Southold's first Black director taps her ballet childhood for broader reach

SOUTH BEND — “So cute,” Sarah Taylor said with an infectious smile as she watched 3- and 4-year-old kids file into a studio for ballet class.

She's giving herself the proverbial pinch. After all, these kids are pacing through the same steps she’d taken as a young dancer here at the Colfax Cultural Center, which led her onstage for “The Nutcracker.”

“I literally can’t believe it,” the enthusiastic 36-year-old said of her new job, executive director of the Southold Dance Theater. “It’s wild. It’s like I’m calling the shots on my childhood.”

Her parents, including the late David Taylor, who was among the founders of the youth mentoring group 100 Black Men of Greater South Bend, made sure young Sarah was exposed to ballet.

She loved it. She stayed with Southold for 13 years, dancing for 10 of those years in “The Nutcracker.”

On Aug. 8, she became the first Black executive director in Southold’s almost 40-year history. And although she’s enjoying the festive rush of rehearsals and promotions for “The Nutcracker,” which Southold dancers will perform alongside the South Bend Symphony Orchestra on Dec. 9-11 at the Morris Performing Arts Center, she’s seizing the chance to diversify Southold.

Taylor speaks of ballet as traditionally an “elitist activity” for the more affluent. But, she said, that notion is falling apart thanks to trailblazers and social media influencers, some of whom Southold’s dancers follow, like Misty Copeland, the first Black female principal dancer in the American Ballet Theatre.

Taylor, who served as head cheerleading coach at Washington High School for the past 11 years, describes Southold as a “melting pot” of nationalities and races.

Based at the Colfax Center at 914 Lincoln Way W., Southold’s dance school is now teaching about 190 youths from age 3 on up to high school seniors, still climbing back to its pre-pandemic student body of 250. It is putting on five productions and shows this year. The most prominent, “The Nutcracker,” boasts a cast of more than 200, serving as a gateway for several kids to try out and enter Southold.

“It’s already in our mission to engage people,” Taylor said. “We want to reach everyone. We want to reflect our community, and our community is diverse.”

Passion for Southold

At this fall’s annual Red Ribbon March from the Colfax Cultural Center, involving dozens of school students united against substance abuse, Taylor made sure the program featured a performance by a few Southold dancers. As she listened to kids’ responses at the march, she heard some say they’d never seen ballet. Kids asked if the dancers were even from here.

When kids aren’t aware that ballet dancers could exist in South Bend, she said, “You haven’t done enough.”

Board President Dan Pfeifer, a local attorney, has observed a “gradual increase” in diversity at Southold over the years. Taylor’s status as the first Black director makes her the “perfect person” to grow that. But, Pfeifer emphasized, that didn’t factor into the board’s decision to hire her.

“From my perspective, she’s the best executive director we’ve had in 20 years,” he said, “and that has nothing to do with the color of her skin. … For the first time in my tenure on the board (almost 18 years), we have an executive director who’s in love with the organization and is passionate about it.”

In fact, for the third year, Taylor will reprise her role on stage with this December’s “Nutcracker” as one of the “party parents” in Act 1, who gather and dance just after young Marie receives the nutcracker. This light role, she said, is suited to people who feel like they have “two left feet.”

Her now-teenaged niece’s dancing in Southold’s company and in “The Nutcracker,” she said, drew her back to the stage.

An ankle injury as a youth had stalled her dancing for years until, while working on her bachelor’s degree at Indiana University, she regained confidence to join a dance company. She eventually worked for four years as a family and community specialist in South Bend schools. And then, in the year before Southold hired her, she directed Startup Moxie, a program that immerses Elkhart County high school students in entrepreneurial experiences.

Sarah Taylor among the 40:South Bend Regional Chamber honors 2022 40 under 40 class

'Accessible'

Now, Taylor said of Southold: “We want to be immersed, we want to be out there. We want to figure out how we get in the surrounding schools. How do we meet them where they’re at? We want to reach the masses and let them know that ballet is accessible.”

∎ When the Alvin Ailey American Dance Co. came to perform at the University of Notre Dame's DeBartolo Performing Arts Center in October, Southold got Alvin Ailey’s director and three of its dancers to do a Q&A with student dancers.

