Lure of the Floor

Jenny Marshall, Carol Howenstine and Beth Muecke (from left) are all smiles when it comes to dance. (Photo: snapshotsbyaileepetrovic.com)

You are a soaring, glamorous creature, an art form. Part woman, part swan, you mesmerize with feather-light arm movements, perfect pirouettes and the grace of a world-class ballerina.

Oh, wait. That was just another dance dream. In reality, you have two left feet. You hate your thick-ish middle. And you’re pretty sure your best dance moves resemble those of a full-body heave set to music. Putting on a leotard? Don’t even go there.

Don’t despair, say some Buzz-area women who bravely returned to dance class after decades, taking ballet, jazz and tap to keep fit, mentally sharp and improve balance and coordination. Some haven’t danced since childhood. Class is a supportive safe zone, even for newbies, they say. Covering leotard with shirt and skirt is A-Okay.

“Yeah, it can be intimidating when you start, but just go for it! If you’d seen me two years ago I was hopeless, but boy have I improved,” says interior designer Jenny Marshall, 52, who left ballet at 13. She now takes adult jazz, tap and ballet at Houston City Dance under the tutelage of owner and instructor Sherese Campbell. 

One room in Jenny’s home is half empty, save a large mirror. She and 12-year-old daughter Sophia, also a City Dance student, practice daily.

During a recent class, Jenny and classmates break out jazz moves to a funky bongo beat, arms outstretched, moving two by two across the floor. They’re smiling, having fun. Instructor Campbell cajoles with funny stories. Tells them, “Looking fine, ladies!”

But she quickly pauses music when footwork goes awry.

“Okay, ladies, you’re working too hard! You’re not trying to navigate the sea out there,” she says, soliciting chuckles. “You’ve got to travel over that space, and how you travel is you stay low, you stay in plié, and you move! You should be getting across the floor in a few efforts, not twenty.”

Carol Howenstine, 57, also a student at City Dance, took ballet and tap as a kid and is happy to be dancing again. “It tweaks your brain muscles because there’s a lot of combinations to remember,” she says.

Indeed, a study recently published in the New England Journal of Health credits ballet, jazz, tap and other forms of dance with lowering the risk of dementia due to “significant mental effort involved.”

“I’m not going to be setting the world on fire, but I’m having a great time,” says Carol, a 5-foot-8-inch blonde mom to 11-year-old twins. She loves her jazz and tap class for the camaraderie and workout. One tap number was particularly fun “where we hit our rear-ends and move back like we’re on a horse,” she recalls.

Recreating the scene in her kitchen didn’t pack the same punch as on the dance floor. “My daughter was like ‘Mom, don’t ever do that again.’ Hilarious, out of the mouth of babes.”

Professional fashion blogger Beth Muecke, 55, majored in dance at The University of Texas, “but straight up quit after that.” She might have left dance, but it never really left her. She volunteered at the Houston Ballet as a young adult, has chaired its annual ball and is a 15-year board member. It was back to the ballet barre at age 39. “It’s in the blood.”

She occasionally takes classes through Houston Ballet but primarily pursues ballet and jazz through the Houston Academy of Dance, a better fit for her schedule.

“If you’re a classically trained dancer, it never really leaves you, this muscle memory,” Beth says. “I stayed limber, so it wasn’t gruesomely intimidating going back. But the combinations? When I was young it was like, ‘Got it.’ When I first went back it was, ‘What did she just say to do?’ But you retrain your mind. It comes back to you.”

Returning to dance is a lesson in gravity, she says. “As in, ‘Hmm.… why am I leaping and not getting off the ground?’”

Nichola Carr-Welch and mom Cathi Pendergraft are two peas in a pod when it comes to pursuing their passion, ballet. (Photo: snapshotsbyaileepetrovic.com)

Nichola Carr-Welch, 39, and mom Cathi Pendergraft, 61, are ballet addicts. Neither are professional dancers, but they live for that giddy sensation of being on tippy-toes. Both take classes at Uptown Dance Centre.

Nichola, mom to a 9-year-old boy and a nurse at Memorial Hermann Hospital at the Medical Center, admits getting grumpy if she misses class. “You have to arrange it around life sometimes. It’s good for the mind, body and spirit.”

It’s also good for jumping horses, says Cathi, a former competitive jumper with her Arabian horse, Happy.

“Ballet keeps you limber, and you have good balance,” she says. “People at the horse shows would see me stick my leg up on the fence to stretch out and were just aghast that an old woman was doing that,” she says, laughing.

Let them laugh, quips Cathi. “The balance I gained from ballet has kept me in the saddle instead of hitting the dirt.”