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The Young Performers of Dance Theatre of Iowa Embody Grace and Talent Beyond Their Years
Every day as the sun sinks slowly towards the Western horizon, a pint-sized brigade makes its way towards a small door across from the courthouse on East Briggs. In an era of cybergames and ultra-baggy jeans, this bunch of girls looks somewhat anomalous: hair pulled tightly in a bun 19th-century style, not a strand astray; dresses thrown hurriedly over leotard and tights.
Inside the dressing room, dresses are quickly dismissed, a last glance in the mirror checks for wayward strands while the chatter flows in endless torrents. Once inside the studio, the prattle calms. Then the music starts, and with the first plié, even chubby ten-year-olds turn into long-limbed dancers, heads floating swan-like atop long necks. Beyond the music: silence. Compactified focus.
People who have not danced themselves will have a hard time fully appreciating the allure of dance. The body is an obstinate servant and progress comes only through relentless perseverance and hard work. But dance turns into art in that rare space when the body does the bidding of the mind and--for however fleeting a moment--lets the beauty, grace, and passion of spirit into the physical structure. In that moment of transparency, the body becomes the vessel through which the soul lives out its dreams, its joys, its inmost longings.
Dance Theatre of Iowa (DTI) celebrates its fourth anniversary at the end of this month and in so doing also celebrates a crop of beautiful young dancers who are bringing new meaning to words like elegance, suppleness, and grace. Ranging from eight to fourteen years of age, the girls of DTI are showing us that artistic excellence is not only the adult dancer's domain.
"In all the years I have been teaching ballet, I've never met kids with so much talent, dedication, and focus as the girls in this community," says Emma Rainey, Director of the DTI. "I am amazed at what these girls are able to do at such a young age."
Rainey taught for nine years at the Newport Academy of Ballet and was founder and artistic director of the Newport Ballet and the Children's Dance Theatre in Rhode Island. She came to Fairfield in 1993, and, seeing the considerable talent among her Fairfield students, founded Dance Theatre of Iowa in 1994 to bring high-quality original dance performances and dance education to southeast Iowa and give the children an opportunity to get professional dance experience.
In their short careers as dancers, many of the girls have already performed in a number of DTI pieces, such as Seeds of Light, The Snow Queen, Pan in Cyberspace, Twelve Dancing Princessses, and Prairie Patches. Three of the girls have been touring nationally, performing at large bookstores in New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville to showcase characters from a children's book by René Posner.
During the past six months, the dancers of DTI have been performing for audiences of over 600 at lecture demo tours at elementary and secondary schools around Iowa. The lecture demonstration aims to educate children about ballet and teach them to appreciate dance as an art form. Everywhere, the young dancers have won the hearts of their audience.
"At one school, a little boy stood up and said, 'Where did you people come from?' his voice and face filled with wonder," recalls Rainey. "I knew exactly what he meant. These girls shine, they glow from the inside out, and it's expressed so beautifully in their art. You could tell that he really felt and experienced that."
At another school, one of the teachers came up to Rainey afterwards and said, "These girls are so astoundingly beautiful. It's like watching the Joffrey Ballet!"
Such praise doesn't fall out of nowhere. It reflects years of dedication and sincere work. Most of the girls in DTI dance for one-and-a-half hours a day, five days a week, plus rehearsals on weekends. And lessons are not exactly child's play. A simple dance movement requires the dancer to remember and incorporate at least half a dozen different points of technique. More challenging movements such as a pirouette turn or a tour d'jete jump require thousands of repetitions to perfect. Swirling through space, the dancer must focus on perfecting each little movement, keep up with the music, remember what comes next, keep her balance, and above all, look as if the whole thing is as easy as eating ice cream.
That is a lot to ask of youngster only eight to fourteen years old--most adults would be hard pressed to sustain this kind of discipline and focus day after day. Yet, oddly, for the girls, the challenge seems part of the charm.
"I also play the violin at home, and ballet is a lot harder than playing the violin," says 12-year-old Catherine Wells, who has been putting in a five-day dance week since she was seven. "But I want to be perfect at it, so even when it's hard, I just try even harder. I like it a lot."
Echoes 14-year-old Laura Moses: "I remember going to my first class and seeing Jhodessa [Emma Rainey's daughter], and she was so good. And I wanted to prove to myself that I could dance like that too. Then I sort of developed a passion for dance, and now it's like, can I get better than I am?"
Several of the girls are already planning to become professional dancers when they grow up. A number have applied for intensive ballet summer schools, and several have been accepted to the prestigious summer school of the Atlanta Ballet. But large life goals aside, it's the day-to-day fun and dedication that counts.
"Whether they become a dancer or not, these girls are set for life as far as learning how to develop a skill and maintain the discipline to do it," says Rainey. "They become more confident on so many levels--physically, because they're becoming so strong; mentally, because dance is 90 percent in your head and it really develops focus and alertness; on the heart level, because they're giving themselves to their audience, and that takes a lot of courage. And spiritually, too, they gain confidence, because they're not just doing what the choreographer tells them to do, they're expressing feelings from the core of their being. Having the opportunity to express yourself in that way is a unique experience. It's pure life, pure breath, pure stillness and light."
When you ask the girls what makes them so passionate about their dance, they echo the same sentiments.
"You can't just, like, dance the steps," says 14-year-old Caitlin Scranton. "In class even, a little bit of yourself comes out in your dancing and much more so when you perform. It makes you feel different, compared to sports and other things that you can do, where part of you doesn't show, and so you feel like you're doing something different, something really great."
Agrees Laura Moses: "I love dancing; it's so beautiful and different from anything else I do during the day. I love to move, and in ballet there's this freedom of movement. You can put yourself into the steps and express your soul and feelings and emotions into the steps. That's what I love most about it, being able to express and share your feelings and emotions with others, to share who you are."
