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Video: California Dance Institute
Carole Vallesky often teaches without words. Dance, she says, is after all a medium of motion. |
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She was a principal dancer with the prestigious Joffrey Ballet company, dancing with the likes of Nureyev and Barishnikov. So what does a ballerina of this caliber do for an encore? Carole Valleskey discovered there was only one thing as fulfilling as the spotlight – helping fourth graders discover the joy of dance.
Valleskey is the founder and principal teacher of the California Dance Institute, a non-profit arts organization that is comprised of a handful of teachers and a pianist for accompaniment.
Five days a week she visits different elementary schools. She is half drill-sergeant, half-artist, and 100% dedicated. Hundreds of school children look forward to their class with Carole. She often teaches without words. Dance is after all a medium of motion. Her style is not ballet, but rather a combination of turns, stomping, shouting, clapping, and punching the air. That's just fine with the boys who have learned that dance is an athletic exercise. Carole says children are naturally physical and dance adds discipline to their energy. "In the classroom", Carole says, "children have to be inside the box, so to speak. They have to sit and behave and all of that or they have the opportunity to go outside on the playground and explode. I like to think that what we do is create an explosion within the box."
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“In the classroom, children have to be inside the box, so to speak. I like to think that what we do is create an explosion within the box.”
Carole Vallesky
Founder, CDI |
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Teachers say they can see the impact of dance on their students' performance in the classroom. Children are more focused, attentive and expressive. Laurel Hitchcock is a fourth grade teacher at Eagle Rock Elementary. "I'm seeing tremendous increases in writing skills. They leave dance and they're energized and they're freer. All of that is such a wonderful academic gift."
Carole Valleskey grew up in Michigan. She remembers seeing the ballet that first captured her imagination. "I know a lot of ballerinas say, oh, they saw Swan Lake or The Sugarplum Fairy or whatever. I saw a ballet called Rodeo. It was about a cowgirl and it was in boots and it was a lot of theater and acting. That was always one of my favorite ballets by Agnes DeMille."
At the age of 12 she won a Ford Foundation dance scholarship and went to New York for dance training. She fell in love the big city. A decade later she was dancing the role that had inspired her as a child.
Her dancing career at the Joffrey was going well when she happened to see a public television documentary about a former dancer turned teacher. It was called He Makes Me Want to Dance, about the National Dance Institute run by Jacques d'Amboise. "I sort of tucked it away in the back of my mind," says Carole, "thinking this makes enormous sense what Jacques is doing."
Her dance career continued. But in the early 90's the Joffrey ballet changed artistically and moved from her beloved New York to Chicago. Carole also moved – to Los Angeles where she continued performing. A few years later she saw a sequel to the documentary about Jacques d'Amboise. It looked at the children who had been part of the National Dance Institute and revealed the long-term impact of the program on their lives. The time had come for Carole to take action. In 1998 she went back to New York to train under Jacques and learn how to create a similar dance program in southern California.
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“Sometimes
it's scary, but
it builds confidence in
us, and it really helps us in experience.”
Elisha, student
Eagle Rock Elementary |
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At Eagle Rock Elementary the children's attention is riveted on Carole. For many of them Carole's is their "funnist" class. But don't be fooled by the fun. The California Dance Institute's techniques are highly structured. Carole will often use children to teach children. Today she singles out Elisha Marquez who demonstrates the box step. "Sometimes it's scary", says Elisha, "but it builds confidence in us and it really helps us in experience."
The children at the various elementary schools work for weeks on their dance numbers. At the end of the year more than 250 from five schools gather on one stage for the grand performance.
But even more challenging than organizing 250 fourth graders in one grand finale, is the challenge of raising money to keep the dance institute on its feet. "It's incredibly difficult to find people that believe in this kind of program that's really about, you know, hard work and it's not real glitzy. I get so much joy out of a ten year old finally mastering a simple step."
Despite the challenges, Carole couldn't imagine doing anything else. She knows that what she's really teaching is something more than dance. "It's about using dance to teach life and learning skills, to teach focus and discipline and energy and commitment which are skills that you need to do anything in life."
 Read the transcript
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