Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Dulin.
Hi Jennifer, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
<span style=”font-family: "Times New Roman", sans-serif;”>My parents were a pastor and a piano teacher. We paid for ballet lessons for my sister and I through barters, scholarships and work study. </span>I trained at several schools before finding Central PA Youth Ballet in the 70’s (I taught my first classes there as well). Upon leaving CPYB, I became a dancer with the newly-formed Festival Ballet of Rhode Island under the direction of Winthrop Corey and Christine Hennessy. A series of events led to relocation to Texas where I met my husband, a horn player who became one of the top freelance horn players in the Metroplex over the next 30 years. I tucked my ballet career into a bottom drawer, had 2 boys, and a girl. My daughter’s interest in ballet, and my guest instruction opportunities at my sister’s ballet school (which boasts dancers in ABT, SAB, Atlanta Ballet, Miami City Ballet) re-awakened a long held desire to begin a ballet conservatory in Texas. Texas Youth Ballet Conservatory was born on August 1st, 2010. Through the McKinney Performing Arts Center I was able to build in numbers, bring in Ballet Magnificat! for two workshops, and grow our conservatory until we grew out of the MPAC in 2014. We found a home about a mile from downtown that had everything we needed. The Covid shutdown shrank the school, and prompted the expansion of our non-profit from performance and scholarship, to the entire organization. Texas Youth Ballet became fully non-profit in 2021. Through our non-profit we have been able to provide need-based scholarships that can boast 4 times the usual number of dancers moving into professional life. I was very intentional on making sure that our atmosphere was not cutthroat or competition-oriented. We emphasize strength of character along with strength of technique. Our dancers support each other, as they receive the training needed to take them into entry level trainee programs. We have dancers currently in trainee programs and dancing professionally. I firmly believe that lack of funds should never be the reason to hold a dancer back from achieving their dreams. Ballet is a beautiful, healthy, strong art that uses only one instrument, the human body and spirit. It is the most difficult of the arts, and a culmination of all of them – music, visual art, and performing arts all in one. My wish to pay forward the generosity I received from my instructors has already made a difference in the world. My enthusiasm for the adventure is, hopefully, contagious.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I have chosen a bumpy road. I was not born with the perfect current-day ballet body. I knew I had to work twice as hard as the girl standing next to me. I knew a career was only going to happen if I never gave up, and didn’t let others define me. Marcia Weary (founder of CPYB) was instrumental in my success because she reset both my technique and my mindset. Reality is important. You can’t live on dreams. You must have a work ethic. My work ethic took me to Festival Ballet, and then to Joffrey on scholarship before I relocated. The road of a non-profit is also a bumpy one. TYB is constantly seeking to put the dancer’s experiences and needs first. If we bring in International Artists to provide training for all of our dancers, the dancers on and off scholarship attend, but where and how do we make up the difference to pay that artist? We are in constant need of support.
From venue expense to needs for new flooring, Grant writing to taxes, the need for even a small school of dancers is ongoing. Many needs are continuously out of reach. The city of McKinney Arts Commission provides us with a season grant which is a 50% grant that requires most of our performances to be in McKinney. Our large performance venues in McKinney are all within the school system. MISD charges us the same for rental as they charge the for-profit, large competition dance schools. This makes even a successful performance barely profitable.
Our dance families’ needs are increasing as more people slip under the poverty level because of inflation. We are not supposed to be the organization that says ‘no’, but we also have climbing utilities and overhead costs. Our professional teachers deserve to be paid their worth and on time.
Dancers don’t have ‘quit’ written into their genes . Things have gotten bad, and we have danced through it together. I hope that more people every day can realize that art is valuable. Children who learn to communicate through ballet and dance have a richer, stronger connection to the world around them. They do better in school, they have the self-discipline to tackle athletics, higher education, or any problem that takes work and teamwork. It is a wonderful, but underrated study that develops the whole child, body and soul.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I feel so lucky to have had the dance career that I did. I got to work with so many luminaries of the day; So many wonderful instructors and artists that were the top of their field. Being able to know Marcia Weary, and have her instruction when I began teaching her curriculum, was a great privilege. Also a privilege: taking floor barre from Pat Sorrell, working with Wink and Christine, working with Mary Jago Romeril (who invited my sister and I to company class with National Ballet of Canada when they were doing their New York run – a class where we danced alongside Rudolph Nureyev and Erik Bruhn!!), being one of Francesca Corkle’s swan maidens (still my favorite Odette), and getting to work with the incomparable Arthur Mitchell (founder of Dance Theatre of Harlem). It was a privilege to have Edith D’Addario tell me that Mr. Joffrey liked my dancing and I needed to stay at Joffrey Ballet. (They were just starting Joffrey 2. I didn’t stay. Long story.) It was a privilege to watch the comic genius of Lloyd Tygett performing the town drunk dance in his ballet ‘Shindig’. It was a privilege to appear on the same program with Edward Villella and Allegra Kent performing Jerome Robbins’ ‘Afternoon of a Faun”. <span style=”font-family: "Times New Roman", sans-serif;”>I love that ballet is empirical, passed from artist of the present to artist of the future. There is a great respect for the past in ballet. It’s a lovely tradition. </span>I carry the memories like an ofrenda in my head, and I hope it comes through my teaching.
I teach everyone with the expectation of success. I have had students who are dancing now, who do not have perfect bodies, but they have the training and support to overcome it. I hope I am giving all of my students memories to cherish and physical and emotional strength to build on, no matter what profession they go into. I am their biggest fan.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
The success dream for the conservatory, has always been to have a large, successful hub of training in McKinney, with a professional company in house, and a facility with a flex space for small performances within the cultural arts district. When Covid hit, I became very aware of my own mortality. The dream didn’t change, but I no longer needed to be the one leading the charge. With the struggles my dance families are facing, and the struggles our non-profit contends with on a daily basis, I am patient for whatever outcome occurs. The chapters of my life, even the non-dancing ones, have been fulfilling each in a different way, so I am happy to either lead the conservatory forward toward the success goal, or find the perfect person to carry this life-work forward in the best way. I am not afraid of succession – but I’m going to be insistent that whoever moves Texas Youth Ballet forward has the same heart for the organization’s true uniqueness within the ballet world that I have. Our dance families deserve nothing less.
Pricing:
- $45 registration for 1 child, $10 reg. for each additional child
- First Steps Program $82 – $108 per month (one or two classes per week)
- Second Steps Program $95 – $180 (depending on hours
- Pre-professional $500 monthly
- Full and Partial Scholarships based on guidelines for school lunch programs and demonstrated need.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.texasyouthballet.org
- Instagram: @tybdance
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064729146903
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/108447918/admin/page-posts/published/
