FYI: Learn more about The Civic Ballet by visiting its web site: www.civicballetofslo.org.

The Civic Ballet celebrates 25 years of dance memories

BY GLEN STARKEY

Before Lori Silvaggio founded the Civic Ballet a quarter of a century ago, San Luis Obispo was ostensibly a dance wasteland. There was one studio in town teaching mostly social dance. Silvaggio’s brand of classical ballet must have at first seemed like some highfalutin big-city artsy-fartsy nonsense to the little cow town.

Even back in 1978, however, it was clear that many townspeople were yearning for a more vibrant arts scene. After the sold-out debut performance of Silvaggio’s newly formed company, Tribune reporter Jim Hayes announced, "Ballet in San Luis Obispo is now a reality."

Despite the glowing welcome offered by the community, it didn’t happen overnight for Silvaggio. Instead, the Civic Ballet’s genesis began eight years prior when Silvaggio opened the Academy of Dance in the converted garage of her first home at 74 Rafel Way. She was 21 years old and the year was 1970.

"I wanted to do it right," recalled Silvaggio recently, "so I did, in this dumb little garage on this horrible floor." Silvaggio was determined to teach the sort of classical ballet she had learned under Mavis Dell of the San Francisco Ballet (the nation’s first professional ballet company!).

She didn’t have much money, but she took out an ad in the local paper, soliciting students. She could only afford a one-column-inch ad six times, and within one month she had six students.

"I was just determined," laughed Silvaggio, who acquired a total of 75 students by the end of her first year in business. "Each paid $10 a month," recalled Silvaggio, "and in 1970, $750 a month was better than a schoolteacher’s salary."

Silvaggio, a tireless whirl of energy even now at 53, was a Tasmanian devil in her youth.

"I started dance at age 3 because I was so excitable as a kid," remembered Silvaggio. "I would run into things constantly. I didn’t have enough control over my body to keep up with my energy."

Her mother put her in a dance class in the hopes that Silvaggio would harness and direct her energy in a productive way.

"I remember everything from that first experience, right down to what color my dress and shoes were. I was transformed. It was like a spell was cast. I’m so glad I remember that experience because I think of it every time a new student enters my class. I’m aware that this experience may be life-altering. There’s something special about having the experience that someone is there solely to watch you express yourself. I remember lessons taught and words spoken to me. My first recital was ‘Alice Blue Gown,’ and I can still remember every step! Being able to tell a young person ‘I’m going to give you the rules to make you free. I’m going to give you the tools in your gorgeous body to express yourself. You have something important to say’–I love the process!"

Silvaggio, the perpetual overachiever, graduated from high school early, and by the time she was 21 she had earned from Sacramento State University a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English and education, and she had her teaching certification from the State of California. She had also been dancing professionally since she was 13 years old.

"My first professional dance job was a on Catalina Island," she said. "I begged my parents to let me go and they finally agreed, giving me a little money to sustain me until the end of the run, when I was to be paid."

Silvaggio was the youngest dancer on the tour and felt pretty grown-up being around the "older kids." When she left her wallet in a gas station bathroom on the way to the island, she was too full of pride to ask for help. When she finally arrived on Catalina, she used what change she had in her pocket to buy a big bag of oranges.

"It was a three-week gig, and you don’t know what weight loss is until you try dancing for three weeks on nothing but oranges! When I got home my parents were aghast. ‘How did you get so thin?’ they asked. But I didn’t tell them what happened. I just said, ‘They really worked us pretty hard.’"

Though ballet was her first love, many of Silvaggio’s earliest jobs were jazz dance. Her jazz instructor, Walton Biggerstaff, dragged her to an audition for "The Red Skelton Show" when she was 14, and her spunky personality quickly won her a regular spot. She stayed with Skelton’s show for a couple of years and went on to do more TV, but all this professional work was kept undercover when she moved to San Luis and started her dance studio.

"What I had been doing professionally was so not what I was wanting to teach," said Silvaggio. "It was an experience I didn’t feel like promoting. In my own experience as a dance student, those teachers with a ‘performance career’ were always the weakest teachers. They were totally self-absorbed with their own careers, as they had to be. I decided early on that I wouldn’t exploit my professional experience and would instead dedicate myself to being a teacher."

Hundreds of local children and young adults have been trained by Silvaggio at her academy. Three years after she opened her garage studio, she moved to a location downtown on the corner of Broad and Higuera streets. After seven years in business she had such a wealth of talented dancers she had trained that she was ready to start the Civic Ballet. Then, in 1984 she took a huge leap of faith and decided to build her own building.

"That was the most difficult experience of my life," recalled Silvaggio.

