{"id":4399,"date":"2009-04-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lesliedinaberg.com\/wordpress\/?p=4399"},"modified":"2013-12-17T16:34:45","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T00:34:45","slug":"noozhawk-talks-leslie-dinaberg-sits-down-with-steven-lovelace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesliedinaberg.com\/wordpress\/?p=4399","title":{"rendered":"Noozhawk Talks: Leslie Dinaberg Sits Down With Steven Lovelace"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Steven<\/a>

Steven Lovelace (Michelle J. Wong \/ Noozhawk photo)<\/p><\/div>\n

As the owner\/director of Santa Barbara Dance Arts<\/a> (with partner Alana
\nTillim),\u00a0Steven Lovelace has his dance card full guiding the jazz hands and pirouettes of\u00a0more than 400 young students. Here, he takes a brief intermission to talk to\u00a0Noozhawk.<\/p>\n

Leslie Dinaberg: So Arts Alive!<\/a> which shared your space, is now gone, sadly. But I hear Santa
\nBarbara Dance Arts is expanding.<\/p>\n

Steven Lovelace: Yes. Now my rent just doubled which is pretty scary. But Alana and I … we’re
\na very good mix, she’s definitely a great artist and does wonderful choreography
\nand really good with the kids. She’s a great teacher … I know that it will be good
\nfor us in the long run …<\/p>\n

LD: I know a lot of kids that take classes from you and just love it.<\/p>\n

SL: They do. We have 400 kids here. Are they going to do it as a profession? I’ve
\ngot a few kids that could be able to do it. Are they talented enough, absolutely,
\nbut you know it also takes intelligence and hard work. …<\/p>\n

Some of it here at my studio is social. I know the girls enjoy dancing, I know they
\nenjoy what I do in the class, but they also enjoy coming in and being a part of this
\ngroup … they interface and they interact and it feels good.<\/p>\n

LD: I also think you can’t discount just the physical part of dancing. I think as a
\nparent you realize that your kids need to run around and burn off energy and they
\ncan’t learn if they don’t do that.<\/p>\n

SL: And they don’t learn this in school. This doesn’t happen in school. The level
\nof dancing or the level of vocal coaching that goes on here of the acting classes,
\nthat is not the same, … Before I started this I have worked in practically every
\ndarn school in the city doing independent things.<\/p>\n

LD: Will there be changes at your studio now that you have the entire
\nspace?<\/p>\n

SL: Now we’re going to really transform this into a performing arts center. …
\nWe’ve got Kindermusik here that’s very successful. … We’ve still got a gallery
\nspace down there. The performing arts need the visual arts anyway because
\nsomebody’s got to build the set to put on the show. I’m about to do two musicals
\nin the summertime, so this is all individual artists, costumers are individual artists,
\nthey’re not performing artists, so I work with set designers, costumers.<\/p>\n

LD: With this transition, is the name of the whole place going to be Santa
\nBarbara Dance Arts?<\/p>\n

SL: Yes. Arts Alive! doesn’t belong to me. … The Arts Mentorship Program is the
\nnonprofit part of it. That is our scholarship program and our dance companies,
\nour performing groups, and a lot of internship stuff. We do everything from teach
\nthem to teach classes, we mentor them to choreograph. They are producing their
\nown things. … The kids right now they are producing their own student
\nchoreography showcase that will be April 26th at 3 p.m. The senior dance
\ncompany produces it under our direction, they put the program together, and they
\ndo auditions and do the ticket sales. They do everything.<\/p>\n

LD: That’s great. That’s really good experience.<\/p>\n

SL: Yes, it’s great. It’s for 14-18 year old kids. They put their own recordings
\ntogether, they edit the music for the kids, they do all that. They outreach to the
\nkids at the dance school. … They can’t walk out of here just being dancers. It
\ntakes more than that to make it in the dance world and we know that, so I’m
\nteaching kids to teach. You know one girl, she went out of here, she didn’t want
\nto be a dance major but she taught dance on the side because she could make
\n20 bucks an hour teaching dance instead of slinging hash and trying to scrape
\ntips together so that she could help support herself in school. So that’s a really
\nnice little skill to walk out of here with.<\/p>\n

I’ve got one girl in her senior year in high school she choreographed two
\nmusicals in the school. It pays a couple of grand for her to go in and choreograph
\neight dances for a musical. She’s so good at it. So she’s working on
\nchoreography and making some money. I’m hiring her this summer to help me
\nchoreograph my musicals because I can’t do everything. She works here in the
\nsummertime; she’s great with teaching. She’s 19.<\/p>\n