∎ Southold dancers performed this summer in the Chris Wilson Pavilion at South Bend’s Potawatomi Park and, under her decision, at Art Beat in downtown.

∎ Southold dancers gave a preview of their work Oct. 1 during the festival that the city held to celebrate the Morris Performing Arts Center’s 100th anniversary. During that time, the owner of Brain Lair Books — a Black woman-owned store in South Bend — also read from “Charlotte and the Nutcracker,” a picture book for young readers about the true story of 12-year-old Charlotte Nebres, the first Black girl to play the lead character Marie (also commonly named Clara) in the New York City Ballet’s production.

Marvin Curtis has been making local inroads in South Bend to bring diversity to another fine art that, likewise, only was seen as white: classical music. A retired arts school dean at IU South Bend and board member of the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, he’s organized concerts that showcase the music of often-neglected Black composers and even performed them in Black churches.

Curtis and the orchestra arranged a series of Día de los Muertos concerts with Latin-composed and Mariachi music that recently drew many from the local LatinX community into the Morris.

October 2022:Three days of free concerts, art to celebrate Día de los Muertos in South Bend

He said that Southold and Taylor will need to be persistent and deliberate as they expose more kids to ballet.

“We (Black people) were told so many years that we don’t have the balance for ballet," he said. “Alvin Ailey proved them wrong.”

Black kids often don’t see fine arts as a career, he said — not as much as they do rap and R&B.

“The arts require practice, they require patience, they require honing your talent," he said. “A lot of kids today don’t see the payoff for the future.”

Curtis said Black men generally don’t see ballet as athletic, although it truly is. Witness the football players who cross-train in ballet for balance. But when kids think about football, Curtis said, “All they see is what’s on the field.”

Youths need the exposure, Curtis said, to “someone who’s doing something you thought was impossible.”

He leads an equity, diversity and inclusion committee at the SBSO. Both the Fischoff National Chamber Music Association and South Bend Civic Theatre have similar efforts.

Southold could consider one eventually, too, but, with just eight or nine members, Pfeifer said Southold’s board is too small to think about forming committees, adding, “there’s a handful of people who do everything.”

Wanted: More males

Southold is seeking greater awareness in general, too.

“People know about Southold because of 'The Nutcracker,’ and that’s the extent of it,” Pfeifer said. “Southold is more than that. … We have a good reputation for taking dancers and developing them so they receive contracts with ballet companies, even internationally.”

He and Taylor proudly note that a member of the Southold dance company, Fred Stuckwisch, has been selected to compete early in 2023 in what they describe as “the Olympics” for dancers ages 15 to 18: the Prix de Lausanne in Switzerland.

Southold needs more males. In late summer, Southold started offering free tuition for male dancers, a temporary measure to ensure that female dancers have enough partners. That led the number of male dancers to grow from five to 21.

Leslie Skeens of South Bend, whose daughter had already been in the classes, enrolled all four of her sons in Southold classes this year — a move that the family wouldn’t have been able to afford without the free tuition.

“I was nervous about it,” her son, Liam, 12, said. He originally thought, “Oh, ballet is for girls,” then quickly learned, “The men get to do the fun stuff.” Like the big jumps.

It’s paid off for the soccer player, who said, “I used to not touch my toes.”

Pfeifer would like Southold to eventually gain enough sponsors so that tuition is free for all dancers. Currently, students can get tuition assistance if their families can’t afford it.

“We want to get to the point where, if there are dancers who want to dance, we don’t want the cost of tuition to be an impediment,” he said.

Feeling welcome

Meanwhile, each of the Skeens brothers and other dancers found a treat from Taylor on Halloween: a bucket of candy. Their mom, Leslie Skeens, and other parents have noticed how Taylor — unlike her predecessors — regularly comes out to chat and connect with parents in the Colfax center lobby as they wait for their kids in dance classes.

And one 13-year-old boy in class still calls Taylor what he’d called her when they’d shared the “Nutcracker” stage: Mom.

Taylor said she wants dancers to feel safe, supported and welcome and to look after their own wellbeing, from nutrition to a balance with school duties. She also wants dancers to expand and try influences beyond their comfort zones.

“Even if you’re scared, you gotta do it scared,” she said, echoing her own philosophy, “and it’ll make you a better human being.”

South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Southold Dance Theater first Black director aims for ballet diversity