Dancing in Appalachia
Jan. 28—HUNTINGTON — Edwina Pendarvis and her sister, Annette Burgess, admired their ballet teacher, June Conn.
"We grew up in little coal camps in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. We loved ballet and we got to take ballet lessons in the summer when we visited our aunt in Huntington," she said. "About eight of us took dance classes in Pikeville on Saturdays. We thought she was so glamorous."
They weren't the only ones.
Pendarvis is a retired as College of Education and Professional Development's Coordinator of the Gifted Graduate Education Program at Marshall University. She also is a writer and the author of "Another World: Ballet Lessons from Appalachia," in which she interviewed 24 Appalachian women who studied and loved ballet to find out why it struck such a chord. She learned there were a number of reasons.
"Girls who grew up here and were kind of not as well off as someone else, ballet meant more to them than it did other women who came from better circumstances," Pendarvis said. "We didn't see people dress up to go dancing or go to dinner, so the glamour of ballet was very important."
She referred to country music queen Dolly Parton, who came from very humble beginnings and gravitated toward rhinestones, sequins and other flashy and fancy attire.
"These are women who took ballet sometime in the 20th century, between the 1940s and 1970s, older women," Pendarvis said. "They all told me without me even asking the beauty of ballet, beauty of the movements and the beauty of the music and the glamour of the costumes, all drew them to ballet."
Five women from the Ashland area were interviewed for the book. They are:
—Lynn Cohen
—Yvonne DeKay Sinnot
—Mitzi Sinnot
—Caroline Wilson
—Christina St. Clair
In looking for connections between Appalachia and dance, Pendarvis found the physical challenges appealed to Appalachian women.
"We used to walk the railroad rails, walk fences, walk on coal bins, and being good physically in our play was important, so the jumps and the hard movements in ballet, we were,more motivated to get the physical part right," she said.
Most of those interviewed liked their ballet teachers and wanted to emulate them.
"There were several of June Conn's students that thought she was beautiful and they wanted to look like her and dance like her," she said. "Sometimes they also admired an advanced student."
She also wanted to explore other perspectives on ballet, so she spoke with Ron Tweel of Huntington, who was an attorney for Muhammad Ali.
"I wanted to talk about different kinds of intelligence and other complicated physical skills that require a different kind of intelligence besides verbal intelligence."
The book, which took Pendarvis four years to complete, answered some questions, she said.
"I wanted to see what might the cultural effect as far as their dancing and whether they can become a national level performer and why Appalachian kids are at a disadvantage, and there are implications for teachers and coaches of dance, she said. "Most famous dancers left their small town and went to a big city by the time they were about 15 because you can't get the coaching and teaching that's needed for national level performance on a local basis. If you're family can't afford it, you're out of luck."
The book also brought up new questions.
"I interviewed women who had taken dance lessons regardless of race and economic status, and they accomplished so much. How interesting the lives of all the women were," Pendarvis said. "Because their parents loved them so much and would do so much for them? Were they successful because their parents were good to them?"
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