Get a Room…to Dance

Private Eyes / Broadway Dance Center by M N O’Donnell

“Matty, your calves need to get a room,” a dancer said to instructor Matt Powell one day before our Advanced Beginner Ballet class at the Broadway Dance Center.  He blushed and stammered a bit, at a loss for words.  He often responds to compliments genuinely humbled and slightly embarrassed.  A self-proclaimed “country boy at heart,” he has an unaffected charm and a bright, kind smile.  When he gives corrections to students, it’s in a low voice, inaudible to the rest of the classroom.  Yet he will give helpful tips and constructive criticism to the class at large.  He also demonstrates each step twice!

To see that beautiful symmetry and turnout up close alone is worth the price of the class. He just came back from a trip to New Zealand where he was working for Ethan Stiefel and coaching Gillian Murphy, Principal Dancer of American Ballet Theater.  Pretty exciting to a ballet geek like me.  I was delighted that some of my California dancer friends took Matt’s class with me while they were in NYC.  I take Matt’s class twice a week and still haven’t gotten to know some of the other dancers yet.  It’s hard to beat the bond I felt with Kathy Mata‘s class in SF (but I had been taking there for about six years!)  However, even if you never talk to other dancers outside of class, you feel like you get to know them without words.