LD: How long have you been dancing?<\/p>\n

SL: I started when I was 21. I actually was doing aerobics up at Nautilus, and the
\ngal that was running it there who is now one of my moms.<\/p>\n

LD: Cindy Elster?<\/p>\n

SL: Yes … she pegged me right away in class. I was very coordinated. … I would
\nbe right up in there in the front just going for it, and I moved really well and she
\nsaid, “you know, I think you should become a teacher. You should teach. Half the
\nclass is following you anyway.”<\/p>\n

So she started having me come up with her on the thing and do the routines with
\nher and she was really basically training me to teach. (Then she said) “Why
\ndon’t you go up to City College and take a couple of jazz classes? You’ll get all
\nthat.”<\/p>\n

So I went to City College and took Kay Fulton’s jazz class. It was actually an
\nintermediate class and … at the end of the class she lined up half a dozen of us
\nand she said, “You need to take ballet, you need to take ballet or modern,” she
\ngot up to me and she says, “you can stay.” So I got to stay in the class. And that
\nwas the beginning of dance for me.<\/p>\n

LD: That’s kind of wild, it’s late in life, most people start dancing so
\nyoung.<\/p>\n

SL: It is late, but it’s more common for men. Men can start late. … They get an
\naccelerated training. I was up in a community college. I wasn’t in a dance studio
\nhidden away, I was up in a community college where everybody could see me so
\nwithin six months somebody from UCSB saw me and called Alice Contadina who
\nwas the department head at the time and she sent one of the teachers out to a
\nclass to observe me and she said “why don’t you come out here and take some
\nlessons free of charge?” So I went out to UCSB and I danced out there for a year
\nand then they offered me a spot in their company. By that time I had quit my day
\njob and had gotten a job at Julie McLeod’s Dance Warehouse. So that’s my
\nwhole history around here. Julie taught me how to teach.<\/p>\n

LD: What’s it like to work with all those little girls?<\/p>\n

SL: Well, there’s a lot of different ways I could answer that. … I think it’s really
\nimportant to be a place where girls can be empowered, which is one of the big
\nreasons we want to mentor girls and give them social skills because every time
\nthey don’t make that audition it’s a skill to know how to take that rejection of not
\ngetting what they want. The first time you don’t get into the college that you want,
\nif you don’t get that job that you think you’re perfect for that they give to someone
\nelse.<\/p>\n

… We really, really feel strongly that we’re providing a service, not just in giving
\nexcellence in dance training or contemporary dances but we’re giving your kids a
\ncommunity that they can feel good about. And the kids love being here.<\/p>\n

… And I know that some of that is because it’s a great experience for them to be
\nhere, but I have to say we provide this forum where they can be seen at
\nwhatever talent level they are at or whatever their interest in dance is. Whether
\nthey are just here for an after school class or they have an aspiration to go on
\nand go to Broadway and be in music videos or be a director or whatever. It’s here
\nfor them and we want to be there. We take them all seriously. We don’t talk down
\nto the kids here. We really believe in that.<\/p>\n

LD: If you could pick three adjectives to describe yourself, what would they
\nbe?<\/p>\n

SL: Holistic, resourceful, appreciative<\/p>\n

Vital Stats: Steven Lovelace<\/p>\n

Born: Santa Barbara, on June 6, 1957<\/p>\n

Family: Partner Gary Clark<\/p>\n

Civic Involvement: Santa Barbara’s Summer Solstice, Lit Moon Theatre
\nCompany; Santa Barbara Dance Alliance: Arts Mentorship Program; Fund for
\nSanta Barbara<\/p>\n

Professional Accomplishments: Co-owner\/director Santa Barbara Dance Arts;
\nCo-owner\/director Stage Left Productions; Teacher at Arts at Laguna; Former
\nArtistic Director and Artist in Residence with Santa Barbara’s Summer Solstice;
\nDancer with Repertory-West Dance Company, Santa Barbara Dance Theatre,
\nSanta Barbara Civic Light Opera, Bill Evans Dance Company, and Nora
\nReynolds Dance.<\/p>\n

Best Book You’ve Read Recently: (laughs) “Twilight. It’s not like they are the
\nbest-written books in the world but there’s something very engaging about those
\ncharacters.”<\/p>\n

Little-Known Fact: “I like to be alone.”<\/p>\n

Originally published in Noozhawk<\/a>\u00a0on April 12, 2009. Click here<\/a> to read the story on that site.<\/h6>\n

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