots stood frozen in their tutus like deer in headlights until Josie, whispering loudly from the wings, broke their stupor and reminded them to point their toes once or twice and tiptoe around in a circle with their arms overhead. Most of the time, they were either spellbound by the audience or craning their necks to see Josie on the sidelines.