A certain city building inspector made things especially difficult for the dance maven. After she had spent thousands and thousands of dollars putting in a sprung maple dance floor from specifications she had acquired from stage builders on the East Coast, this inspector told Silvaggio the floor would have to be ripped out and a sprinkler system installed inside the floor.

"Nowhere in the United States was something like this required!" said Silvaggio, clearly still stinging from the memories. She appealed the decision and was finally given the go-ahead to complete construction without the in-floor system, but the red tape had put her three weeks behind.

"Those three weeks very nearly broke me," she said. "It was a horrible experience, to have to deal with the city on that project. But I’m very proud of the building, which has been an asset to hundreds and hundreds of children. And it nearly didn’t happen due to the very city I was supporting through the arts."

Silvaggio says that she would never start the Academy of Dance today. Between insurance costs, ASCAP and BMI fees, and the sheer difficulty of operating within the myriad tangle of regulations, it just wouldn’t be worth it.

But despite ordeals like her dealings with the city and the increase in obstacles to business, Silvaggio has never slowed down in her pursuits. She still teaches regularly and acts as artistic director of the Civic Ballet, and now she’s gone back to school to work toward her Ph.D. in educational psychology at the University of the Pacific, which she commutes to once a week.

"It’s been the joy of my life to be able to teach," said Silvaggio. "Dance is such an amazing art form. A person is stripped naked. Dance becomes an expression of who you are. But I’ve been at it for 32 years at the Academy of Dance. I know I can’t be dancing into my 80s, but I’d like to be teaching and empowering others.

"I don’t think any of us who are intimately involved in the arts can be pleased with the way the arts have been slipping out of school curricula. The arts are what make us human; they inspire, titillate, and empower–and they’re absolutely being ripped out of the school system. I think that’s a tragedy. I would love to think I can have some influence in reversing this trend. I don’t know if I’m the one to do it, but if not me, who? That would be a dream of mine, to facilitate the reinvigoration of the arts in schools."

Silvaggio’s is a life intimately connected to the arts, and she’s gone a long way in promoting her style of dance to other cultures, taking her dancers to both China and Cuba. In San Luis, her annual performance of "The Nutcracker" has become a holiday tradition for dozens of families. She’s also mounted productions of "Don Quixote," "Cinderella," "Slaughter on 10th Avenue," portions of "Cats," "The Red Shoes," "Alice in Wonderland," "Die Fledermaus," "Max and the Wild Things," "The Yellow Submarine," "Earth Mother Earth" with Jon Anderson of the rock band Yes, the original ballet "Wild Heart," and "West Side Story." This year she and the Civic Ballet are mounting "Since I Saw Her Standing There, a Beatles Ballet," which Silvaggio says is the most exciting thing she’s done since her collaboration with Anderson on "Earth Mother Earth."

All those shows. All those terrific world-class guest artists she’s brought to town. All those children she’s taught, including the ones who have gone on to professional careers because of her training and influence. Silvaggio has a lot to be proud of, and yet she still remembers her failures. She just decided to learn from them rather than let them hurt her.

"Every time I fell down it was great," she said. "There’s a quote I love that goes something like this: I get up. I walk. I run. I fall down, but meanwhile I keep dancing. That’s the story of the Civic Ballet. I’ve fallen down. I’m not everybody’s favorite person. But I’ll take the fault because it’s been a beautiful process of mistakes and successes."

In the end, for Silvaggio it always come back to her students. In that sense, she’s fulfilled her early promise she made 32 years ago to devote herself to teaching. A couple of weeks ago at a ballet fund-raiser, she spoke to two sets of parents with two different stories.

"I saw the parents of one girl I trained, a beautiful child with a wonderful heart, soul, and body, but dance just wasn’t her thing. In a recent application essay she wrote to get a school teaching position, her parents told me she wrote about how her early dance training had inspired her to want to teach others. This girl wasn’t one of my successes in that she went on to a professional company, but she responded in a wonderful way. It brought me to tears to know dance had led her to her vocation.

"I spoke to another set of parents whose child had never had dance training. These parents had been called into the principal’s office of their child’s school because the child had been caught with a vial of white powder. It turned out the powder was baking soda. The kid said, ‘I’m cool if people think I have this. No one bothers me.’ That’s how hard it is to have a healthy kid these days. That’s how hard it is to belong. It just breaks my heart. I know that dance has helped a lot of kids find something to belong to and believe in. I hope I’ve helped a lot of kids belong to something, but if I only helped one, that would be enough for me. In these two stories, one of the kids I know and the other I don’t know, but they’re both teaching me." Æ

Glen Starkey, who looks great in tights, danced in the 1982-83 season of the Civic Ballet.